Most Popular Books by Samuel Beckett

“It is one thing to be informed by Shakespeare that life “is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing”; it is something else to encounter the idea literally presented in a novel by Samuel Beckett. But I am reasonably certain that a sensitive reader who journeys through How It Is will leave the book convinced that Beckett says more that is relevant to experience in our time than Shakespeare does in Macbeth. It should come as no surprise if a decade or so hence How It Is is appraised as a masterpiece of modern literature. This poetic novel is Beckett at his height.” — Webster Schott “A wonderful book, written in the sparest prose. . . . Beckett is one of the rare creative minds in our times.” — Alan Pryce-Jones “What is novel is the absolute sureness of design. . . built phrase by phrase into a beautifully and tightly wrought structure — a few dozen expressions permuted with deliberate redundancy accumulate meaning even as they are emptied of it, and offer themselves as points of radiation in a strange web of utter illusion.” — Hugh Kenner

In Happy Days, Samuel Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, top time past and time present. Once again, stripping theater to its barest essentials, Happy Days offers only two characters: Winnie, a woman of about fifty, and Willie, a man of about sixty. In the first act Winnie is buried up to her waist in a mound of earth, but still has the use of her arms and few earthly possessions—toothbrush, tube of toothpaste, small mirror, revolver, handkerchief, spectacles; in the second act she is embedded up to her neck and can move only her eyes. Willie lives and moves—on all fours—behind the mound, appearing intermittently and replying only occasionally into Winnie’s long monologue, but the knowledge of his presence is a source of comfort and inspiration to her, and doubtless the prerequisite for all her “happy days.”

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)

In honor of the centenary of Samuel Beckett''s birth, this bilingual edition of "Waiting for Godot" features side-by-side text in French and English so readers can experience the mastery of Beckett''s language and explore the nuances of his creativity.

From an inauspicious beginning at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone in 1953, followed by bewilderment among American and British audiences, Waiting for Godot has become of the most important and enigmatic plays of the past fifty years and a cornerstone of twentieth-century drama. As Clive Barnes wrote, “Time catches up with genius … Waiting for Godot is one of the masterpieces of the century.” The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existential post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.

In life, Beckett was notoriously reticent, preferring to let his work speak for itself. In the first half of this collection, he reveals many of his inner thoughts and honest opinions about his life, writing, friends, and colleagues in candid interviews published for the first time in this book. He discusses his friendship with James Joyce and his role in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France. Also included are newly discovered photographs of Beckett—as a young boy, as a teacher, as best man at a friend’s wedding, and with painter Henri Hayden. In the second half, friends and colleagues share their memories of Beckett as a schoolboy, a teacher, a struggling young writer, and a sudden success in 1953 with the appearance of Waiting for Godot. Readers will be enchanted by the poignant remembrances by those who knew him best, worked with him most closely, or admired him for his enduring influence: including actors Hume Cronyn, Jean Martin, Jessica Tandy, and Billie Whitelaw and fellow playwrights and authors Edward Albee, Paul Auster, E. M. Cioran, J. M. Coetzee, Eugène Ionesco, Edna O’Brien, and Tom Stoppard.

Primera de las novelas de la gran trilogía que completan «Malone muere» (L 5616) y «El innombrable» (L 5595), MOLLOY constituye el punto de arranque de la etapa iniciada por SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989) tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial, caracterizada por el abandono del inglés en favor del francés como lengua literaria y el ahondamiento de la visión trágica del mundo contemporáneo a través de imágenes en las que lo grotesco sirve para potenciar al máximo el patetismo y desolación de la vida humana. La enajenación, la soledad, la falta de identidad y el anonimato condenan a los personajes del novelista irlandés a una lucha sin sentido con su propia existencia, para la que ni siquiera la aniquilación final de la muerte constituye ya una esperanza.

Murphy, Samuel Beckett’s first published novel, is set in London and Dublin, during the first decades of the Irish Republic. The title character loves Celia in a “striking case of love requited” but must first establish himself in London before his intended bride will make the journey from Ireland to join him. Beckett comically describes the various schemes that Murphy employs to stretch his meager resources and the pastimes that he uses to fill the hours of his days. Eventually Murphy lands a job as a nurse at Magdalen Mental Mercyseat hospital, where he is drawn into the mad world of the patients which ends in a fateful game of chess. While grounded in the comedy and absurdity of much of daily life, Beckett’s work is also an early exploration of themes that recur throughout his entire body of work including sanity and insanity and the very meaning of life.

