The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don't want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit the more I am grateful to him. He's not f---ing me about, he's not leading me up any garden path, he's not slipping me a wink, he's not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he's not selling me anything I don't want to buy — he doesn't give a bollock whether I buy or not — he hasn't got his hand over his heart. Well, I'll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty.     His work is beautiful. -- Harold Pinter Samuel Beckett is sui generis...He has given a voice to the decrepit and maimed and inarticulate, men and women at the end of their tether, past pose or pretense, past claim of meaningful existence. He seems to say that only there and then, as metabolism lowers, amid God's paucity, not his plenty, can the core of the human condition be approached...Yet his musical cadences, his wrought and precise sentences, cannot help but stave off the void...Like salamanders we survive in his fire. -- Richard Ellman

From the Literary Encyclopedia:
A brief introduction to the life and works of Samuel Beckett.

• 
  
  
  Access to pages of the Times requires registration. It's free.
  • Biographies
    "Savage Loving". Damned to Fame by James Knowlson (1996), authorized by Beckett. Reviewed by J. D. O'Hara: "A magnificent biography". A tiny excerpt.

    "An Outsider in His Own Life". The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin (1997). Reviewed by Morris Dickstein. Read Chapter 1 here or here.

  • Plays
    Waiting for Godot, reviewed by Brooks Atkinson (1956): "Don't expect this column to explain Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot.' It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma."

    Endgame, reviewed by Brooks Atkinson (1958): "Don't expect this column to give a coherent account of what--if anything--happens. Almost nothing happens."

    Happy Days, reviewed by Howard Taubman, 1961.
    Happy Days in Boston, 1997. Reviewed by The Boston Phoenix.

  • Book Reviews
    "Search for Peace in a World Lost" (Murphy)
    "Real Love Abides" (Malone Dies) Reviewed by William Barrett.
    "Lifelong Suffocation" (The Unnamable) Reviewed by Stephen Spender.
    "One Man's Universe" (Watt)
    "While Waiting for Godot" (Mercier and Camier) Reviewed by Deirdre Bair.
    "Where Is the Where, Why Is Why" (How It Is)   Some snippets.

  • Other Beckett related material in The Times
    http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0413.html"
  • Obit. Dec. 27, 1989
    
  • Historical relic: Hatchet job in the Times Book Review. One Joseph Epstein ("Visiting professor, Northwestern Univ.") lambasts Beckett and two books about him by scholars Hugh Kenner and A. Alvarez, November 25, 1973. Not posted by the Times.
    
    
    
• 
  Jan. 20, 2000: Game Without End  Review by Fintan O'Toole of two recent books:
  • The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Volume IV: The Shorter Plays, edited by Stanley Gontarski.
  • No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, edited by Maurice Harmon.
    
  Nov. 14, 1996: The Painful Comedy of Samuel Beckett. Three biographies:
  • Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett by James Knowlson
    
  • Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin
    
  • The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946 by Lois Gordon.
  Reviewed by John Banville, and an additional brief analysis of some of Beckett's works. Quite a bit of biographical information from the three books.

• Journal of Beckett Studies, from the English Department at Florida State Univ.
      Essays by scholars and critics who are "at ease with the entire Beckett canon as well as
      with the tradition in literature and philosophy that has helped make it possible."
  
  • The complete original series. Entire contents of:
      Number 1, Winter, 1976. Contributors include James Knowlson, Ruby Cohn, Stanley Gontarski and Martin Esslin.
      Number 2, Summer, 1977.
      Number 3, Summer, 1978.
      Number 4, Spring, 1979.
      Number 5, Autumn, 1979.
      Number 6, Autumn, 1980.
      Number 7, Spring, 1982.
      Number 8, Autumn, 1982.
      Number 9, Spring, 1983.
      Number 10, Autumn, 1983.
      Double issue Number 11/12, Dec., 1989. For this issue, Adobe Acrobat required to read .pdf  files.
    • Brief summaries of most of the articles in this issue.
    
    
  • Review from the Summer `95 issue of Contemporary Literature of The Beckett Studies Reader, a book containing 13 essays from the Journal of Beckett Studies

• Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui, an annual bilingual review published by Rodopi, The Netherlands, an independent publisher of international academic series on the humanities. It consists of scholarly papers by many well known and lesser known Beckettians. Their contributions "meet equally the tests of sound scholarhip coupled with a high degree of readability, at the same time avoiding academic fustiness and learned obfuscation."

•  Book review: No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider. Jim McCue in The New Statesman.
  

  From the review: “‘[Beckett writing]: I prefer these letters not to be republished, and quite frankly, dear Alan, I do not want any of my letters to anyone to be published anywhere, either in the petit pendant or the long apres.’ No author better served? This whole book is a betrayal of a wish that could scarcely have been more clearly stated.”

  • A longer, more insightful and balanced review by Robert Brustein in the New York Times.
    
    "No Author Better Served not only chronicles the almost symbiotic relationship between a great writer and a faithful disciple but adds invaluable epistolary material to the Beckett canon."

  
  

• 
  • My friend, Samuel Beckett by Israel Horovitz,1989.
    
  • Beckett remembered: 'Oh, all to end' by Robert Taylor,1989.
    
  • Shedding light on a dark and droll Irish master by Mark Harman, 1996, on the Knowlson bio.
    
  • Beckett's brightness on dark days by Askold Melnyczuk, 1996, on The Complete Short Prose. "Reads like a psalter, an anthology of prayers for relief from the burden of being".

• Two more reviews of the Knowlson and Cronin biographies
  • Samuel Beckett : Beyond Biography by Stephen Mitchelmore
    from on-line magazine: "Picking the brains of popular culture"
  • From Ireland: The word become spirit. Gerry Dukes in the Irish Times.

• One final review of Knowlson's Damned to Fame, by William Hutchings in World Literature Today.

• From   Samuel Beckett in Guide to the Nobel Prizes, by Martin Esslin. His Life / Works / Philosophy / Humour and Technical Mastery.

• Short, bleak biography. Daniel Lindley in BIBLIO.

• Final biography. Extensive biographical notes, drawn from Damned to Fame. A Fringeware Subculture page.

• Why Samuel Beckett joined the (French) Resistance. A page on the heart of things website of Jonathon Delacour.

• Four Encounters with Beckett, a page by Tina Hsu, Univ. of Pennsylvania
  • Herbert Mitgang, Beckett in Paris, 1981
  • Kenneth S. Brecher, Samuel Beckett: Private in Public, 1988
  • Israel Horovitz, My friend, Samuel Beckett, 1989
  • John Montague, A Few Drinks and a Hymn: My Farewell to Samuel Beckett, 1994
    Montague writes an appreciation of Sam just after his passing. The Guardian, Dec. 27,1989.
  [ Index ]
  
  
• Sam's happy days. John Calder recalls his friend, Samuel Beckett, as a man of compassion, courage and humour. The Guardian, Aug. 29, 1999.
  Interview. Calder talks about Sam's last days.

