Growing Up Absurd

This article explores the curious interface between Beckett’s writing and the male-orientated magazine culture of the United States. Throughout the 1960s, Beckett would be solicited for articles by Esquire (advertised as ‘The Magazine for Men’) including an unlikely invitation to cover the 1968 Democratic Convention. By 1969, a write-up of Kenneth Tynan’s Oh! Calcutta! (for which Beckett would contribute the opening skit) would feature prominently in the October issue of Playboy magazine. Despite his often-perplexed reactions, this article suggests that the appeal of Beckett to commercial men’s magazines may help to situate the author within mid-century discourses around sexual freedom and ‘hip’ masculinity.