Samuel Beckett drew part of his inspir­ation for Waiting for Godot from a painting, “Two Men Contemplating the Moon”, by Caspar David Friedrich. As a result, Beckett’s drama moves towards the stasis of the canvas rather than the dramatic action more often associated with the playhouse, inspiring the critic Vivian Mercier to joke that the two halves of the play showed how Beckett had managed to create a work in which “nothing happens, twice”.

In Sara Baume’s second novel A Line Made By Walking, nothing happens about 75 times