• An Appreciation of Samuel Beckett. A rather perceptive piece in a rather small newspaper. Rick Lopez in the Erie (Pennsylvania) Times-News.

  With his fiction, Beckett straps us into the front seat of a roller-coaster mind with fifty-mile hills, explosive drops, impossible curves, and tracks that splinter and scream with the constant threat of disaster. All this exhilaration, and beautiful prose to boot. -- Rick Lopez

• Abandoning Rational Explanations, by Jason Waltman, Wittenberg Univ.
  The human condition as defined by the realities of:
  • Mortality
    
  • Contingency
    
  • Discontentment
  
  

  What, if anything, is the meaning of life? What defines "the self"? What truly is the definition of human existence? Three 20th century authors and their conceptions of human existence, as expressed in:
  

  - A Retrievable Essence. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. The self is, at bottom, an essence comprised of layers of hidden memories reflecting past experiences.
  - Nothing Matters. The Stranger by Albert Camus. The meaning of life is determined by the event happening at present.
  - They Do Not Move. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Human experience is continually waiting for the solution to the problem to present itself.

• The Absurdity of Samuel Beckett by Eva Navratilova, Center for Comparitive Cultural Studies, Palacky Univ., Olomouc, Czech Rep.
  
  The feeling of Absurdity as a literary-creative motivation connecting a number of writers and philosophers, and which is evident in Godot, Endgame, Happy Days and Krapp's Last Tape, is dealt with here.

• Wham, bam! Thank you, Sam!
  EVERYTHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT WAITING FOR GODOT BUT...
  by Penelope Merritt, Community Center for the Performing Arts, Eugene, Oregon.

  Perhaps Penelope feels that the "ungagging" of Beckett and Waiting for Godot is long overdue. In any case, she has posted, utilizing her own analysis and notes drawn from the books of dozens of Beckett scholars, an awesome, almost line-by-line explanation and interpretation of Godot. Included is the entire text of the play (Acts 1 and 2) with reciprocal links to the notes. In addition, most all of her pages are enhanced by some lovely and historical images -- and a few gory ones of the crucifixion.

  From her introduction: "The following links point to notes that I prepared for a January 2000 college production of Godot in the Pacific Northwest. They were primarily intended for student actors, but I attempted to include information that would be of interest to those who found the play interesting as a purely academic pursuit, whether as a scholar of French or English Literature, the history of Theatre or even the cultural resonances of Existentialist philosophy..."

  Introduction
  Program Notes
  Didi/Gogo
  Pozzo/Lucky
  Godot
  Beckett
  Influences/Resonances
  Staging
  Production History
  "Four" Symbolism

• Traffic of our stage: Why Waiting for Godot? by Normand Berlin in The Massachusetts Review. A lengthy and insightful essay delving into many aspects of the Godot phenomenon.

• Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text by Michael Worton. This is a chapter from the book, "The Cambridge Companion to Beckett" (An invaluable addition to Beckett criticism ... an outstanding book, faultlessly edited and superbly presented... —Independent on Sunday). Prof. Worton presents here an extensive and erudite analysis of Beckett's plays and of how the ideas of the many writers that he has drawn upon are both interwoven into his texts or are often dismissed by him.
  
  • The Cambridge Companion to Beckett

• Martin Esslin covers a lot of Godot ground in Waiting for Godot -- Western and Korean

• Essay on Waiting for Godot by Michael Sinclair

• Essay on Waiting for Godot by Jak Peake, Hewett School, Norwich, England.

• Beckett's Godot: "A bundle of broken mirrors" by Robert D. Lane

• "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down: Ropes, Belts and Cords in Waiting for Godot" by Roger Schonfeld, Yale Univ.
  
  
• The Concept of Time and Space in Beckett's Dramas Happy Days and Waiting for Godot by Dong-Ho Sohn, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea.

• The Meaning of Time as Depicted in Waiting for Gogot [sic] by Jeffrey Philip Bigham, Princeton Univ.

• A Thought (or two) by Jim Nastos, Univ. of Alberta, on Lucky's "thought" after being commanded by Pozzo to "Think, pig!" A nice analysis written by a first year university English class student who found some of Beckett's writings to be a "cryptographic challenge".

• The parallels between Christ and Lucky in Waiting for Godot. By Greg Tigani, Yale Univ.

• The Second Coming and Mr. Godot by Jeffrey Miller. A paper written for a Contemporary Drama class.

• Teaching an Anti-Christian Text from a Christian Perspective: The Case of S. Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" by Gatsinzi Basaninyenzi, Solusi College, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

• Beckett and Brecht: Keeping the Endgame at a Distance by Jodi Hatzenbeller. A comparative analysis of Brechtian theatre and the themes of Endgame.

• So many people have requested a copy of this unpublished article that I have decided to make it generally available via the web. That's the actual title of this web page, and the article itself is called Beckett, Duchamp and Chess in the 1930s by Andrew Hugill, De Montfort University, Leicester, England. In Section 2 he posits some fascinating and plausible connections between Endgame and the real chess, although some of them are a bit of a stretch.

• But Not In the Eye: Beckett’s comedy, by Fintan O'Toole.

• Three chapters from The Plays of Samuel Beckett by Eugene Webb.
  
  Chapter 2: Waiting for Godot
  Chapter 4: Endgame
  Chapter 7: Act Without Words I and II.

• Reading Beckett's Fiction by R.M. Berry in Context, A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture, Number 1, 1999.
  
  Why does Beckett write [the way he does]? In 1949, Beckett tried to describe a new kind of artistic problem, one in which skill and knowledge and talent had become liabilities and where the task was no longer to do something as well or better than in the past, but rather to meet the obligations of art in full acknowledgement of the absence of anything artistically to be accomplished. Berry attempts to help in understanding some puzzling characteristics of Beckett's fiction in the context of Molloy.
  
  
  [ Index ]
  
  
• Knowing me, knowing you. Novelist Keith Ridgway re-discovers Beckett's seminal work, Mercier and Camier, and is thrilled — despite other scholars' and crritics' negative judgments — by its early indications of Sam's epiphany, at age forty:
  "Put simplistically, he realised that his writing future lay not in the firm ground he knew over his shoulder, but in the darkness facing him, about which he knew nothing. It was time to write from the wordless inside. He would use his confusion and uncertainty where he had previously used his intellect and his wit." The Guardian, Jul. 19, 2003.

• From the Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco): The Beckett Trilogy by Karen Mills.
  
  "Plagued by a depressive condition, left on the unsteady ground of his own uncertainties, Beckett came to believe in an utterly black, utterly futile existence. Disturbing that such a belief is to countenance, it was the sole thought that he had any confidence in. This deeply prejudiced view is manifest in varying degrees in the triumvirate that is The Trilogy."

