In April 1962, Samuel Beckett sent a clipping from the French press to his lover Barbara Bray: a report of the arrest in Paris of a member of the Organisation armée secrète. The OAS was a far-right terror gang whose members were drawn largely from within the French military. It had carried out bombings, assassinations, and bank robberies with the aim of overthrowing the government of Charles de Gaulle and stopping the concession of independence to Algeria. Among its targets had been Beckett's publisher and friend Jérôme Lindon, whose apartment and office were both bombed by the OAS.
The press clipping detailed the capture of an army lieutenant who would be charged with leading an OAS attack on an arms depot outside Paris and a raid on a bank in the city. His name was Lieutenant Daniel Godot. Sending it to Bray was a typical expression of Beckett's black humor. But it also serves as a reminder that his work is not an exhalation of timeless existential despair. It is, as Emilie Morin's groundbreaking study, Beckett's Political Imagination, shows, enmeshed in contemporary politics.
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