By the winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature A dense inner monologue, Stirrings Still was written by Beckett in 1987 and 1988, when he had become increasingly reflective about his life. It portrays, in Beckett’s spare style, a “consciousness” exploring a “self,” faced with uncertainties about its own existence. Stirrings Still is a spellbinding work, full of a sense of farewell. It is dedicated to Beckett’s longtime friend and publisher Barney Rosset. Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was a playwright, poet and novelist whose work has had a formative influence on 20th century culture. Born in Foxrock, Ireland, he moved to Paris after an abortive attempt at being an academic. Years of penury and obscurity followed, during which time he consorted with artists such as James Joyce, Alberto Giacometti, and Marcel Duchamp. During World War II, he was an active member of the French Resistance, and after the war he was honored with the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance. In 1954, Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” was introduced to an unsuspecting America by Barney Rosset at Grove Press; Beckett became a signature author of the fledgling company. Although he was highly regarded by a small circle of literary aficionados, it was not until Beckett won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 (he famously gave away the prize money that accompanied it) that his work began to reach a wider audience. His writing is characterized by meticulousness and a ceaseless fascination with the puzzle of fitting words to actions, and with the simultaneous impossibility and necessity of doing so that marks the human condition.

The present volume gathers all of Beckett''s texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio. ''He believes in the cadence, the comma, the bite of word on reality, whatever else he believes; and his devotion to them, he makes clear, is a sufficient focus for the reader''s attention. In the modern history of literature he is a unique moral figure, not a dreamer of rose-gardens but a cultivator of what will grow in the waste land, who can make us see the exhilarating design that thorns and yucca share with whatever will grow anywhere.'' - Hugh Kenner Contents: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, All That Fall, Acts Without Words, Krapp''s Last Tape, Roughs for the Theatre, Embers, Roughs for the Radio, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio,... but the clouds..., A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht und Traume, What Where.

Belacqua''s love is divided between two women, Smeraldina-Rima and the Alba.

Samuel Beckett, the great minimalist master and winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, has produced some of his most widely praised work for the stage in the form of the shorter play. This complete and definitive collection of twenty-five plays and "playlets" includes Beckett''s celebrated Krapp''s Last Tape, Embers, Cascando, Play, Eh Joe, Not I, and Footfalls, as well as his mimes, all his radio and television plays, his screenplay for Film, his adaptation of Robert Pignet''s The Old Tune, and more recent Catastrophe, What Where, Quad, and Night and Dreams. Includes: All That Fall Act Without Words I Act Without Words II Krapp''s Last Tape Rough for Theatre I Rough for Theatre II Embers Rough for Radio I Rough for Radio II Words and Music Cascando Play Film The Old Tune Come and Go Eh Joe Breath Not I That Time Footfalls Ghost Trio …but the clouds… A Piece of Monologue Rockaby Ohio Impromptu Quad Catastrophe Nacht und Träume What Where

Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969; his literary output of plays, novels, stories and poetry has earned him an uncontested place as one of the greatest writers of our time. Endgame, originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, is considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. A pinnacle of Beckett’s characteristic raw minimalism, it is a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.

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.

Fremtidsvision af alt livs forsvinden her på jorden

Samuel Beckett, the recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the greatest writers of our century, first published these ten short stories in 1934; they originally formed part of an unfinished novel. They trace the career of the first of Beckett’s antiheroes, Belacqua Shuah. Belacqua is a student, a philanderer, and a failure, and Beckett portrays the various aspects of his troubled existence: he studies Dante, attempts an ill-fated courtship, witnesses grotesque incidents in the streets of Dublin, attends vapid parties, endures his marriage, and meets his accidental death. These early stories point to the qualities of precision, restraint, satire, and poetry found in Beckett’s mature works, and reveal the beginning stages of Beckett’s underlying theme of bewilderment in the face of suffering.

Roman om menneskets forgæves søgen efter en mening i tilværelsen

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“[Beckett] is a serious writer with something serious to say about the human condition: and therefore one of the dozen or so writers those who are concerned with modern man in search of his soul should read.”—Stephen Spender, The New York Times Renowned Beckett scholar Ruby Cohn has selected some of Beckett''s criticisms, reviews, letters, and other unpublished materials that shed new light on his work.

Few works of contemporary literature are so universally acclaimed as central to our understanding of the human experience as Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy. Molloy, the first of these masterpieces, appeared in French in 1951. It was followed seven months later by Malone Dies and two years later by The Unnamable. All three have been rendered into English by the author.

"Two seedy stumblebums named Mercier and Camier, forerunners of Estragon and Vladimir of Waiting for Godot, set out on a mysterious journey through vaguely Irish scenery. They are unwilling clowns in a performance they do not understand ... "--From back cover, paperback edition.

Arena Stage, Zelda Fichandler, producing director, Thomas C. Fichandler, executive director presents Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy in "Two by Samuel Beckett," directed by Alan Schneider, production supervisor, Robert Walter, production coordinator Thomas Lloyd, stage manager Joseph Brocket, "Not I".