• The Narrative Paradox: The virus of nothingness in Samuel Beckett's Watt by György Dragomán, School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.
  

  After a prefacing caveat from Hugh Kenner that "the [literary] analyst whose stock-in trade is his skill at putting his author's matter before his reader in pithier or less redundant language will find no purchase [with Watt]", Prof. Dragomán nonetheless makes a valiant effort to do just that, with a modicum of success.

• Lucky's Bones: A Sense of Starvation in Watt, Waiting for Godot and Oliver Twist, by John Robert Keller in PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for Psychological Study of the Arts. A shrink psychoanalyzes Watt, Didi, Gogo, Oliver and others.
  
  Keywords for this paper: Samuel Beckett; Waiting for Godot; Watt; Charles Dickens;
  Oliver Twist; Thomas Hardy; psychoanalysis; object relations; paranoid-schizoid position;
  depression; hopelessness; abandonmnent; eating disorders.

• “There is no escape from the hours and the days.”: The ‘goings-on’ of Samuel Beckett. An essay by David Parfitt, The King's School, Gloucester, England.

• Samuel Beckett's Postmodern Fictions by Brian Finney, California State Univ., Long Beach.

• Beckett's Dying Remains: The Process of Playwriting in the Ohio Impromptu Manuscripts by Adam Seelig, poet, playwright, theatre director and founder of One Little Goat Theatre Company.
  
  How Beckett struggled to write himself out of his texts, moving away from self preservation
  and toward self effacement.

• Nothing is More Real: Experiencing Theory in the Texts for Nothing, by Paul Sheehan.
  

  What kind of a theorist is Samuel Beckett, exactly? An artist of impoverishment, a theorist of the end of modernity or a mythologist of psychoanalysis, as three recent titles suggest. Sheehan examines one of Beckett's most overlooked works, the 13 prose fragments published, he says, almost out of desperation in 1955 as Texts for Nothing.

• Editing Beckett, by Stanley Gontarski in Twentieth Century Literature, 1995. An analysis of the inept editing and numerous publication blunders to which Samuel Beckett's work has been subjected.

• Revising Himself: Performance as Text in Samuel Beckett's Theatre. How Beckett transformed himself into a producer/director/theatre artist. By Stanley Gontarski in the Journal of Modern Literature.

• Beckett, openness and experimental cinema by Michael Schell.

• The Silence That Is Not Silence: Acoustic Art In Samuel Beckett's Embers, by Marjorie Perloff.

• The Joys of Cycling with Beckett by Friedhelm Rathjen, Scheeßel, Germany.
  
  "Beckett's oeuvre is well known to be marked by bleakness and despair. If a bicycle
  comes into play, however, there is always a light of hope, joy and even love in these texts."

• Master's degree thesis: Samuel Beckett's Radio Plays: Music of the Absurd by Stefan-Brook Grant, Department of British and American Studies, University of Oslo.
      An excellent, erudite thesis analyzing virtually every aspect of Beckett's radio plays.
  Introduction
  Chapter 1: Background
  Chapter 2: All That Fall
  Chapter 3: Embers
  Chapter 4: Words and Music and Cascando

• Play Analysis. The True-Real Woman: Maddy Rooney as Picara in All That Fall, by Sarah Bryant-Bertail, University of Washington, Seattle.

• Beckett Bethicketted: James Joyce's influences on Beckett. By Stephen Dilks, Univ. of North Dakota.

• Samuel Beckett's (linguistic) exile: continuity through separation by Helen Astbury, Université Paris.
  
  Sam left Ireland, but Ireland didn't leave Sam.

• Eavesdrop on the London Beckett Seminar where the participants had fun trying to dope out the literary references as they collectively read
  
  How It Is
  The Lost Ones
  Embers
  and Worstward Ho.
  

• Essay on A Piece of Monologue by Hwa Soon Kim, Univ. of Inchon, Korea.
  
  Read A Piece of Monologue.

• Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 Edited by Stanley Gontarski. Review by Paul West in The Bookery Bookpress.

• Eleuthéria, Beckett's first play, written in 1947 (before Godot) and steeped in controversy.
  
  
• A brief introduction from American Bookseller

• Eleutheria Revisited, a 1997 speech by Marius Buning, President, The Dutch Samuel Beckett Society, recounting the delightful story of the book that Sam didn't want published and the row over its translation into English, pitting Barney Rosset and Michael Brodsky against Jérôme Lindon. Prof. Buning sides against Brodsky, and gives an impassioned defense of the play, declaring it "worth having, worth studying, and — above all — worth seeing."
  [ Index ]
  
  
• Film starring Buster Keaton
  
  Watch (if you're able) an 86 second trailer on a tiny screen (160x120 pixels). Or somewhat (but not much) better, copy and paste this URL into a RealPlayer, Quicktime or Windows Media player and zoom to "Double Size" or "200%".
  • Some favorable comments by Katherine Waugh and Fergus Daly in Film West, Ireland.
  • Some unfavorable comments by Ted Sludds in the very next issue: "Film...strikes me as being...a poor attempt by a genuine writer to move into a medium that he simply hadn’t the flair or understanding of to make a success."
  • On Samuel Beckett's Film by Barney Rosset in , a new publication which features "the best writers writing about what they are most passionate about" for people who are "tired of stuffy, staid literary magazines that go down like cough medicine." Rosset recounts some fascinating details of the joys and agonies of shooting Film.
  • Interview: Barney Rosset, founder of Grove Press and the Evergreen Review, talks to Tin House publisher Win McCormack.
  • Brownlow on Beckett (on Keaton). Filmmaker Kevin Brownlow talked with Sam about Buster.
  • A review, of sorts, in Life Magazine, Aug. 14, 1964. A couple of nice stills of Buster.
    

• An analysis and discussion of That Time by Aaron Appel.

  That Time: A spotlit face is seen listening to its own voice emanating via loudspeaker from different points in the auditorium. The face itself never speaks, and its stage directions consist solely of blinking, breathing audibly and, at the very end, smiling.

• Beckett's Fiction in Different Words by Leslie Hill. Reviewed by Alan Astro: "A lively study of incomprehensibilty".
  
  Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). A tribute from Leslie Hill.

  
  

•     Magazine Littéraire

  Beckett, inconnu et inconnaissable, un bel article par John Montague dans n° 35, Décembre 1969.
  Samuel Beckett raconté par les siens dans n° 372, Janvier 1999.

• Des librairies Initiales: Un Dossier: Samuel Beckett.

• Beckett, un écrivain devant Dieu par Jean Onimus.

  "Nous remercions  Jean Onimus, Professeur Honoraire de l'Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, d'avoir bien voulu mettre à la disposition de tous les agrégatifs, sur notre serveur, le contenu de son étude sur Beckett publiée aux éditions Desclée de Brouwer dans la collection Les écrivains devant Dieu en 1967. Cet ouvrage est en effet maintenant épuisé."

