New Release Books by Samuel Beckett

"[Beckett''s] specifications are preserved in the remarkable series of notebooks . . . now completed by S. E. Gontarski''s exemplary edition of Beckett''s ledgers for productions of his short late plays."--New York Review of Books

This book contains the English and French texts and a complete record of the genesis of each. Besides Comment C''est How It Is, O''Reilly has included L''Image and an excerpt from Comment C''est that was published later in another volume.

"The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett is beyond doubt a major contribution to Beckett scholarship and to the study of drama as a genre."--Richard J. Finneran

By the winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature Before the classic Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett wrote Eleuthéria. Legend has it that the great French director Roger Blin was given his choice of the two plays. Waiting for Godot won out.Eleuthéria, which has seventeen characters and elaborate and numerous scene changes, was virtually forgotten for the next forty years. As Beckett scholars have noted, elements in Eleuthéria prefigure many of the themes and characters of Beckett’s most important plays. Beyond the historical interest of this “lost” work, there is also the mesmerizing quality of the master playwright’s language. 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 three pieces that comprise this volume are among the most delicate and disquieting of Samuel Beckett’s later prose. Each confined to a single consciousness in a closed space, these stories are a testament to the mind’s boundless expanse. In Company, a man—"one on his back in the dark"—hears a voice speak to him, describing significant moments from his lifetime, and yet these memories may be merely fables and figments invented for the sake of companionship. Ill Seen Ill Said tells of a solitary old woman who paces around a cabin, burdened by existence itself. And Worstword Ho explores a world devoid of rationality and purpose, containing the famous directive: "Try again. Fail Again. Fail Better." The quintessential distillation of Beckett’s philosophy on human existence and the ultimate example of his minimalist approach to fiction, Nohow On is a vital collection, concerned with conception and perception, memory and imagination.

This fourth and final volume, which completes the Cambridge edition of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, covers the final twenty-four years of what was, as Beckett saw it, a surprisingly long life. During these years he produced many of his finest and most concentrated works for theatre, plays that included Not I, Ohio Impromptu, and Catastrophe; for television he wrote Eh Joe and Ghost Trio; while in prose, he produced the late ''trilogy'' that comprises Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, and Worstward Ho. In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the letters from this period show him struggling to cope with the pressures created by his ever-growing international fame. The letters reveal how, later, he turned his mind to his legacy, as seen through his interactions with biographers and archivists. This volume also provides chronologies, explanatory notes, translations, and profiles of Beckett''s chief correspondents.

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.”

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.

Samuel Beckett began his career by publishing poems in literary reviews in Paris during the 1930s, and--although primarily considered a playwright and novelist--he continued writing poetry throughout his life. This new, definitive volume presents Beckett’s poetry in the order it was composed, from pre-war to post-war, and contains previously unpublished and never-before-reprinted work. Along with his translations of Apollinaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud, and many others, this book brings together all of the pieces from Collected Poems in English and French, selections from Mexican Poetry: An Anthology (translated by Beckett), and poems that appeared in his novels and plays. Extensive critical notes by editors Se�n Lawlor and John Pilling detail the circumstances of their composition, explaining obscure allusions and references (frequently sourced to Beckett''s notebooks), and identifying resonances across his oeuvre. Poetry allowed Beckett to reconcile his penchant for opulent phrasing with his preference for minimalism, and it profoundly influenced his approach to the drama and fiction for which he’s revered. This complete collection is an informative and essential addition to the libraries of Beckett’s readers.

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“Opened at last, the chest brims with treasures.”—The New Yorker

Collects a series of interviews that offer insight into the playwright''s beliefs about life, his work, friends and colleagues, and includes essays by contemporaries whom Beckett influenced.

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.

"[Beckett] never set out to be a revolutionary but rather to investigate the particular advantages of theater for his characteristic meditations on being, dubious presence, seriocomic desolation, and the artistic imperative to `fail again, fail better.'' In the process, though, he ended up turning the theater world---famously liberal politically yet notoriously conservative regarding received forms---on its head."---Jonathan Kalb, The New York Times A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Samuel Beckett is recognized as one of the pivotal geniuses of modern literature. He was a minimalist master and produced some of his most highly regarded work for the stage in the form of the short 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 Pinget''s The Old Tune, and shorter dramatic works written later in his life, Catastrophe, What Where, Quad, and Nacht und Traume (Night and Dreams). "I think there are perhaps four playwrights of the twentieth century that we could not have done without: Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, and Beckett. I think if you''ve got those four, you''ve got the century covered." ---Edward Albee "After Godot, plots could be minimal, exposition expendable, characters contradictory, settings unlocalized, and dialogue unpredictable. Blatant farce could jostle tragedy."---Ruby Cohn

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.

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.

