'The Walworth Farce': Critically acclaimed confusion Nov 9, 2009
"He's in a groove at the moment," he says, "In 10 or 15 years' time, we'll be talking about him in the same way that people talk about Samuel Beckett and Brian Friel.". " 'The Walworth Farce' is something that I can - hand on heart - say you will never forget," he says punctuating his words with great emphasis. (San Francisco Chronicle -- Entertainment)
Trip to book store recalls who helped through life Oct 22, 2009
In the "B" section, there was Samuel Beckett. In the "M," Henry Miller and Norman Mailer. (Anchorage Daily News)
'Waiting for Godot' production finds humor but loses tragedy Oct 21, 2009
This succeeded in presenting the versatility of the script written by Samuel Beckett and the universality of the themes presented in the show. . (The Seahawk, NC)
Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Oct 17, 2009
During the Twenties, when mass advertising, mass entertainment, mass communications, and mass politics had yet to reach their fullest development, full-blown self-promoting phonies were discoverable mainly among the political and business classes, with here and there a Picasso in the fine arts, a Samuel Beckett in literature, a Sch. nberg in music. (The American Conservative)
Winners of Nobel Prize in literature since 1960 Oct 8, 2009
1969: Samuel Beckett, Ireland. 1968: Yasunari Kawabata, Japan. (San Francisco Chronicle -- Science)
Odd facts about Nobel Prize winners Oct 7, 2009
Nobel Laureates you must know: Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Jimmy Carter, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Pierre & Marie Curie, Max Planck and Albert Einstein. 7. (CNN)
What if Polanski were an abusive priest? Oct 4, 2009
At the ICA, the set included not only hints of the country road/tree/evening prescribed by playwright Samuel Beckett, but also a bunch of debris and the shell of a house spray-painted with the now-iconic search and rescue marking that indicates, among other things, whether anyone was found dead inside. There was a certain surreal aspect to the ICA staging, because, through the windows of the museum, we could see the booze cruises motoring by in the harbor, offering a strange contrast to the... (Boston Globe)
Three's a crowd Oct 1, 2009
It s no coincidence that Harold Pinter s The Caretaker resembles Samuel Beckett s Waiting for Godot. The latter was a friend and mentor to the former, and in Pinter s psychological drama, we meet brothers Ast,on and Mick, who take in an old tramp named Davies. (Boston Globe)
Dan Browns worst sentences (or at least twenty of them) Sep 19, 2009
" Which is nonsense. His plot twists are ridiculously unconvincing. The way his characters behave is laughable. It isn't "elitist" to point this out, any more than it would be to say that a Philippe Starck chair is too uncomfortable to actually sit on. DJ on September 18, 2009 at 01:00 PM To be fair about the entanglement/manta rays thing, it's a fairly common device to illustrate something about a character's personality-- have them say or think something completely wrong or ignorant about a... (Harper's Magazine)
Arena shows allow Cirque du Soleil to stretch out Aug 21, 2009
On Sept. 26-27, the ICA will present the Classical Theatre of Harlem s production of Samuel Beckett s Waiting for Godot, which is set in post-Katrina New Orleans. The production debuted in 2006 in New York and has played the waterlogged Ninth Ward of the Big Easy. (Boston Globe)
Cut and polish Aug 1, 2009
Described by The New York Times as the Samuel Beckett of the Jon Stewart generation , the play s writer, Eno, won a 2005 Pulitzer Prize nomination. The work has been high on Strong s directorial wish-list since seeing it performed at the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2007. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
He wrote the stuff of Irish Jul 20, 2009
Find the Irishness, for instance, in George Bernard Shaw or Samuel Beckett. James Joyce masked his behind a prose so impenetrable as to be deniable as a testament to ethnicity. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA)
An insightful, if worshipful, look at Albert Camus Jul 19, 2009
In the pantheon of photogenic writers with auras, Albert Camus shares the dais with Ernest Hemingway and Samuel Beckett, no question. Camus, with his trench coat, Gauloises, and Bogart mien. (Boston Globe)
The Bath Fugues Jun 16, 2009
Francis Bacon - the painter, not the philosopher - is there and Samuel Beckett, too, of course. Besides, we hear a good deal about baths, bicycles and clepsydras, about kidney stones and jellyfish and also about literary theory and Chinese painters' disdain for perspective. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Recommended summer reads Jun 16, 2009
"The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1, 1929-1940," edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck (2009). It's a hefty volume but absolutely revelatory in every way: the portrait of a young artist filled with doubt, chaos, outrageous humor, obsessive self-examination, relentless intellectual and aesthetic curiosity, enormous kindness, and vast Irish charm, an artist who doubts that language will ever reveal what he is truly thinking but who slowly comes to discover that the inability... (San Francisco Chronicle -- Entertainment)
Tony Squeezes Out Drama Jun 3, 2009
Why call attention to the work of minor writers such as August Wilson ("Joe Turner's Come and Gone"), Alan Ayckbourn ("The Norman Conquests"), Lee Hall ("Billy Elliot") and Samuel Beckett ("Waiting for Godot"). Far better to showcase the work of a major artist like Elle Woods. (New York Post -- Entertainment)