• De "France 3 en ligne": une biographie.

• www.samuelbeckett.tk il sito italiano dedicato a Samuel Beckett. Una brutta fissazione di Federico Fellini Platania, ma completo, impressionante e meraviglioso.

• Desde Café Rincón Literario: Una biografía.
  

  Párrafo introductario: El Sentido profundo de toda la obra literaria de Samuel Beckett, el Premio Nobel de Literatura de 1969, lo resume Pozzo en las últimas palabras que pronuncia en Esperando a Godot, antes de hacer mutis con Lucky en el segundo acto de la pieza: «Ellas paren a horcajadas sobre una tumba, la luz brilla un instante; luego, otra vez la noche.»

• by Shigeru Ozawa.
  Many, actually, very comprehensive Godot and Beckett pages in Japanese, and in addition:
  
      Analysis1 
      Analysis2

• Samuel Beckett Research Circle of Japan

• Has Beckett's Existentialism any roots in Hegel's Philosophy? by Kenneth Knapman in Cultural Review Online Magazine.

• The Pornographic Imagination in All Strange Away by Graham Fraser, Univ. of Reading, England.

• Acting "at the nerve ends": Beckett, Blau, and the Necessary by Phillip Zarrilli, Univ. of Wisconsin.

• Pseud's Corner: Academicspeak
  
  
  
  Michael Guest
  Between Contiguous Extremes: Beckett and Brunonian Minimalism 32KBytes

  An excerpt: The "rumour," as a minimal reduction of all discourse, speaks only of the logos, whose presence is affirmed, in a sense, to the extent that meaning is communicated by Beckett's text. But at the same time, the minimalist reduction of this idea, and its concretion in the "notion" described (both words are used to refer to the same thing), creates an opposite, circular form of reasoning that implies entrapment in a Wake-ian Purgatory of textuality: a pre-cogito, the "rumour," the "notion," speaks the precondition for its own being.

  Beckett and Foucault: Some Affinities 32KB
  Act of Creation in Beckett's Catastrophe 40KB
  
  
  Steven ConnerSlow Going 38KB
  
  
  
  Robert Lukehart
  Reflections on Samuel Beckett: The Subjective Imperative of Voice 42KB
  
  Waiting for Godot: A Synchronicity of Opposites 9.3KB
  
  
  
  Russell SmithBeckett, Negativity and Cultural Value 26KB.

  A paper presented -- after lunch -- at the "Social Justice/Social Judgement" conference, Univ. of Western Sydney, Australia, Saturday, April 25, 1998. Mr. Smith has deduced that Beckett's writings are "a bitterly negative, anti-humanist and even misanthropic body of work".

  
  
  

Other Sites and Pages on Beckett

• Samuel Beckett in the Nobel Prize Internet Archive
  Award presentation speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow of the Swedish Academy
  Ever see a Nobel Prize diploma? Impressive.
      And here's the accompanying medal. Sam might have been pleased — or highly amused — upon reading its inscription.
  Beckett Wins Nobel for Literature N. Y. Times, Oct. 24, 1969. Registration required.
  

  Sam won six Village Voice Off-Broadway Theatre Awards ("Obies") but he probably never attended the award ceremonies in New York and he definately didn't appear at any of the pre-ceremony cocktail parties.

•  presents... over 200 quotations by Sam, and from his works, from "the largest database of quotations ever published and representing the research of 154 experts". Here's one (#6154):
  
  "It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still
   and each thing in its last place, under the last dust."
  
  -- Clov, in Endgame.

•  Think reprehensible.  Apple's Samuel Beckett ad unsavoury at core by Vit Wagner in The Toronto Star.

• How Beckett Was by Karl Orend in the Times Literary Supplement. Short – and generally favorable – reviews of four books by Beckett critics and/or "scholars":
  - How It Was: A memoir of Samuel Beckett by Anne Atik
  - Reading "Godot" by Lois Gordon
  - Beckett's Eighteenth Century by Frederik N. Smith
  - A Beckett Canon by Ruby Cohn.
  
       From the review: "The critical industry that has grown up around Beckett has reached epidemic proportions... Few critics seem to be aware that they might take a hint from the author himself, and his disdain for academic prose."

• Relatively recent books
  • The Philosophy of Samuel Beckett by John Calder. The first study of the thinking and influences which lie behind the philosophy that motivates Beckett's work. (See, also, Beckett Festivals section, below.)
  • 
    Beckett in Black and Red: The Translations for Nancy Cunard's Negro, edited by Alan Friedman.
    "Friedman demands a complete and utter revision of the position of Samuel Beckett, as a writer and a man, in this history of modern letters." —Jane Marcus
    "Opens up a whole new view of Beckett. The strong mutual attraction between Beckett and Cunard may help explain the leftist political views he expressed both in these superb and long-neglected translations for Negro and elsewhere in his work." —Barney Rosset
    2 translations
    • The Best Negro Jazz Orchestra by Robert Goffin
      
    • Louis Armstrong by Ernst Moerman

  • Samuel Beckett and the Arts: Music, Visual Arts, and Non-Print Media, edited by Lois Oppenheim. A "comprehensive presentation of Samuel Beckett's use of the musical and visual arts." Twenty essays and analyses, some by well-known Beckettians. Hardcover, 416 pages (according to Barnes & Noble -- Amazon says 300), $75. Read one essay.

• Brief book descriptions
  Directing Beckett by Lois Oppenheim
  The World of Samuel Beckett by Lois Gordon

  Book review: Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde by Charles Juliet. Reviewed by Mark Finch in contemporary visual arts, Britain, who refers to these conversations as "interviews".

  Two samples of Sam's somewhat illegible handwriting deciphered and translated by Prof. Hans Hiebel, Graz, Austria.

  • Another sample, a bit more legible.
  • The first page of the Endgame manuscript, possibly typed by Sam, including — definately — his signature.

  Waiting for Beckett, an award winning television documentary from Global Village but given only a tepid review by Walter Goodman in the New York Times (Registration required). Read additional comments by the producer/director or buy the video.

  Sir Peter Hall looks back at the first performances of Godot in English, which he directed.
  

  • Godotmania. Hall's reflections upon the 50th anniversary date. "Theatre has never been the same." The Guardian, Jan. 4, 2003.

  "Now What I Wonder Do I Mean By That? (Interpreting Beckett)" by Louis Menand. Theater criticism from Slate.

  Ping... in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Earth edition). Yes, indeed, the Beeb now hosts a real Guide, naming it h2g2 and dividing its sections, as you might expect, into Life, The Universe and Everything. Here is a piece about Sam's challenging poem Ping, the first Beckett posting entered under Life / Books & Literature / Authors and Playwrights, written by this category's Content Producer, "Jimster". You, too, can contribute.