In prose possessed of the radically stripped-down beauty and ferocious wit that characterize his work, this early novel by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett recounts the grotesque and improbable adventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master. Watt is a beautifully executed black comedy that, at its core, is rooted in the powerful and terrifying vision that made Beckett one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

This volume brings together three of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s major short stories and thirteen shorter pieces of fiction that he calls “texts for nothing.” Here, as in all his work, Beckett relentlessly strips away all but the essential to arrive at a core of truth. His prose reveals the same mastery that marks his work from Waiting for Godot and Endgame to Molloy and Malone Dies. In each of the three stories, old men displaced or expelled from the modest corners where they have been living bestir themselves in search of new corners. Told, “You can’t stay here,” they somehow, doggedly, inevitably, go on. Includes: “The Expelled” “The Calmative” “The End” Texts for Nothing (1-10)

Samuel Beckett, one of the great avant-garde Irish dramatists and writers of the second half of the twentieth century, was born on 13 April 1906. His centenary will be celebrated throughout 2006 with performances of his major plays, including Waiting for Godot. Here are the two most famous plays for solo voice. Krapp''s Last Tape finds an old man, with his tape recorder, musing over the past and future. Not I is a remarkable tour de force for a single actress, as a woman emits memories and fears. Also included are two other singular short dramas for single voice, That Time read by John Moffatt and A Piece of Monologue read by Peter Marinker.

Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett was one of the most profoundly original writers of the 20th century. He gave expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature. A tremendously influential poet and dramatist, Beckett spoke of his prose fiction as the "important writing," the medium in which he distilled his ideas most powerfully. Here, for the first time, his short prose is gathered in a definitive, complete volume by leading Beckett scholar S. E. Gontarski.

Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt) and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience.

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.

This collection gathers together the Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett''s English poems (including Whoroscope, his first published verse), English translations of poems by Eluard, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and Chamfort, and poems in French, several of which are presented in translation.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and acknowledged as one of the greatest writers of our time, Samuel Beckett has had a profound impact upon the literary landscape of the twentieth century. In this one-volume collection of his fiction, drama, poetry, and critical writings, we get an unsurpassed look at his work. Included, among others, are: - The complete plays Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape, Cascando, Eh Joe, Not I, and That Time - Selections from his novels Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier, Molloy, and The Unnamable - The shorter works “Dante and the Lobster,” “The Expelled,” Imagination Dead Imagine, and Lessness - A selection of Beckett’s poetry and critical writings With an indispensable introduction by editor and Beckett intimate Richard Seaver, and featuring a useful select bibliography, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On is indeed an invaluable introduction to a writer who has changed the face of modern literature.

These four last prose fictions by Samuel Beckett were originally published individually, and their composition spanned the final decade of his life. In Company a solitary hearer lying in blackness calls up images from the far-off past. Ill Seen Ill Said meditates upon an old woman living out her last days alone in an isolated snow-bound cottage, watched over by twelve mysterious sentinels. In Worstward Ho, a breathless speaker unravels the sense of things, acting out the unending injunction to ''Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'' And Stirrings Still, published in the Guardian a few months before Beckett''s death in 1989, is the last prose work and testament of ''this great soothsayer of the age, and of the aged'' (Christopher Ricks). The present edition includes several short prose texts (Heard in the Dark I & II, One Evening, The Way, Ceiling) which represent work in progress or works ancillary to the composition of these late masterpieces.

As Vladimir and Estragon await the arrival of Godot, they discuss their lives and consider hanging themselves, but choose to wait for Godot instead, in the hope that he can tell them what their purpose is, in a new bilingual edition of the classic play honoring the centennial of the Nobel laureate''s birth. $50,000 ad/promo.

''Malone'', writes Malone, ''is what I am called now.'' On his deathbed, and wiling away the time with stories, the octogenarian Malone''s account of his condition is intermittent and contradictory, shifting with the vagaries of the passing days: without mellowness, without elegiacs; wittier, jauntier, and capable of wilder rages than Molloy. The sound I liked best had nothing noble about it. It was the barking of the dogs, at night, in the clusters of hovels up in the hills, where the stone-cutters lived, like generations of stone-cutters before them. it came down to me where I lay, in the house in the plain, wild and soft, at the limit of earshot, soon weary. The dogs of the valley replied with their gross bay all fangs and jaws and foam...

Krapp''s Last Tape was first performed by Patrick Magee at the Royal Court Theatre in October 1958, and described as ''a solo, if that is the word, for one voice and two organs: one human, one mechanical. It fills few pages. It is perhaps the most original and important play of its length ever written.'' (Roy Walker) The present volume brings together Krapp''s Last Tape and Beckett''s other shorter works or ''dramaticules'' written for the stage. It will be complemented by a forthcoming Faber edition of dramatic works written for radio and screen. Arranged in chronological order of composition, these shorter plays exhibit the laconic means and compassionate ends of Beckett''s dramatic vision. KRAPP ''Here I end this reel. Box - [Pause.] - three, spool - [Pause.] - five. [Pause.] Perhaps my best years have gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn''t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn''t want them back. [Staring motionless before him.]

This is the last of three volumes of collected shorter prose to be published in the Faber edition of the works of Samuel Beckett - which already includes a volume of early stories (The Expelled/The Calmative/The End/First Love) and of late stories (Company/Ill Seen Ill Said/Worstward Ho/Stirrings Still). The present volume contains all of the short fictions - some of them no longer than a page - written and published by Beckett between 1950 and the early 1970s. Most were written in French, and they mostly belong within three loose sequences: Texts for Nothing, Fizzles and Residua. The edition also includes two remarkable independent narratives: From an Abandoned Work and As The Story Was Told. All of these texts, whose unsleeping subject is themselves, demonstrate that the short story is one of the recurrent modes of Beckett''s imagination, and occasions some of his greatest works. ... he would like it to be my fault that words fail him, of course words fail him. He tells his story every five minuts, saying it is not his, there''s cleverness for you. He would like ti to be my fault that he has no story, of course he has no story, that''s no reason for trying to foist one on me...