He does in my copy (British trade paperback). I'd look it up and quote it, but I'm at work at the moment.

I thought it just a play on the "Waiting for Godot" play and I dont think (having just read WOLP for the third time) that either Snell or Thursday looked in the bag, just bought it as a head in the bag plotline with various ways to discover it - although the idea of TGC writing it in to pin lots more nefarious activities on Thursday does seem plausible...I guess only one person knows what the idea was here and that's Jasper!! Dont keep us in suspense please!!!!

I'm telling you guys, Garcia is eVIL, witha capital VIL!

Snell and Thursday definitely look in the bag (US printing) - I have the book open at that scene. Garcia says its not any old head, but has an "intriguing tattoo" on the neck. Does Godot have any tattoos? It has been quite a while since I read the text (think over-done high school English class), but I don't think Godot was into body art.

Therefore, I vote that TGC re-wrote the head-in-a-bag to incriminate Thursday (I sort want to know if Garcia lopped the head off some poor Generic, or if decapitated heads are considered more of a "prop").



I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. --Oscar Wilde
balletbookworm.blogspot.com

Yes, probably written in. I guess that the heads are just props, however, what would a talking head in a book be? An actual generic I guess!!



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'Pompadour,' spat my mother. 'Living in sin with his pompadour.'

Oh well, I lose.

Dear ffolks,

As to looking in the bag: whoever looks in the bag must also recognize the head as Godot's. I don't think Thursday had ever seen him.

As to who did it: I think it's just what Thursday said -- a dramtic chapter ending foisted upon the Jurisfiction meeting in order to finger her. Only an entity who could manipulate the plot of the Bookworld itself could do that. I'd lay it at the feet of TGC -- look how they manipulated the Bellman. Someone on TGC; and he or she will not be happy.

-- J

So what your saying is that I win, but only on a strictly limited basis.
Kind of like losing, but not!

Both Thursday and Snell look at the head in the bag at the time of purchase (commonwealth edition, bottom page 51), Therefore it could not have been Godot at that time, otherwise Snell woul;d have reacted differentl. When Tweed ampties the head in Norland Park Thursday figures out that with the help of UltraWord the 'facts' can be altered, and is about to explain all but her 'spec-ops' training reminds her not to blab too much (top page 318). Which is also why she sabotages the footnoerphone (sp?) relays to TGC.

also

Godot never had physical form in the origional play, but the well is full of ideas, and Godot certainly was a personification of an idea. so physical for or not, I don't see any reason why a generic would not be used to 'create' Godot.

that's about all for now

Godot no longer shows up in the play 'Waiting for Godot' because he is dead. Like Mrs. Havisham changing the ending of 'Great Expectations', a character can change their plot. Jurisfiction may have decided that as a
tribute to Godot, he would not be replaced. Or the play may be better off without him. After all, his dialog may have added a couple of hours to the running time. ;)

It certainly could have been Godot's head in the bag, and Snell may have recognized him. But that doesn't mean that Thursday knew Snell recognized Godot. After all, a trained private investigator doesn't reveal all his reactions.

As an alternative, Snell set the whole Godot's head in a bag thing up in order to test Thursday because Snell thought she had something to do with his death. We don't know how close Snell and Perkins were to solving the mystery on their own. Snell may have deduced that an Outlander was involved, but not which one.

Cheers,

-Flex

Nice theories! I prefer the "alternative" one...


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"Logic is like Fire, a good servant but a bad master."

Godot cannot die... he is the plot device of death himself. Ingmar Bergman..."Waiting for Godot". On and on, on and on and on!!! Interminable.

Samuel Beckett killed Godot so he could write a very strange play.

i think thats probably the best explanation. after all, TGC wrote Havisham's axle failure, and the padlock off the cage, so why not do this to try and bump off another JF agent?Tom wrote:

Oddly, I would have sworn that they didn't look in the bag, but my memory is probably just wrong.

I haven't seen or read "Waiting for Godot", but from what I've heard of it, it seems that Godot is an abstraction that is talked about as if he were a real person. It's always felt a little strange to me that Jasper used Godot as a concrete character (albeit dead) in the book.
I just had a thought, though. Since the characters in the play talk about Godot and seem to believe he exists (whether he does or not), maybe there exists a sort of sub-BookWorld within the context of the play, and Godot does exist there because he exists in the minds of the characters? Now this is starting to get a bit metaphysical, but think about it: Since Thursday's Outland is actually a part of the TN books, it must therefore be a part of our own BookWorld. But there is a Bookworld within the TN books as well. So Thursday's BookWorld is a sub-BookWorld contained within our own BookWorld.
Then if you sort of abstract-ize the BookWorld into a place where anything we imagine in our heads exists (which is what it is, really, because that's what stories are), you could argue that even though the characters in "Waiting for Godot" haven't written a book about Godot, he certainly exists in their heads. Therefore, Godot exists in a sub-BookWorld contained within "Waiting for Godot", which is contained within Thursday's BookWorld, which is contained within our own BookWorld. This could go on ad infinitum, and so could I since I have a habit of talking way too much, so I'll stop now. :-)

Maybe they wait for so long because Godot was dead.
In other words, in an original version of the play, he arrived, but, as events within a play or book can change, maybe Godot's untimely demise meant that the play changed from a play ABOUT Godot into a play that should be about Godot but can'e be because he's dead.
Well if endings can be changed and Miss Havisham be late for a certain chapter maybe he just missed the whole play.... and then the changes became too deep for the original to be extracted. Or they (whoever 'they' may be) simply prefered the new version.

Does that make any sense?



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When shall we three meet again...

I like that--he was late for the whole play. (Okay, that pun was too bad to resist.) Seems to pull everything together nicely.

Nice one Pip. I always assumed Jasper used Godot so he could goof on the title (and the Alfred Garcia bit was just icing on the cake), but maybe it's more...

Maybe it's the same case as TEA, only on a smaller scale - Jasper playing with the machinations that make a story what it is. If his characters could conceivibly "engineer" the ending to Jane Eyre, why not Godot?

And it would be an excellent explanantion for a play about someone who never shows up - an obvious one that makes a joke out of all the psychological blathering that surrounds the actual work.



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"I'm a god... I'm not THE God... I don't think..."

I just noticed: in TEA when Acheron is threatening to kill off Martin Chuzzlewit, someone speculating about the consequences of killing off a title character makes a comment to the effect of:
"Can you imagine a literary work in which the main character never shows up, and the other characters just sit around waiting for him?"
It didn't occur to me until after I read WOLP, but I think this must be a really well-hidden Godot joke!

I think the idea of the head-in-a-bag gag was just, "Well, that would explain why he never showed up!"
Perhaps he was originally supposed to be in the play, or perhaps he was killed before it started and somebody forgot to tell the rest of the cast.

"He was late for the whole play" ... *chuckle*



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Metaphors be with you!