  Evergreen Review Feature on Beckett

  16 questions of a theological nature that preoccupied Jacques Moran in Molloy (p. 166-7).

  A brief but interesting bibliography by Johnny Eck

  A comprehensive bibliography of books in English and German.

  How one person researched, produced and directed a performance of Endgame. Seven phases, 46 very short pages which could stand a bit of proofreading. A master's thesis by Leon Ingulsrud.

  The Old Tune from the Tübingen, Germany Anglo-Irish Theatre Group

  Company on stage at Williams College, by Lawrence Graver

  Excerpts

  Interactive Beckett (real, not virtual), from no less than The Royal Shakespeare Company.

  Virtual (not real) Beckett. Play as seen through i-glasses. We must be in Kansas (at the University).

  Waiting for Godot in various modes by "Richard Harter, Human Being?". Commentaries on Godot by: a preacher; Marxist; Freudian; pseudo-intellectual; feminist; evolutionary psychologist; Zen Buddhist; and deconstructionist.

  Amazon.com Customers' Comments about Waiting for Godot.
  Avg. Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 116 (as of July, 2003)
  One review by a reader from Newark, New Jersey: "If Read Properly... This Book Will Save Your Life".

  Striking – mostly – scenes from shorter plays: Act Without Words 1; Act Without Words 2; Breath; Come and Go₁; Come and Go₂; Eh Joe!₁; Eh Joe!₂; Footfalls; Ohio Impromptu; Play; That Time; Not I; Rockaby; Rough for Theatre 2; Ghost Trio; Quad I; Catastrophe; All Strange Away (monologue); Happy Days and Krapp's Last Tape.

  Images (not "portraits", but "identities in motion") of Sam by artist Louis Le Brocquy in 1987, again in 1987, 1989, 1992 and 1994. Really striking.

  "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." David Levine tries in 1964, 1967, 1971, 1978, 1981 and 1986. Does he fail better? You decide.

  • David! Look at this. Then try again.

  
  

  [ Index ]

  
  

  The Samuel Beckett Endpage A comprehensive Beckett site devoted to the author and his works. Many interesting pages including:

  A portrait gallery

  A short biography

  Timeline A chronology of his life and works in the context of his times.

  Beckett on Stage Current and upcoming productions, world wide.

  The Beckett Bulletin Board -- A Miscellany of News and Inquiry. This 'n' that. Good stuff.

  The official page of The Samuel Beckett Society

  And much more.

  The Dutch Samuel Beckett Foundation and Het Beckett blad (The Beckett Sheet), its semi-annual Newsletter.

  The Maison Samuel-Beckett Association
  
  An association created in 1997 for the purpose of purchasing the house in Roussillon where Beckett lived during World War II and opening it to the public as a cultural center and a "Writers Home".                     

  
  

  Forums, Discussions, Message/Bulletin/Posting Boards, Mailing Lists, Whatever

  • The Samuel Beckett Lecture Hall. Go to a Beckett forum and join the seekers in puzzling out Godot, Endgame, the novels, etc. This is now being called the "old" Hall, it contains hundreds of postings dating from 1997 and is still quite active. The new and still very brief Hall was initiated, for some reason, on or about... Sept. 11, 2001. The Hall still has an adjoining Chat Room which is said to be "most active" from 9 P.M. to 3 A.M. Eastern U.S. time, but in reality it's usually quite empty.
  • The Hall's little sister, the Samuel Beckett Discussion Deck. Why don't they combine the two? Ask their "Mom", the Western Canon Great Books "University".
  •  Yahoo eGroups™ beckettlist mailing list. After a slow start, this one is now becoming the most interesting forum. It's basically a medium of exchange for people already conversant in Beckett, and if you register (free) and subscribe you can receive all communicants' messages by email and send them your own ideas. Otherwise you can just read what others have to say most recently or archived.
  • GradeSaver ClassicNotes™  ("Helping to relieve the stress of the writing process") Waiting for Godot Forum
  • SparkNotes™ Waiting for Godot message board (Caution: may crash older Netscape browsers).
  • The Cafe Utne Literature Conference Samuel Beckett topic. Registration required to even have a look at this moribund board.

  Waiting for Godot online study guide notes. Choose "P & L"s (Pozzo and Lucky) to view Summaries and Commentaries. "Cliff Notes™ cost money but SparkNotes are FREE" (after you register). (Caution: may crash older Netscape browsers).

  Lecture time at : English 2302, Lesson 6: Waiting for Godot. Study these notes and then write an essay (but "avoid plot summary").

  Still confused? Why not enroll in a one year, full time M.A. course in Beckett Studies at the University of Reading, England. Requires writing a 20,000 word dissertation and taking a viva voce examination.

  • The Beckett International Foundation at the Univ. of Reading.
  • The Beckett Collection at the Univ. of Reading. Over 600 books and documents. First click on
    "Connect to Unicorn", then click on "Main", then key in "Samuel Beckett" and click on "Author".

  Are you a Beckettian? If so, you should have no trouble correctly answering at least 10 of The Guardian's 12 quiz questions about Sam and his works. 2003.

  Answers to 20-question Beckett quiz (one of which is wrong, and another questionable). The winner's choice of books was Samuel Beckett and the Arts edited by Lois Oppenheim.

  Beckett the first class cricketer. He was an opening left hand batsman and left arm medium pace bowler, and once went wicketless for 64 runs.
         Sam in Heaven? Oil painting by Brian O'Toole of 1920's cricket pitch scene.
         Sam as Palliaci? Pastel painting by Moya Acton

  
  

  Godot parodies
  

  Waiting for the Unknown
  Waiting for Gatchaman
  Waiting For Krapp
  Waiting For Sam
  Waiting to Go
  Still Waiting
  "Waiting for Godot", performed by the Guinea Pig Theatre (2 min. 24 sec.).
  Flash animation. Download Flash player
  "Since guinea pigs excel at waiting (among other things),
  who better to bring this masterpiece to life than Guinea Pig Theater!"
  

  List of Beckett's better known plays and novels. (Nothing much, other than a HUGE background pic.)

  Beckett as Inspiration
  

  • to the Oregon State Archives.
  • to a South African management consultant firm.
  • to an artist, Marc Snyder, who perceives Godot as Nightmare

  • to the composer, Michael Mantler, who was especially impressed by Watt.

  • to Jim Poyser, Zeitguy, who sat down and composed a satire of culture and journalism, Just Ask Buckett.

  • to Francis Warner, who established The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust.
    
    • The 2003 Theatre Trust Award winner.

  cookies

  merde

  THE GIST OF IT, a publication of anyman.com  Sam played out his endgame just before the Coming of the Internet, but here's a page that might have brightened up his day.

