Samuel Beckett Nyt

Samuel Beckett NYT: Exploring the Literary Giant's Relationship with the New York Times

The name Samuel Beckett conjures images of bleak landscapes, existential angst, and minimalist prose. This enigmatic Irish novelist, playwright, and poet remains a towering figure in 20th-century literature, his influence reverberating through generations of writers. But how did this master of the absurd fare in the pages of the New York Times, a publication often associated with a very different literary landscape? This in-depth exploration dives into the complex relationship between Samuel Beckett and the NYT, examining reviews, obituaries, and the enduring presence of his work in the paper's cultural coverage. We'll uncover how the NYT shaped public perception of Beckett and how his work, in turn, challenged and expanded the paper’s literary horizons.

I. Early NYT Coverage: Establishing a Literary Presence

The New York Times' engagement with Samuel Beckett wasn't immediate. His early works, often characterized by their experimental nature and challenging themes, didn't always receive the widespread acclaim they would later achieve. Initial reviews, often appearing in the book review section, were likely mixed, reflecting the critical uncertainty surrounding his unique style. We'll analyze these early reviews, highlighting the points of contention and praise, and examine how they contributed to the slow but steady build-up of Beckett's reputation in the American literary scene. The focus here will be on identifying the early NYT pieces that first introduced Beckett to a wider American audience, charting the evolution of critical response to his writing in the paper's pages.

II. The Impact of Waiting for Godot and Subsequent Plays: NYT's Response to Beckett's Theatrical Triumphs

The theatrical success of Waiting for Godot marked a turning point in Beckett's relationship with the NYT. The play's absurdist themes and unconventional style initially sparked debate and divided critics. We'll examine how the NYT covered the play's Broadway debut and subsequent productions, tracing the evolution of critical interpretations and analyzing how the paper's reviews reflected the changing cultural landscape and the growing acceptance of avant-garde theatre in America. Did the NYT initially misunderstand or resist Beckett’s work, and if so, how did their critical stance evolve over time?

III. Beckett's Novels in the NYT: Reviewing Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable

Beyond his plays, Beckett's novels form a significant body of work exploring themes of isolation, absurdity, and the human condition. We'll delve into the NYT's coverage of these challenging works, particularly Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. These novels presented unique challenges for critics, requiring a deep engagement with their complex narrative structures and philosophical underpinnings. We will examine the language used by NYT reviewers to describe these books, highlighting the evolution of critical understanding of Beckett's stylistic innovations and their impact on the literary landscape. Did the NYT's engagement with his novels mirror its reaction to his plays, or did they elicit a different kind of response?

IV. The Nobel Prize and Beyond: The NYT's Coverage of Beckett's Later Years and Legacy

Samuel Beckett's Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 undoubtedly cemented his status as a major literary figure. The NYT's coverage of this event and its subsequent impact on Beckett's reputation will be analyzed. We'll explore how the NYT framed his achievement, highlighting the paper’s recognition of his contributions to literature and its evaluation of his enduring influence. We'll also explore the NYT's coverage of his later works and productions, examining how the paper continued to engage with his evolving artistic vision. This section will also address the NYT's role in solidifying Beckett's place in the literary canon.

V. Beckett's Enduring Influence: The NYT's Ongoing Engagement with His Work

Even after his death, Samuel Beckett's work continues to resonate with readers and critics alike. This final section will explore how the NYT continues to engage with Beckett's legacy, examining articles, reviews, and features that highlight his ongoing relevance in contemporary literature and culture. This might include analysis of recent productions of his plays, discussions of his works in academic circles, and any renewed critical interest in his writings. How does the NYT continue to position Beckett within the larger context of literary history?

VI. Conclusion: A Lasting Legacy

This analysis will conclude by synthesizing the findings, offering a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted relationship between Samuel Beckett and the New York Times. We'll summarize the evolution of the NYT's critical response to Beckett's work, from initial uncertainty to widespread recognition of his genius. We will emphasize the importance of understanding this historical context to fully appreciate the impact of Beckett’s literature on the cultural landscape, both then and now.


Article Outline:

Introduction: Hooking the reader with a compelling introduction to Beckett and his relationship with the NYT.
Chapter 1: Early NYT coverage and establishing a literary presence.
Chapter 2: The impact of Waiting for Godot and subsequent plays.
Chapter 3: Beckett's novels in the NYT: reviews of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable.
Chapter 4: The Nobel Prize and beyond: coverage of Beckett's later years and legacy.
Chapter 5: Beckett's enduring influence: ongoing NYT engagement with his work.
Conclusion: Summarizing the findings and concluding thoughts on the lasting legacy of Beckett's NYT coverage.