* [HARDCOVER: US] Samuell Beckett spills his guts May 31, 2009
No one understood the tenuousness of the undertaking better than Samuel Beckett, whose hero in Malone Dies writes himself to death, and after sharpening his pencil at both ends is gratified to see that my lead is not inexhaustible. But despite his skepticism about what he called the making relation, Beckett was a loyal friend and a tireless letter writer. (Taipei Times, Taiwan -- Business)
Rob Melrose is on a bit of a Samuel Beckett kick May 29, 2009
He's been on a bit of a Samuel Beckett kick ... He's been on a bit of a Samuel Beckett kick. (San Francisco Chronicle -- Entertainment)
Hudson Keynotes May 23, 2009
Billed as An Evening of Theater of the Absurd, the plays are spoofs, comedies and satire, and include The Marriage Proposal by Anton Chekhov; Medea by Christopher Durang and Wendy Wasserstein, Catastrophe by Samuel Beckett; The Sandbox by Edward Albee and the Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco. Thursday, May 28 performance is at 7 p.m.; Friday and Satrday, May 29 and 30 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, May 31 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and students. (Hudson Sun, MA)
Does theater need to play it safe? May 16, 2009
After it became financially impossible to keep producing plays, Wheeler went on to direct at the American Repertory Theater, which championed many of the same modern masters as he did, such as Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, and Harold Pinter. Things are changing next year. (Boston Globe)
Panic Attack May 11, 2009
Samuel Beckett s Waiting for Godot, billed as the laugh sensation of two continents, made its American d. but at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, in Miami, Florida, in 1956. (New Yorker)
Ian M. Banks May 3, 2009
They re not all literary, but: Brian Aldiss, Jane Austen, Samuel Beckett (Watt and Murphy in particular), Saul Bellow, Alfred Bester (especially Tiger, Tiger), Enid Blyton, Jorge Luis Borges, John Brunner (especially Stand On Zanzibar), Noam Chomsky, Arthur C. Clarke, Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers and The Favourite Game), Ivor Cutler (Life in a Scotch Sitting Room), Samuel Delaney, T. S. Eliot (especially The Waste Land), Gunter Grass (the early works, especially The Tin Drum), Robert Graves,... (Suite101.com)
'Harry Potter' among those missing from e-library Apr 30, 2009
Grove/Atlantic Inc., which has published William Burroughs, Samuel Beckett and Malcolm X, expects many of its older works to become available. "We're getting less resistance every day," says Grove associate publisher Eric Price. (USA Today -- Tech)
Inside the young writer's laboratory Apr 19, 2009
The first thing to say about volume one of Samuel Beckett's letters is that it is essential reading for any admirer of Beckett's work ... The Letters of Samuel Beckett: 1929-1940, Cambridge University Press, 750 pages, $52 ... No matter how much you know of Samuel Beckett, a great deal or a little, The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1940, is an impressive collection of correspondence by an exceptional young writer. (Globe and Mail -- Business)
Directors tackle Charlie Brown, Godot Apr 17, 2009
"It's definitely a lot harder than it looks," Burgwinkle said of his experience directing "Waiting For Godot," the 1940s play by Irish writer Samuel Beckett, which presents two characters waiting for another named Godot. The show will be presented through the Fourteenth Grade Players this weekend in the Lisner downstage. (GW Hatchet, Washington DC)
Anthony Lane: “Anvil! The Story of Anvil.” Apr 13, 2009
(The film s director, Sacha Gervasi, went from being a roadie for Anvil, in the eighties the musicians called him Teabag, because he s English to working on an archive of Samuel Beckett material, so this film may represent an unrepeatable chance to merge his interests. Many such gems fall from the mouth of Lips; after everything on tour goes drastically wrong, he gently points out that at least there was a tour for it to go wrong on. (New Yorker)
Playwright Profile - Brendan Gall Apr 10, 2009
His plays include Panhandled, A Quiet Place, and the ambitious Alias Godot, which puts its own spin and answers some of the questions of the original Samuel Beckett classic, Waiting For Godot. He recently completed a lengthy tour performing as Rudi, the lead in Hannah Moscovitch s play, East of Berlin. (Suite101.com)
A dark lyricism fills composer Goebbels's 'I went to the house' Apr 6, 2009
Goebbels has set passages from the works of T.S. Eliot, Maurice Blanchot, Franz Kafka, and Samuel Beckett. The texts themselves are reflections - sometimes thorny, occasionally impenetrable - on aging, mortality, and various dark 20th-century themes, yet Goebbels and his set designer Klaus Gr. (Boston Globe)
Absurd theater Apr 2, 2009
It is pretty common for theater and literature students to become interested in the works of such luminaries as Samuel Beckett and Eugne Ionesco during college, she said. They have been asking me about doing something like this for the last couple years, Grady said of the students. (Auburn Citizen, NY)
Hilton Als: Battling death, armies, and one’s own preoccupations. Apr 1, 2009
Whereas Samuel Beckett, another chief proponent of the theatre of the absurd, tried to describe meaninglessness, Ionesco aimed to deflate power for power s sake, to expose men s intellectual and emotional greed. Brilliantly directed by Neil Armfield, Exit the King introduces us to the major players as they stride across the stage, waving at the audience, as if greeting the paparazzi. (New Yorker)