  Sam's dog, a Kerry Blue terrier, allegedly the breed of dog referred to in Krapp's Last Tape.

  Sam's car, a 1963 Citroen 2CV, the beloved French "people's car". Originally advertised on the Internet on Oct. 12, 1998, but has now been sold. Don't feel bad, it was obviously "not cheap".

  How about a tacky bronze statue from the Irish Shop.

  Beckett's Dublin Beer. No comment.

  Alibris_™  Books You May Not Be Too Excited About Finding

  Nohow On. 4to, full black leather with etchings by Robert Ryman and signed in the colophon by the author & the artist. Typeset in English Monotype Bodoni at Golgonooza Letterfoundry on paper from Cartiere Enrico Magnini. Laid in a suede lined linen clamshell box. Design by Benjamin Shiff, The Limited Edition Club, New York. $3500. Also available in paperback for $8.80.

  The North. A prose piece, first edition, one of fifteen signed copies, with an extra suite of three tissue-guarded signed etchings by Avigdor Arikha. Printed by Will and Sebastian Carter at the Rampant Lions Press, Cambridge on heavyweight paper made by J. Barcham Green. Loose gatherings in wrappers. Seven (7) pages. Fine. $3,646.

  More Pricks Than Kicks. Well, it turns out that the Alibris description of this book had a minor problem. The previously posted price of $100,000.00 should have read $1000.00. Probably didn't sell too well. It's still a limited edition of 100 signed and numbered copies, printed on 1/4 gilt-lettered vellum, all edges gilt and each copy (in original slipcase) is near fine (only minor spine toning). However if you just want to read it you can buy it for $8.80.
  
  
  
  

Beckett Interviews

• The Hapless Dilettante News The Samuel Beckett Interviews

On-line Texts

Some posted without explicit permission.

• Act Without Words.
  Graphics by Kristina Pugliese, Illinois State Univ.

• Act Without Words II

• Breath  ("Inspiration" = Inhalation, "Expiration" = Exhalation)
  
  Londoners gasp at Beckett's 35-second play by Paul Keller, Reuters.

• Catastrophe

• Come and Go

• Eh, Joe

• Fizzle 3 and Fizzle 4

• Imagination Dead Imagine

• Lessness
  • Here's one example of why scholars and intellectuals — in this case a computer scientist and a student of English and International Affairs — are drawn to Sam:
    Lessness: Randomness, Consciousness and Meaning by Elizabeth Drew and Mads Haahr, Trinity College, Univ. of Dublin.
       From the abstract: "Lessness is a prose piece in which Beckett used random permutation to order 60 sentences... and is comprised of two of the approximately 8.3 x 10⁸¹ possible orderings of these sentences. The authors have developed a web site that generates versions of Lessness, exploring the effects of the capabilities of computing in the creation and exploration of art."
       Keywords: chaos, randomness, Samuel Beckett, postmodern fiction, permutation, consciousness

  • Sing (or hum) a bit of Lessness along with the Andy Laster Quartet, who have captured "something of Beckett's...obtuse, oddly-vaudevillian humor".

• Not I

• A Piece of Monologue
  To both read and listen to it, first click here, then here.  (Requires an MP3 player and broadband streaming.)

  Play

  Stirrings Still

  Company (excerpts)

  The last sentence of The Unnamable, parsed and punctuated by Colin Greenlaw.

  The sucking stones sequence from Molloy.
  

  "An activity which, in Beckett, is not so meaningless as it first appears; it involves thinking about
  life, about order and chaos — and the everlasting human longing to escape entropy."

  The "conceptual writing" in Watt. Footwear, movements around the room, and furniture positions including chairs.

  Poems
  

  Neither
  what would I do without this world
  Dieppe
  Cascando  Not to be confused with the radio play of the same name.
  Echo's Bones
  Roundelay
  Ooftish
  What is the Word. Sam's very last work.

  Krapp's Last Tape

  Endgame

  Waiting for Godot

  Act 1

  Act 2
  

    To both read and listen to a fine, two-part live performance of Act 1 by the Stratford Festival players as recorded and broadcast by CBC Radio, click here. Pozzo is superb.

  
     Annotated version by Penelope Merritt
  

  Act 1  Act 2

  
  Losigkeit (Lessness)
  Sechs Gedichte (Six Poems)
  Weder (Gedicht)
  Endspiel
  que ferais-je sans ce monde (poème)
  Bing (poème)
  Hungarian
     Krepp utolsó szalagja (Krapp's Last Tape)
  Español
     El Expulsado
     El Final
     Esperando a Godot
     Molloy
     Malone Muere
     Compañía
     Sobresaltos (Stirrings Still)
  Basque
     Godoten esperoan
     Azkenburuko bulkadak (Stirrings Still)
  Korean
     Waiting for Godot
  

  
  

On-Line Bookstores

[ Index ]

• Amazon.com
  
  Books by Beckett
  
  Books about Beckett. 335 and counting.

  Amazon.fr: Livres en français

  Barnes and Noble
  

  Books by

  Books about

  Calder Publications
  

  A brief personal memoir, followed by a list of books published by Beckett's friend, John Calder, some of which are available nowhere else. Included in this list are Beckett Shorts, a series of twelve shorter writings, the best known being First Love, Worstward Ho and Three Novellas (The Expelled, The Calmative and The End). All twelve are available individually or together as a boxed set. All have covers with photographs of Sam caught in different moods.
  • Review (favourable) of Beckett Shorts by Nicholas Lezard in The
    
  • On the other hand, Christopher Ricks in The Guardian takes a very hard look indeed, at the new Calder book, "Samuel Beckett: Poems 1930-1989".

  W. H. Smith ("At the frontiers of technology and customer service").
  

  Books by.  Enter "Samuel Beckett" in "Author", click on Search.
  

  Books about.  Enter "Samuel Beckett" in "Title", click on Search.
  
  
  

Film and Video

[ Index ]

• 
  The Beckett Film Project. A new filming of all 19 plays, starring Jeremy Irons, Julianne Moore, Barry McGovern, Harold Pinter, John Gielgud (in his last acting appearance) and others. The entire program of films is being shown on Britain's Channel 4 and on RTE in Ireland (the co-producers), and has now been released as a boxed video set.

  Channel 4's Beckett on Film website. A lovely, comprehensive site encompassing dozens of pages including a brief critical introduction to the plays, a chronology of Beckett's life, information about the origins of the project and the films' producers, synopses about each film and stills and clips from the films. Quite impressive.

  In the U.S., the PBS program Stage on Screen will air, on New Year's Day, 2003 at 9:30 PM, the entire Waiting for Godot.

  The boxed set is now available for purchase, all 19 plays on four DVDs.

  • In the UK/Ireland from Channel 4/Blue Angel Films, $150.
  • In the US from Documentary-Video, $150.