(The following sections would be expanded upon to create the full 1500+ word article as outlined above. Due to the length constraints of this response, these sections are presented in a summarized form.)


Chapter 1: Early NYT Coverage

This chapter will delve into the early reviews of Beckett's works in the NYT, highlighting their initial reception and the gradual shift in critical perspective. We'll examine the language used by early reviewers, noting any recurring themes or criticisms. This will include analysis of specific articles and reviews from the NYT archives.

Chapter 2: Waiting for Godot and Subsequent Plays

This section focuses on the NYT's coverage of Waiting for Godot's Broadway debut and its impact. We'll examine how the paper’s critics grappled with the play's experimental nature, and how their reviews evolved over time as the play gained popularity.

Chapter 3: Beckett's Novels

This chapter delves into the NYT's reception of Beckett's challenging novels. We’ll analyze reviews of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, noting how critics approached their unique styles and challenging themes.

Chapter 4: The Nobel Prize and Beyond

This section explores the NYT's coverage of Beckett's Nobel Prize win and its impact on his reputation. We'll analyze the paper's celebratory articles and their assessment of his lasting influence.

Chapter 5: Enduring Influence

This chapter explores how the NYT continues to engage with Beckett’s legacy, examining recent articles, reviews, and features that discuss his work. We'll look at any current scholarship or critical interpretations featured in the paper.


FAQs:

1. When did the NYT first review Samuel Beckett's work? (Answer will be derived from research into NYT archives.)
2. How did the NYT's coverage of Beckett's plays differ from its coverage of his novels? (Answer based on comparative analysis of reviews.)
3. What was the NYT's overall reaction to Waiting for Godot? (Answer based on analysis of reviews surrounding the play's debut.)
4. Did the NYT's critical reception of Beckett change after he won the Nobel Prize? (Answer based on pre- and post-Nobel Prize coverage.)
5. How did the NYT contribute to the establishment of Beckett's literary reputation in the US? (Answer analyzing the cumulative impact of NYT coverage.)
6. Are there any recurring themes in NYT reviews of Beckett's work? (Answer summarizing common critical viewpoints across different reviews.)
7. How does the NYT's current coverage of Beckett reflect his continuing influence? (Answer based on analysis of contemporary NYT articles on Beckett.)
8. Were there any significant dissenting voices within the NYT regarding Beckett's work? (Answer identifying any critics who offered opposing viewpoints.)
9. How does the NYT's coverage of Beckett compare to that of other major literary figures of the 20th century? (Answer based on comparative analysis with other writers' NYT coverage.)


Related Articles:

1. Beckett's Existentialism: A New York Times Perspective: An analysis of how the NYT framed Beckett's existentialist themes.
2. The Absurd in Beckett's Plays: A NYT Retrospective: Examining the NYT's critical interpretations of the absurdist elements in Beckett's work.
3. Beckett's Minimalism: NYT Reviews and Interpretations: Focusing on the NYT's response to Beckett's minimalist style.
4. The Influence of James Joyce on Samuel Beckett: A NYT Perspective: Exploring the relationship between Joyce and Beckett as seen through the lens of the NYT.
5. Samuel Beckett's Endgame: A NYT Theatrical Review: Analyzing a specific NYT review of Endgame.
6. Beckett's Prose Style: Deconstructing the NYT's Critical Responses: Analyzing the critical language used to describe Beckett's prose style in NYT reviews.
7. Samuel Beckett's Legacy: A NYT Perspective: Examining how the NYT has presented Beckett's enduring legacy.
8. Comparing Beckett to other Absurdist Playwrights: A NYT Analysis: A comparative analysis of Beckett's work with other absurdist playwrights, as covered in the NYT.
9. The Reception of Samuel Beckett's Novels in the United States: A broader examination of Beckett's reception in the US, incorporating NYT coverage as one component.


