{"id":5436,"date":"2006-10-05T14:31:05","date_gmt":"2006-10-05T18:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5436"},"modified":"2026-03-18T08:02:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:02:49","slug":"waiting-for-godot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5436","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for Godot: Waiting, In General"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like this question a lot:<\/p>\n

What books or stories can you think of that importantly feature absent characters?<\/a> The answers in the thread are cool, too.<\/p>\n

The first one that comes to mind, for me, is Ulysses<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – where Molly hovers over the whole action and we don’t see her until the very end. But in a weird way, the whole thing is about her.<\/p>\n

I would also say “Seymour Glass” – in practically every one of Salinger’s books. Seymour is there … but very rarely in the flesh. But isn’t he just so ever-present anyway?? Seymour is the key to the whole thing.<\/p>\n

The Passion<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by Jeanette Winterson is pretty much all about Napoleon – but we see him once or twice only. But the whole book has him as a focal point. He’s always on everybody’s mind at all times.<\/p>\n

Surfacing<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by Margaret Atwood. Woman looking for her father. A feminist fable. Her father is … dead? But he is the key to all her other relationships. I seem to recall that the book climaxes in some kind of group camping trip where the narrator flips out – abandons her party – goes off into the woods – takes all her clothes off, and rolls about in the dirt, eating carrots she yanked out of the mud. I’m quite serious. I love Margaret Atwood but this is how I remember that book. My friend Jackie read it, and Jackie said about it (in this flat deadpan – heh heh): “Sweetheart. Your fatheh’s dead. Put your clothes on.”<\/p>\n

Also – even though the first half of Cat’s Eye<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by Margaret Atwood prominently features Cordelia – the second half does not. But at every page, at every moment, you, as a reader, are wondering about her, waiting for her … she has taken up space in your brain, taken root. Where is Cordelia?? Of course that’s the point of the whole book.<\/p>\n

Billy, from Charming Billy<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, by Alice McDermott. I loved that book – anyone read it? Really nice novel, I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like this question a lot: What books or stories can you think of that importantly feature absent characters? The answers in the thread are cool, too. The first one that comes to mind, for me, is Ulysses – where … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,28],"tags":[213,1057,85,82,78,713,566],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5436"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102935,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436\/revisions\/102935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}