  On videocasette
  

  • All are being sold in the UK on VHS PAL format videocasettes, £19.99 each.
    
  • Four are for sale from Canada in VHS NTSC format.
    
    • Waiting for Godot $28 US.
      
    • Endgame $28 US.
      
    • Krapp's Last Tape $27 US
      
    • Happy Days $27 US.

  Beckett goes to Hollywood by Tillmann Allmer in The Observer, Nov. 19, 2000. An excellent summation of the entire project that follows an unfortunate headline, given the fact that none of these plays were filmed in Hollywood. Indeed, one (Happy Days) was shot outdoors on a volcano in the Canary Islands.
  Stardust Melancholy. Jonathan Kalb asks: Does the filming of Samuel Beckett's complete works compromise his theatrical legacy? On the Theatre Communications Group website.
  Blobs, babble and blackness. Adrian Searle is overwhelmed by Comedie (Play). In The Guardian, Dec. 9, 2000.
  Short reviews of several of the films by Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
  

  
  Beckett on Film in the Netherlands on Nederland 3 television, April 30 - August 27, 2002.

  
  

• films.com  Films for the Humanities & Sciences

  Prices include public perfomance rights. Substantially less if purchased for private viewing.

  Three Plays: Eh Joe, Footfalls and Rockaby. "Special studio recordings" featuring Billie Whitelaw. 80 minutes, black and white. $149.
  Silence to Silence  Portrait of Beckett's artistic life, seen through his works. Selected scenes from plays, acted by his well known interpreters. 80 minutes, color. $149.
  As the Story Was Told  BBC profile of Beckett from his childhood to old age. "A rare glimpse into the reclusive world of this literary giant." 2 parts, 55 minutes each, colour. $259.

•  Happy Days
  A video of the original airing of Happy Days, June 25, 1980 on WNET/13, New York, in their Great Performances series. Distributed by The Broadway Theatre Archive.
  Starring Irene Worth as Winnie and George Voskovec as Willie. Directed by David Heeley and produced by Joseph Papp. 90 minutes, color. $29.95.

  On DVD "Region 1" (North America)   On VHS NTSC videocasette.

  DVD also available at Amazon.com. $22.46 new, $17.02 used.

  
  

• From facets video, a non-profit media arts organization.
  Krapp's Last Tape starring Jack MacGowran, about whom Beckett once said, "I didn't have to talk to him; I didn't have to direct him. He just knew." A 1971 recording. $59.95. (Or $49.95 here.)

• 
  

  Beckett's most famous plays on video, presented by the San Quentin Drama Workshop using Beckett's stage directions, are frequently available on video cassette (please inquire), and there are tentative plans to eventually release them on DVD. Here's a nice Beckett Directs Beckett website, including clips, from the producer of the films, Mitchell Lifton.

  
  
  If you've got broadband (or else if you're very patient) download and view a 42 second Quicktime movie of a scene from the BDB Godot, 3.775 megabytes, in colour.
  
  
  
  
  

  Sketch by Tom Phillips of Beckett directing the San Quentin group in a rehearsal of Godot.

• Global Village videos
  • Waiting for Beckett
  • Peephole Art: Beckett for Television
         Not I
         Quad I & II
         What Where

• Foxrock Books videos
  On VHS: Film and Waiting for Godot (the version with Zero Mostel and Burgess Meredith, 1961)
  

  Film is also available on DVD here.

  British Universities Film and Video Council
      (Available in PAL or NTSC format).

  Eh, Joe! Beckett's first play written specifically for television. Original 1972 taping. 25 minutes.
  What?...Who?...No!...She! Renowned Beckett scholar and biographer James Knowlson discusses with Billie Whitelaw the background to her performances of several of his works. 34 minutes.
  Thirty-nine today  Max Wall, the actor and former music-hall comedian, discusses with James Knowlson his experiences acting Krapp. 21 minutes.

  
  

Audio

[ Index ]

• Samuel Beckett Radio Plays
    Produced by Voices International and distributed by Evergreen Review
  
  • All That Fall
    
  • Words and Music. Music by Morton Feldman.
    
  • Embers
    
  • Cascando
    
  • Rough for Radio II

    
    

• Waiting for Godot
  A live performance by the Stratford Festival players recorded by CBC Radio.
  On two audio casettes from the CBC. $15.95 US.
  • Listen to the entire Act 1 in Real Audio.

  • Listen to Vladimir sing, in German, "A dog came in the kitchen" at the beginning of Act 2. From a 1981 Deutsche Grammophon recording of the play.

  
  

• Murphy
  On . Beckett's comic masterpiece about "romantic entanglements that foil the search for metaphysical certitude". Narrated by Fionnula Flanagan and featuring 20 of the finest English and Irish voices. Produced in association with Viper Records, TZ Entertainment and The San Quentin Drama Workshop.

  The complete unabridged text on six CDs, $50.00. ($70 from Amazon.) Available at no cost to prisons.
  Listen to six Sections -- more than an hour -- in streaming broadband mp3 (160Kbps).

  
  

• Molloy, performed on audio CD by Conor Lovett. A Gare St Lazare Players production.
  From the reviews of Conor Lovett's stage performance: "Masterly" The Irish Times   "Magnificent" The Sunday Times   "Beautiful" The Independent   "Pure Brilliance" The Stage.
  (For Conor's current Beckett performances, see Beckett Festivals and Events section, below.)

• Molloy, read in its entirety by Dermot Crowley and Sean Barrett on Naxos Audiobooks. Seven CDs or audiocassette tapes. Running time: approx. 7 hours.

• Words and Music. A 1987 collaboration between Beckett and composer Morton Feldman. Performed by the Ensemble Recherche on a Disques Montaigne CD.
  
  The Note Man and the Word Man. An interview with Morton Feldman about composing the music for Samuel Beckett's radio play, Words and Music. Interviewer: Everett C. Frost.
  Book review: Samuel Beckett and Music, ed. Mary Bryden. Review by Walter A. Strauss, Case Western Reserve Univ.

• From Ubu Web. Listen to two radio plays, a recording of Krapp's Last Tape and Text for Nothing #8.
  • Words and Music. Not the Morton Feldman version. The music in this 1979 performance by the Theater for Your Mother was composed by Mark E. Miller. Available in streamed Real Audio (16 kbps) or MP3 (80 kbps).
    
    • To both listen to and read it, first click here, then here.
  • Cascando. Performed by the Theater for Your Mother in a 1979 recording. Real Audio or MP3.
  • Krapp's Last Tape, performed by Donald Davis.
    
    A bit of ephemera from the record sleeve:
    Sleep is lovely, death is better still
    
    Not to have been born is of course
    
    the miracle. More..
    
    • To both read and listen to (stream) this 2-part performance, first click here and here for Part 1, and later click on "Back", then here and then "Forward" for Part 2. (Broadband [224 Kbps] required)
  • Text for Nothing #8, read by Jack MacGowran.
  