  samuel beckett nyt: Malone Dies Samuel Beckett, 2012-10-04 'Malone', writes Malone, 'is what I am called now.' On his deathbed, and wiling away the time with stories, the octogenarian Malone's account of his condition is intermittent and contradictory, shifting with the vagaries of the passing days: without mellowness, without elegiacs; wittier, jauntier, and capable of wilder rages than Molloy. The sound I liked best had nothing noble about it. It was the barking of the dogs, at night, in the clusters of hovels up in the hills, where the stone-cutters lived, like generations of stone-cutters before them. it came down to me where I lay, in the house in the plain, wild and soft, at the limit of earshot, soon weary. The dogs of the valley replied with their gross bay all fangs and jaws and foam...
  samuel beckett nyt: Parisian Lives Deirdre Bair, 2019-11-12 A PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair explores her fifteen remarkable years in Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, painting intimate new portraits of two literary giants and revealing secrets of the biographical art. In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written—or even read—a biography before. The next seven years comprised of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other—and lived essentially on the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair’s own feminist beliefs. Parisian Lives draws on Bair’s extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.
  samuel beckett nyt: Collected Poems in English and French Samuel Beckett, 2007-12-01 This collection gathers together the Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett's English poems (including Whoroscope, his first published verse), English translations of poems by Eluard, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and Chamfort, and poems in French, several of which are presented in translation.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Unnamable Samuel Beckett, 2012-10-04 The iconic trilogy of novels by the era-defining Nobel laureate, relaunched for a new generation. I can't go on, I'll go on. Molloy: a sordid vagrant riding his bicycle through the countryside, sucking stones, on a quest for his mother. Moran: a private detective sent on his trail, investigating his crimes - but soon to deteriorate alongside him. Malone: an octogenarian man on his deathbed, naked in piles of blankets, wiling away the time with stories - writing, reminiscing, raging, surviving. The Unnameable: an armless and legless creature from a nameless place, weeping and watching in his urn, orbited by visitors outside a chop-house. Together, these selves speak, debate, exist: the prose as alive, or more, than them. 'The master innovator of them all.' Guardian
  samuel beckett nyt: Damned to Fame: the Life of Samuel Beckett James Knowlson, 2014-10-16 _______________ 'A triumph of scholarship and sympathy... one of the great post-war biographies' - Independent 'A landmark in scholarly criticism... Knowlson is the world's largest Beckett scholar. His life is right up there with George Painter's Proust and Richard Ellmann's Joyce in sensitivity and fascination' - Daily Telegraph 'It is hard to imagine a fuller portrait of the man who gave our age some of the myths by which it lives' - Evening Standard _______________ SHORTLISTED FOR THE WHITBREAD PRIZE _______________ Samuel Beckett's long-standing friend, James Knowlson, recreates Beckett's youth in Ireland, his studies at Trinity College, Dublin in the early 1920s and from there to the Continent, where he plunged into the multicultural literary society of late-1920s Paris. The biography throws new light on Beckett's stormy relationship with his mother, the psychotherapy he received after the death of his father and his crucial relationship with James Joyce. There is also material on Beckett's six-month visit to Germany as the Nazi's tightened their grip. The book includes unpublished material on Beckett's personal life after he chose to live in France, including his own account of his work for a Resistance cell during the war, his escape from the Gestapo and his retreat into hiding. Obsessively private, Beckett was wholly committed to the work which eventually brought his public fame, beginning with the controversial success of Waiting for Godot in 1953, and culminating in the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Rock from the Sky Jon Klassen, 2021-04-13 Look up! From the Caldecott Medal–winning creator of the hat trilogy comes a new deadpan gem. There is a spot. It is a good spot. It is the perfect spot to stand. There is no reason to ever leave. But somewhere above there is also a rock. A rock from the sky. Here comes The Rock from the Sky, a hilarious meditation on the workings of friendship, fate, shared futuristic visions, and that funny feeling you get that there’s something off somewhere, but you just can’t put your finger on it. Merging broad visual suspense with wry wit, celebrated picture book creator Jon Klassen gives us a wholly original comedy for the ages.
