Chapter 2 Grey Time: Anachromism and Waiting for Beckett

Abstract

Alongside marking Beckett’s obvious fascination with what we would now call greyscale images, this chapter will argue that Beckett’s modernist, often minimalist works also materialise an analogous temporal aesthetic: a grey time structured, in particular, by an attention to waiting without the possibility of fulfilment or progression. In a greyscale image, the value of each pixel is a single sample representing only an amount of light; in other words, it carries information only about intensity rather than chromatic difference.