Hopeful surface on Cape hoping to see right whales Mar 29, 2009
Nearly everyone watched the water and waited, like the cast of a giant Samuel Beckett production. Sightings of the 40-ton, 45-foot right whales - named because they were historically considered to be the right whale to hunt - can't be timed, said Charles "Stormy" Mayo, senior scientist at Provincetown's Center for Coastal Studies, which has been conducting aerial and ship surveys of the whales for more than two decades. (Boston Globe)
Anthony Lane: Samuel Beckett’s life in letters. Mar 23, 2009
Samuel Beckett s life in letters ... At the end of January, 1958, the first American production of Samuel Beckett s Endgame opened, at the Cherry Lane Theatre ... First came No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, published in 1998, nine years after the author s death, and revolving mostly around the staging of the plays. (New Yorker)
Time travel has been a constant on TV series Mar 22, 2009
This series, which ran from 1989 to 1993, featured Scott Bakula as a character with the literary name of Dr. Samuel Beckett. The good doc gets stuck in a time-travel experiment gone awry, and he lands in other times in other people's bodies (even though he still looks like Bakula to us). (Boston Globe)
An American original Mar 22, 2009
Owing to Barthelme's pedigree, wide interests, and experiences, the book reads like a cultural history of the 20th century, taking in, among other things, modern architecture, the "Baltimore Catechism," the French Symbolists, Kierkegaard, jazz, the birth of television, Cahiers du Cinema and the French New Wave, Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum (where Barthelme served briefly as the director), Abstract Expressionism, Samuel Beckett, the 1960s, Watergate, and the rise of literary minimalism in... (Boston Globe)
Nothing matters but the letter writing - 1st Beckett volume shows master of silence was also habitual corresponder Mar 21, 2009
REVIEW The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1: 1929-1940, edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck, Cambridge University Press, 782 pages, 50 ... Not so the Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett, who has seemed to rise further in our esteem with every year that has passed since his death in 1989 at the age of 83 ... There s Hugh Kenner s foundational criticism, of course, and two excellent, relatively recent biographies, James Knowlson s magisterial Damned to Fame and Anthony Cronin s... (Missoulian, MT)
Book Reviews: The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1 and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English Mar 19, 2009
The Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume 1, 1929-1940 Edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck 782 pages ... It would hardly seem possible were the evidence not right here: Samuel Beckett, that most taciturn and private of 20th-century writers the man who said "every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness" was in fact one of the century's great correspondents ... There are many moments in these letters when it seems Samuel Beckett can't go on. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Baryshnikov photos capture movement in motion Mar 9, 2009
Two years ago, he performed the notoriously challenging work of Samuel Beckett in the New York Theatre Workshop's Beckett Shorts. "He gives instructions what to do but rarely on how to do it," said Baryshnikov in praise of the late Irish playwright. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
Christopher Nolan, novelist who battled cerebral palsy Feb 27, 2009
To keep the boy's mind stimulated, his father told stories and read passages from James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and D.H. Lawrence. His mother strung up letters of the alphabet in the kitchen, where she kept up a steady stream of conversation. (Boston Globe)
Last laughs in 'Endgame' Feb 20, 2009
CAMBRIDGE - There is no better cure for February than Samuel Beckett ... ENDGAME Play by Samuel Beckett. (Boston Globe)
'I'm so annoying!' Feb 11, 2009
Your lyrics are very literary - First Love is based on a Samuel Beckett story. Were you always interested in words. (BBC News -- Entertainment)
Robert Anderson, 91; wrote 'Tea and Sympathy,' other plays Feb 11, 2009
"Summer " and "I Never Sang" were directed by Alan Schneider, a leading interpreter of Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, and Samuel Beckett. In 1967, Mr. Anderson scored his second Broadway hit, a series of four one-act comedies (also directed by Schneider) about a playwright who is having a hard time reconciling his own prudishness with his desire to write honestly about sex. (Boston Globe)
'Where nothing happens twice' Feb 8, 2009
Tired and worn from "the wasteland of prose" in his fiction trilogy (Murphy, Molloy, Malone Dies), where he tunnelled into his own psyche, Samuel Beckett turned to playwriting as a form of relaxation, sticking to French (as he already was in his novels) as a test of discipline, though the dominant diction of the play is colloquial and imbued with the speech and energy of clochards rather than the sophistications of the French Academy. Beckett set his play in an unoccupied zone of France during... (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
What Is There To Laugh About in Gaza? Feb 8, 2009
But you don't need to read Samuel Beckett to get that. Khaled, my guide in Jebalia, said as much as walked past a group of chuckling men. (Slate)