  Ubu Web: "An unlimited resource with unlimited space... Ubu Web posts much of its content without permission".

• ...the whole thing's coming out of the dark  Beckett used this terminology to describe the origin and quality of his radio plays. Three texts are read here by the actress Natasha Parry, the actor Barry McGovern and the American author Raymond Federman. The playing directions for the instrumentalist on this CD (Uwe Dieksen) are allegedly derived directly from the so-called sucking stones sequence in Beckett's novel Molloy. Intermedium Records. Order it from Forced Exposure or go to Ubu Web and listen here (to yes, the whole thing) in Real Audio, 16 kbps, mono.

• Listen to a performance of A Piece of Monologue (Requires an MP3 player and broadband streaming.)
  To both read and listen to it, first click here, then here.

  MacGowran Speaking Beckett. Jack MacGowran speaks extracts from seven of Beckett's works. On Claddagh Records.

  Billie Whitelaw, actress, lecturer and author, describes "the pleasure (mostly) and pain (only a little)" of working with Beckett. Hear it in Real Audio (10 min.). Registration required.

  Alleged Beckett sounds Acoustic and synthesized (including a 30 sec. sample)

Beckett Festivals and Events

[ Index ]

• Beckett Festival and Symposium, The Hague, 1992

• The Beckett Festival, Lincoln Center, 1996
  
  Dispelling the Gloom. Richard Corliss's report on it in Time magazine.

  Multimedia Exhibition: Samuel Beckett/Bruce Nauman Kunsthalle, Treitlstraße 2, Vienna, Austria, February 4 - April 30, 2000.

  "This exhibition represents a first attempt to bring together the writer Samuel Beckett and the artist Bruce Nauman, two unique, intense and highly complex artists in one concept and space. More than any other artists, Beckett and Nauman offer an experience that stimulates the public to detach itself from its familiar modes of perception and of thought, to open itself to other conceptions of space."

  The Beckett/Nauman Nexus

  
  

  
  Mini-Festival, Chicago, June, 2000.

  QUAD / PLAY / ACT WITHOUT WORDS 2 / KRAPP'S LAST TAPE

  
  Cryptic Productions Samuel Beckett Festival
  Glasgow, Scotland, Oct. 13-22, 2000. A ten day Scottish-led international event that took an "innovative and radical approach" to Beckett in presenting a programme of theatre, dance, film and educational events, and a new contemporary chamber opera.

  Beckett on Film, Nederland 3 television. April 30 - August 27, 2002, The Netherlands. All 19 plays.

  Beckett on Film, PBS, USA. Sunday, September 15, 2002, 10 PM. Seven of the shorter works, and on Jan. 1, 2003 at 9:30 PM, Waiting for Godot.

  Samuel Beckett Symposium
  
       after Beckett 
                   d'après Beckett
       Sydney, Australia, Jan. 6-10, 2003

  A CELEBRATION OF THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF WAITING FOR GODOT Sydney will host a series of events including premieres of new productions of Godot and Endgame, cultural events exploring the diversity of Beckett's artistic influence, radio broadcasts of his works, visual arts exhibitions and a likely screening of the Beckett on Film plays. In addition, a conference will gather leading academics and practitioners in the fields of Beckett studies and theatre performance from around the world. A call for papers has been announced and the deadline for submission of proposals is July 15, 2002.

  
  

  Conor Lovett performs The Beckett Trilogy
  

  "Astonishing...There can be no doubt about the Beckett niche Lovett has carved for himself.
  He is special." Irish Times (Gerry Colgan)

  2003 DATES: "The Beckett Trilogy" continues to tour intermittently. On Jan 27 & 28, 2003, 2.30pm, at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College, Dublin. For info e-mail Conor.

  
  

  Images of Beckett: Photographs by John Haynes
  

  At the National Theatre, London, September 22 to November 8, 2003. A collection of photos of Beckett's works in preparation and performance, and newly exhibited photos of the playwright himself.

  
  

  Newark, Delaware, USA.
  

  A celebration on the occasion of the University Library's exhibition of the Sir Joseph Gold collection of works by and about Samuel Beckett. Includes performances by Billie Whitelaw and Pierre Chabret, and an inaugural lecture by Ruby Cohn. Open to the public. Billie Whitelaw performance $10, all other events are free of charge. Complete schedule.

  
   
  

  Blessed Unrest - An Evening of Samuel Beckett
  Play, Rockaby and That Time, presented by the Chaikin Memorial Theater, a new performing arts organization.
  New York City, January 14-25, 2004.
  

  • A moving, two-part tribute in the Village Voice to Joseph Chaikin (1935-2003), the highly acclaimed and much admired actor and director.
    
    Part 1
    Part 2

  
  

  Literary Events at The Calder Bookshop, London
      October 2, 2003: SAMUEL BECKETT'S COMPANY. The most poignant of Beckett's late novellas, Company, will be narrated by Anthony Jackson and Peter Pacey.
      November 6, 2003: DANTE and the LOBSTER. The actor Sean Barrett reads this jewel of twentieth century literature, the young Beckett's hilarious picture of student life at TCD.
      December 4, 2003: BECKETT'S THEATRE ROUGHS. Rough for Theatre I and II, graphic depictions of despair and the human capacity to cope with it, will be read by actors and discussed by John Calder.
      February 19, 2004: BECKETT'S MURPHY. Parts of one of the great comic novels of the last century will be read by actors. John Calder will point out the philosophical references and highlight references to the author's own life.
      April 1, 2004: BECKETT'S WORSTWARD HO. In this text, "Beckett describes the earliest conception of life itself" in language "that is both startling and potently original". The entire Worstward Ho will be read by Sean Barrett, followed by a discussion chaired by John Calder.
      May 6, 2004: BECKETT'S POETRY. A selection of poetry — less known than his plays and novels — and some of Sam's translations of other poets will be read by actor Peter Marinker.
      May 13, 2004: MALONE DIES: BECKETT'S MASTERLY "MIDDLE" NOVEL. The actor Sean Barrett will read selected passages from the second novel in Beckett's famous trilogy.
      May 20, 2004: FROM AN ABANDONED WORK. The actor Peter Marinker will read one of Beckett's most admired prose-narratives of the 1950's.
      June 24, 2004: CONOR LOVETT'S MOLLOY. A dramatic presentation by Irish actor Conor Lovett of Beckett's most famous novel. It has been taken to theatres throughout the world, resulting in high acclaim. Read more.
  Admission £4. Includes wine.

  
  

  Coming in 2006, Sam's centenary year
  

  • The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett. A four volume edition that will contain about 2500 letters from him, with annotations incorporating portions of another 4000-5000 letters to, from, and about him and his work.
    
  • Samuel Beckett Festival, Tokyo 2006

[ Index ]

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