When the Layover Never Ends

To be in-between is to pass through a space where the normal rules of movement, time, and social interaction are suspended—but only briefly, on the way to elsewhere. But what happens if you’re stuck in such a place? As you explore the selections below, consider: how should we approach spending time in liminal spaces? Should we do more to seek them out?

Samuel Beckett | Waiting for Godot, Scene 2 (1953)
Pablo Neruda | “Keeping Still” (1958)
Philippe Orreindy | I'll Wait for the Next One... (2002)
Marcel Ayme | “The Man Who Could Walk through Walls” (1941)
Amor Towles | A Gentleman in Moscow (Excerpt) (2019)

Key concepts

The Theatre of the Absurd: The postwar theatre Beckett belongs to, staging the claim that life supplies no built-in meaning. Its plays refuse the usual machinery — plot, arrival, explanation — on the grounds that supplying any of it would be a lie about the thing being shown.

Every work — at a glance

Waiting for Godot, Scene 2 — Samuel Beckett

Beckett's 1953 play in which two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait beside a bare tree for a man named Godot, who sends word he will come tomorrow and does not. A famous early review said it was a play in which 'nothing happens, twice' — the second act repeats the first with tiny unbearable differences, a few leaves on the tree.

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What to know

01
How should we spend time we cannot leave? The set answers by contrast. Rostov, sentenced to the Metropol, builds friendships, a job and the raising of a child inside a building people are meant to pass through; Vladimir and Estragon build nothing beside their tree; Dutilleul is stopped inside the wall itself. What separates them is not how long the confinement lasts but whether the person is still able to act inside it.

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Across subjects

Mehran Karimi Nasseri lived in Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle airport from 1988 until 2006. His papers were gone, so no country would admit him and none would

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

The in-between is usually somewhere you pass through; this asks what happens when you cannot. Is a permanent in-between a prison or a strange kind of freedom? Rostov builds a whole life inside his sentence. Vladimir and Estragon do not, and the difference between them is the useful part.

Practice — a sample

LITThe key difference between Count Rostov and Vladimir/Estragon is whether each can still —

A Meet the awaited
B Leave tomorrow
C Hire a lawyer
D Act inside confinement
E Remember the past

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