  samuel beckett nyt: Dream of Fair to Middling Women Samuel Beckett, 2020-03-31 Beckett's first 'literary landmark' ( St Petersburg Times) is a wonderfully savoury introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning author. Written in 1932, when the twenty-six-year-old Beckett was struggling to make ends meet, the novel offers a rare and revealing portrait of the artist as a young man. When submitted to several publishers, all of them found it too literary, too scandalous or too risky; it was only published posthumously in 1992. As the story begins, Belacqua - a young version of Molloy, whose love is divided between two women, Smeraldina-Rima and the little Alba - 'wrestles with his lusts and learning across vocabularies and continents, before a final relapse into Dublin' ( New Yorker). Youthfully exuberant and Joycean in tone, Dream is a work of extraordinary virtuosity.
  samuel beckett nyt: No Author Better Served Samuel Beckett, Alan Schneider, 1998 Samuel Beckett claimed he couldn't talk about his work, but he proves remarkably forthcoming in these pages, which document the thirty-year working relationship between the playwright and his principal producer in the United States, Alan Schneider. The 500 letters capture the world of theater as well as the personalities of their authors.
  samuel beckett nyt: No Man's Land Harold Pinter, 2013-07-18 'The work of our best living playwright in its command of the language and its power to erect a coherent structure in a twilight zone of confusion and dismay.' The TimesDo Hirst and Spooner really know each other, or are they performing an elaborate charade? The ambiguity - and the comedy - intensify with the arrival of Briggs and Foster. All four inhabit a no-man's-land between time present and a time remembered, between reality and imagination.No Man's Land was first presented at the National Theatre at the Old Vic, London, in 1975, revived at the Almeida Theatre, London, with Harold Pinter as Hirst and revived by the National Theatre, directed by Harold Pinter, in 2001.
  samuel beckett nyt: Mojo Jez Butterworth, 1999 THE STORY: Silver Johnny is the new singing sensation, straight out of a low-life Soho clubland bar in 1958. His success could be the big break for two dead-end workers in the bar, if they play their cards right and trust the owner of the place to
  samuel beckett nyt: Simone de Beauvoir Deirdre Bair, 1991-08-15 This definitive biography is based on five years of interviews with de Beauvoir, and is written with her full cooperation. Bair penetrates the mystique of this brilliant and often paradoxical woman, who has been called one of the great minds of the 20th century, and surely, one of the most famously unconventional figures of her generation. As a reference work . . . Simone de Beauvoir can be considered definitive.--The Atlantic. 16-page photographic insert.
  samuel beckett nyt: Watt Samuel Beckett, 2012-08-16 Written in Roussillon during World War Two, while Samuel Beckett was hiding from the Gestapo, Watt was first published in 1953. Beckett acknowledged that this comic novel unlike any other 'has its place in the series' - those masterpieces running from Murphy to the Trilogy, Waiting for Godot and beyond. It shares their sense of a world in crisis, their profound awareness of the paradoxes of being, and their distrust of the rational universe. Watt tells the tale of Mr Knott's servant and his attempts to get to know his master. Watt's mistake is to derive the essence of his master from the accidentals of his being, and his painstakingly logical attempts to 'know' ultimately consign him to the asylum. Itself a critique of error, Watt has previously appeared in editions that are littered with mistakes, both major and minor. The new Faber edition offers for the first time a corrected text based on a scholarly appraisal of the manuscripts and textual history.
  samuel beckett nyt: Stories and Texts for Nothing Samuel Beckett, 2007-12-01 This volume brings together three of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s major short stories and thirteen shorter pieces of fiction that he calls “texts for nothing.” Here, as in all his work, Beckett relentlessly strips away all but the essential to arrive at a core of truth. His prose reveals the same mastery that marks his work from Waiting for Godot and Endgame to Molloy and Malone Dies. In each of the three stories, old men displaced or expelled from the modest corners where they have been living bestir themselves in search of new corners. Told, “You can’t stay here,” they somehow, doggedly, inevitably, go on. Includes: “The Expelled” “The Calmative” “The End” Texts for Nothing (1-10)
  samuel beckett nyt: Her Here Amanda Dennis, 2021-03-09 An atmospheric debut novel about one lost young woman’s search for another “Spellbinding. . . . Wholly engrossing.” —Washington Post Elena, struggling with memory loss due to a trauma that has unmoored her sense of self, deserts graduate school and a long-term relationship to accept a bizarre proposition from an estranged family friend in Paris: she will search for a young woman, Ella, who went missing six years earlier in Thailand, by rewriting her journals. As she delves deeper into Ella’s story, Elena begins to lose sight of her own identity and drift dangerously toward self-annihilation. Her Here is an existential detective story with a shocking denouement that plumbs the creative and destructive powers of narrative itself. An Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and Cambridge Gates Scholar, Amanda Dennis teaches at the American University of Paris. Her Here is her first novel.
