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Beckett's career as a writer can be roughly divided into three periods: his early works, up until the end of World War II in 1945; his middle period, stretching from 1945 until the early 1960s, during which period he wrote what are probably his best-known works; and his late period, from the early 1960s until Beckett's death in 1989, during which his works tended to become shorter and his style more minimalist. ... Read more

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Harvey is required reading
Of scholars in the field who have published extended studies of Beckett'searly prose (Dream of Fair to middling Women, More Pricks Than Kicks,Murphy, and Watt) three stand above the others and are required reading onthe subject for scholars.Anthony Farrow's Art and Allusion ... is one. It is hampered by the lack of an index and extraordinarily poorproofreading.Lawrence Harvey's Samuel Beckett: Poet and Critic isanother. Published in 1970, it is out of print, a big shame.Harvey'sisthe only serious study of Beckett's poetry. The style of both Farrow andHarvey is discursive. Rubin Rabinovitz's The Development of SamuelBeckett's Fiction is the third, written in a more concise scholarly stylethat makes it the most entertaining of the three for the non-specialist. Rabinovitz is likely to be the most useful to the specialist as well,though of course this depends on what you're after. I have not read JohnPilling's new book Beckett Before Godot, and there are, as one wouldexpect, numerous article-length studies of the early prose that arerequired reading for the specialist. ... Read more

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Endgame

Review of Play: Endgame

Premiere: 1957

By:Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)

The play "Endgame" is set in a single room with only four characters.The two main characters (Hamm and Clov) bicker throughout.The other two characters (Nagg and Nell) are in trash cans in the room and someone needs to life the lids to talk to them.Nagg and Nell are Hamm's parents.Outside of the room it seems that either the earth is uninhabited or else the outside world is entirely void.

Hamm (Hamlet?) is decrepit, blind and immobile.Hamm depends on Clov (Clown?) for everything.Clov serves him food and medicine and gives him warm covers.Clov serves Hamm grudgingly.

Although Nagg and Nell (Nag and Hell?) are Hamm's parents he shows no warmth or feeling toward them.They show no humanity or awareness of the world.There is no interaction between parent and child that would indicate human feeling.Nagg and Nell
(Nag and Hell?) are just stage props to reinforce the premise that time stopped passing and the universe is a void.Nell's death invokes no sense of loss making the audience wonder if she was really alive at the start or was her trash can actually an urn for her ashes.Perhaps the voices of Nagg and Nell are faded memories.



Waiting for Godot

Krapp's Last Tape




I completely enjoyed and highly recommend this book.



... Read more

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AN ENLIGHTENING STUDY OF THREE LEGENDARY WRITERS Have literary institutions such as introductions, prefaces and footnotes killed the book? The "book as book" has been removed from the oral tradition by such features as prefaces, footnotes, and indexes. Books have become voiceless in some sense - they are to be read silently, not recited aloud. How this mechanical change has affected the possibilities of fiction is Kenner's subject. Each of the three featured authors approached this situation in a unique, yet connected way:Flaubert as the "Comedian of the Enlightenment", categorising man's intellectual follies.Joyce as the "Comedian of the Inventory", with his meticulously constructed lists.Beckett as the "Comedian of the Impasse", eliminating facts and writing novels about a man alone, writing. ... Read more

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Samuel Beckett has long been seen as a distinctly 'apolitical' and 'ahistorical' writer, but this reputation fails to do him justice. Placing Beckett's novels in the context of the newly-liberated Irish Free State, Patrick Bixby explores for the first time their confrontation with the legacies of both Irish nationalism and British imperialism. In doing so, he reveals Beckett's fiction as a remarkable example of how postcolonial writing addresses the relationships between private consciousness and public life, as well as those between the novel form and a cultural environment including not only the literary tradition, but also political speeches, national monuments, and anthropological studies.With special attention to these relationships, the study demonstrates Beckett's challenge to familiar narratives of personal identity and communal belonging, which makes his writing integral to understanding the history of the novel and the fate of modernism, in addition to the emergence of postcolonial literature. ... Read more

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The Metaphysical Vision: Arthur Schopenhauers Philosophy of Art and Life and Samuel Becketts Own Way to Make Use of It expands upon the ideas and theories set forth in the authors Die eigentlich metaphysische Tätigkeit: Über Schopenhauers Ästhetik und ihre Anwendung durch Samuel Beckett, published (in German) in 1982 and hailed by Catharina Wulf in her book The Imperative of Narration (1997) as an excellent study and the most thorough enquiry into Beckett and Schopenhauer. ... Read more

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Schopenhauer, the artist, and aesthetics
The infuence of Schopenhauer has been massive, yet often unappreciated. From Wagner, to Nietzsche, and Freud, or Heidegger and Wittgenstein, the brilliance of Schopenhauer's clarity of vision has echoed in the age period in his wake. This fascinating book is both an excellent brief introduction to Schopenhauer's thought, and a demonstration of his influence on Beckett (and Proust). Schopenhauer's aesthetics is such a compelling arrow to the heart of the matter that it has inspired artists across a whole spectrum to put the philosophical question into high gear in a kind of stilling of thoughts, as the visionaryimpulse comes to the fore.
Engaging and highy readable introduction to both the philosopher and the artist. ... Read more

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Samuel Beckett's radical drama, prose and poetry challenged and forever changed the concepts of literature and theatre. His work remains a core part of introductory courses on literary history, drama, theatre or performance and also features in more specialist modules such as Modernism or The Absurd. Many courses on twentieth century literature begin with Beckett. However, strange as it may seem, this book is the first single-authored introductory guide which covers life and contexts, work and criticism, as well as poetry, prose, drama, and radio plays. ... Read more

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Samuel Beckett gives a very clear notion that not only is life itself meaningless but that our existence in that life is meaningless as well, and our attempts to find meaning or shape some kind of meaningful existence are completely absurd. Beckett reveals this absurdity via the conventions of absurdist drama such as bizarre situations, speech, etc., but he also incorporates Biblical allusions and archetypes into his plays, not to offer any hope, but rather to drive home the point that there is no solace to be found in life, as religion, as portrayed by Beckett, is simply another meaningless ritual in which human being participate as a desperate way of coping with life devoid of any value. The absurdity of life is a given; there is no redemption hidden away, waiting to be discovered. All that can be found in life is one's response to the absurdity of one's condition. When we deeply think over our own situations, we can’t escape this harsh realism. ... Read more

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A triumph of his own style
An amazing book with a stylish touch that explores the paradox of the self that can never know itself; in the very act of observing itself the self splits in two, an observing consciousness and an object that is beingobserved. The self perceives itself as a stream of words, a narration. Eachtime it tries to catch up with itself, it merely turns into another story,thus putting before the reader a succession of storytellers. A must-readfor anyone who cares about literature and who think that it still matters. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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