  samuel beckett nyt: The New York Times Book of Broadway Ben Brantley, 2001-11-14 This volume, essential for anyone who loves Broadway, includes a full introduction by Ben Brantley, chief theater critic of The Times, his selection of 25 of the influential Broadway plays that defined the twentieth century, and his choice of 100 other, memorable plays - right up through plays currently running on Broadway..
  samuel beckett nyt: Murphy Samuel Beckett, 2012-08-16 Edited by J. C. C. MaysMurphy, Samuel Beckett's first novel, was published in 1938. Its work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphy's lovestruck fiancée Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure. Murphy's friends and familiars are simulacra of Murphy, fragmented and incomplete. But Beckett's achievement lies in the brilliantly original language used to communicate this vision of isolation and misunderstanding. The combination of particularity and absurdity gives Murphy's world its painful definition, but the sheer comic energy of Beckett's prose releases characters and readers alike into exuberance.
  samuel beckett nyt: Nohow On Samuel Beckett, 2014-11-11 The three pieces that comprise this volume are among the most delicate and disquieting of Samuel Beckett’s later prose. Each confined to a single consciousness in a closed space, these stories are a testament to the mind’s boundless expanse. In Company, a man—one on his back in the dark—hears a voice speak to him, describing significant moments from his lifetime, and yet these memories may be merely fables and figments invented for the sake of companionship. Ill Seen Ill Said tells of a solitary old woman who paces around a cabin, burdened by existence itself. And Worstword Ho explores a world devoid of rationality and purpose, containing the famous directive: Try again. Fail Again. Fail Better. The quintessential distillation of Beckett’s philosophy on human existence and the ultimate example of his minimalist approach to fiction, Nohow On is a vital collection, concerned with conception and perception, memory and imagination.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Skunk Mac Barnett, 2015-04-14 This sly, hilarious tale, The Skunk, brings together luminaries Mac Barnett and Patrick McDonnell for the first time. An Entertainment Weekly Best Kids' Book When a skunk first appears in the tuxedoed man's doorway, it's a strange but possibly harmless occurrence. But then the man finds the skunk following him, and the unlikely pair embark on an increasingly frantic chase through the city, from the streets to the opera house to the fairground. What does the skunk want? It's not clear-but soon the man has bought a new house in a new neighborhood to escape the little creature's attention, only to find himself missing something. . .
  samuel beckett nyt: Endgame Samuel Beckett, 1958 Four characters play a game of life, concluding with the exit of one character and the immobility of the remaining three, in a study of man's relationship to his fellows
  samuel beckett nyt: Fizzles Samuel Beckett, Susan Kinsolving, 2003 Eight short prose pieces written between 1973-1975.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Company Robert Littell, 2020-10-06 This realistic New York Times–bestselling epic spy novel captures the thrilling story of CIA agents in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. The New York Times bestselling spy novel The Company lays bare the history and inner workings of the CIA. This critically acclaimed blockbuster from internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the CIA—known as “the Company” to insiders. Racing across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the ’50s, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, and the Gorbachev putsch, The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an amoral, elusive, formidable enemy—and each other—in an internecine battle within the Company itself. “Compulsive reading from start to finish.” —The Boston Globe “Hugely entertaining . . . A serious look at how our nation exercises power. . . . Popular fiction at its finest.” —The Washington Post Book World “As it happens, this longest spy novel ever written turns out to be one of the best.” —Chicago Tribune “Reads like a breeze . . . guaranteed to suck you right back into the Alice-in-Wonderland world of spy vs. spy.” —Newsweek “If Robert Littell didn’t invent the American spy novel, he should have.” —Tom Clancy “It's gung-ho, hard-drinking, table-turning fun.” —Publishers Weekly
  samuel beckett nyt: Odd Jobs John Updike, 2012-12-04 To complement his work as a fiction writer, John Updike accepted any number of odd jobs—book reviews and introductions, speeches and tributes, a “few paragraphs” on baseball or beauty or Borges—and saw each as “an opportunity to learn something, or to extract from within some unsuspected wisdom.” In this, his largest collection of assorted prose, he brings generosity and insight to the works and lives of William Dean Howells, George Bernard Shaw, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and dozens more. Novels from outposts of postmodernism like Turkey, Albania, Israel, and Nigeria are reviewed, as are biographies of Cleopatra and Dorothy Parker. The more than a hundred considerations of books are flanked, on one side, by short stories, a playlet, and personal essays, and, on the other, by essays on his own oeuvre. Updike’s odd jobs would be any other writer’s chief work.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Dark Flood Rises Margaret Drabble, 2016-11-03 NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017: ‘masterly’ GUARDIAN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: 'An absolute tour de force' Fran may be old but she's not going without a fight. So she dyes her hair, enjoys every glass of red wine, drives around the country for her job with a housing charity and lives in an insalubrious tower block that her loved ones disapprove of. And as each of them - her pampered ex Claude, old friend Jo, flamboyant son Christopher and earnest daughter Poppet - seeks happiness in their own way, what will the last reckoning be? Will they be waving or drowning when the end comes? By turns joyous and profound, darkly sardonic and moving, The Dark Flood Rises questions what makes a good life, and a good death. This triumphant, bravura novel takes in love, death, sun-drenched islands, poetry, Maria Callas, tidal waves, surprise endings - and new beginnings.
  samuel beckett nyt: A Country Road, A Tree Jo Baker, 2016-05-17 From the bestselling author of Longbourn comes a story of survival and determination, of spies and artists, passion and danger—a portrait of Samuel Beckett’s wartime experiences in Paris. “Exquisitely crafted.” —O, The Oprah Magazine In 1939 Paris, the ground rumbles with the footfall of Nazi soldiers marching along the Champs-Élysées, and a young, unknown writer, recently arrived from Ireland to make his mark, smokes one last cigarette with his lover before the city they know is torn apart. Soon he will put them both in mortal danger by joining the Resistance. Through the years that follow, we are witness to the workings of a uniquely brilliant mind struggling to create a language to express a shattered world. A Country Road, A Tree is a portrait of the extremes of human experience alchemized into one man’s timeless art.
  samuel beckett nyt: All that Fall Samuel Beckett, 1957 Published to celebrate the centenary of Beckett's birth
  samuel beckett nyt: The Shorter Plays Samuel Beckett, S. E. Gontarski, 1999 Shorter Plays follows Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Krapp's Last Tape in this highly praised series of Beckett's notebooks, which show for the first time the extensive revisions made by Beckett during revivals of his plays and presents the complete and definitive texts for Play, Footfalls, Come and Go, What Where, That Time, Eh Joe, and Not I. From the mid-1960s, Samuel Beckett himself directed all his major plays in Berlin, Paris, and London. For most of these productions he meticulously prepared notebooks for his personal use. Beckett's theatrical notebooks, which are reproduced in facsimile here, offer a remarkable record of his involvement with the staging of his texts. They present his solutions to the practical problems of staging and also provide a unique insight into the way he envisaged his own plays. With additional information taken from Beckett's annotated and corrected copies of the plays, and using his experience as a director and scholar, S. E. Gontarski has been able to constitute a revised text for each of the plays, incorporating Beckett's many changes, corrections, additions, and cuts.
  samuel beckett nyt: Samuel Beckett's Hidden Drives James Donald O'Hara, 1997 Culminates with the closest, most detailed and systematic reading of Beckett's most important novel, Molloy, yet produced. . . . No other work in Beckett studies has attempted to deal with these works in this much detail, with this strong a thesis, and, most important, with this much success. . . . A masterwork. It will completely revise how we think of Beckett's creative process and how we read Molloy.--S. E. Gontarski, Florida State University While much has been written on the subject of Joyce's uses of sources and models, little has been written about Samuel Beckett's similar preference for using formal systems of thought as scaffolding for his own work. In the most comprehensive study of his use of source material, J. D. O'Hara examines specifically Beckett's almost obsessive concern with psychological sources and themes and his use of Freudian and Jungian narrative structures. Beginning with Beckett's early monograph, Proust, O'Hara traces Beckett's preference for Schopenhauer's philosophy as the system of thought most appropriate for thinking and writing about Proust. O'Hara then examines Beckett's shift from philosophical to psychological models, specifically to Freudian and Jungian texts. Beckett used these, as O'Hara demonstrates, for characterization and plot in his early writings. Beckett's use of depth psychology, however, in no way allows the reader to hang either a Freudian or Jungian tag on Beckett. O'Hara cautions his readers against inferring truth value from what is more properly understood as scaffolding--a temporary arrangement used during the construction of his own absolutely unique art form. O'Hara analyzes this scaffolding in the novel Murphy, the story collection More Pricks Than Kicks, the short works First Love and From an Abandoned Work, and the radio play All That Fall. He concludes with the most comprehensive and detailed reading of Molloy available anywhere. No serious reader of Beckett will want to be without this book.
  samuel beckett nyt: A Dangerous Friend Ward S. Just, 1999 An idealistic political scientist abandons his family to bring progress to 1965 Vietnam, only to wreck havoc with people's lives. Sydney Parade of Connecticut is unaware that the foundation employing him is a front for the Pentagon. By the author of Echo House.
  samuel beckett nyt: Now the Day Is Over Sabine Baring-Gould, Herbert Brokering, 2001 Preston McDaniels uses his wit, wisdom, and talent to help children understand the deeper meaning of this 1865 Baring-Gould song.
  samuel beckett nyt: Collected Shorter Prose 1945-1980 Samuel Beckett, 1984
  samuel beckett nyt: Sartre and Camus Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, 2004 In a series of highly publicized articles in 1952, Jean-Paul Sartre engaged Albert Camus in a bitter public confrontation over the ideas Camus articulated in his renowned work, . This volume contains English translations of the five texts constituting this famous philosophical quarrel. It also features a biographical and critical introduction plus two essays by contemporary scholars reflecting on the cultural and philosophical significance of this confrontation.
  samuel beckett nyt: Tropic of Cancer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) Henry Miller, 2012-01-30 Miller’s groundbreaking first novel, banned in Britain for almost thirty years.
  samuel beckett nyt: Street Cop Robert Coover, 2021 Robert Coover's detective novelette, STREET COP, is set in a dystopian world of infectious 'living dead,' murderous robo-cops, aging street walkers, and walking streets. With drawings by Art Spiegelman, this short tale scrutinizes the arc of the American myth, exploring the working of memory in a digital world, police violence and the future of urban life. STREET COP is provocative and prophetic, asking us to interrogate the line between a condemnable system and a sympathetic individual.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Unfortunates B S Johnson, 2023-06-29 A sports journalist, sent to a Midlands town on a weekly assignment, finds himself confronted by ghosts from the past when he disembarks at the railway station. Memories of one of his best, most trusted friends, a tragically young victim of cancer, begin to flood through his mind as he attempts to go about the routine business of reporting a football match. B S Johnson’s famous ‘book in a box’, in which the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in any order the reader chooses, is one of the key works of a novelist now undergoing an enormous revival of interest. The Unfortunates is a book of passionate honesty and dark, courageous humour: a meditation on death and a celebration of friendship which also offers a remarkably frank self-portrait of its author.
  samuel beckett nyt: Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd M. Bennett, 2011-03-31 Fifty years after the publication of Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd , which suggests that 'absurd' plays purport the meaninglessness of life, this book uses the works of five major playwrights of the 1950s to provide a timely reassessment of one of the most important theatre 'movements' of the 20th century.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Letters of Samuel Beckett 4 Volume Hardback Set Samuel Beckett, 2016-10-29
  samuel beckett nyt: Imogen Says Nothing Aditi Brennan Kapil, 2018 A revisionist comedy in verse and prose featuring Imogen, a character who only appears in the first folio of William Shakespeare's Much Adoe About Nothing, speaks no lines, and is probably a typo. A feminist hijacking of Shakespeare that investigates the voices that have been absented from our canon, and the consequences of cutting them.
  samuel beckett nyt: The Memorandum Václav Havel, 1981 Revolves around the invention of a new bureaucratic language, Ptydepe, which is adopted by an organisation despite the fact that few employees seem to understand it.
  samuel beckett nyt: Loaded marquis de Sade, 1991-07-04 The 120 Days of Sodom is the Marquis de Sade's masterpiece. A still unsurpassed catalogue of sexual perversions and the first systematic exploration of the psychopathology of sex, it was written during Sade's lengthy imprisonment for sexual deviancy and blasphemy and then lost after the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution in 1789. Later rediscovered, the manuscript remained unpublished until 1936 and is now introduced by Simone de Beauvoir's landmark essay, 'Must We Burn Sade?' Unique in its enduring capacity to shock and provoke, The 120 Days of Sodom must stand as one of the most controversial books ever written, and a fine example of the Libertine novel, a genre inspired by eroticism and anti-establishmentarianism, that effectively ended with the French Revolution.
  samuel beckett nyt: Proust Samuel Beckett, 1968