Dear Mr Beckett Letters From The Publisher

(Book). Preface by Paul Auster * Foreword by Edward Beckett Edited by Lois Oppenheim * Curated by Astrid Myers Rosset "You know, Barney, I think my writing days are over," Beckett writes in 1954 when most of his output was still ahead of him. And later, "Sick of all this old vomit and despair more and more of ever being able to puke again. In a world where writers switch publishers at the first shake of a martini pitcher, our trans-Atlantic communications seemed to float on a sea of tranquility and trust." from Dear Mr. Beckett Through letters, contracts, photos, interviews, speeches, reviews and memorabilia most of which has never before been made public a rare personal and professional friendship unfolds between these two oddly shy daredevils; through their embrace, they shifted and turned the tide of literature in America. Among the many never before published entries: * Beckett's discussion about acting with his long time director, Alan Schneider, as they huddled with Barney Rosset in his East Hampton quonset hut about their upcoming rehearsal with Buster Keaton. * Susan Sontag correspondence on her Godot production in Sarajevo. * The comprehensive Endgame file about the controversial production in Cambridge Mass which proceeded against Beckett's wishes. * Interviews with Eugene Ionesco and Alain Robbe-Grillet about Beckett and Rosset and the Absurdists. * Estelle Parsons correspondence with Beckett about the actress's proposal to perform Godot with Shelley Winters on Broadway. * Comprehensive file on the genesis and development of Beckett's Rockaby with Billie Whitelaw. * Comprehensive file on Rosset's termination from Grove, the press he founded and championed.

Through letters, contracts, photos, interviews, speeches, reviews, and memorabilia - most of which has never before been made public - a rare personal and professional friendship unfolds between these two oddly shy daredevils, shifting and turning the tide of literature in America. Barney Rosset, more than any other publisher, fiercely advocated for the most daring and influential writers of the 20th century. Through his Grove imprint, whole generations have embraced some of the greatest playwrights of our time, including Genet, Pinter, Mamet, Ionesco, D.H. Lawrence, and of course Samuel Beckett. Scholars, students, and fans of literary letters will find this volume beguiling reading.--Publisher.

Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction provides an overdue investigation into Beckett’s rich influences over American writing. Through in-depth readings of postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, this book situates Beckett’s post-war writing of exhaustion and generation in relation to the emergence of an explosive American avant-garde. In turn, this study provides a valuable insight into the practical realities of Beckett’s dissemination in America, following the author’s long-standing relationship with the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review and its dramatic role in redrawing the possibilities of American culture in the 1960s. While Beckett would be largely removed from his American context, this book follows his vigorous, albeit sometimes awkward, reception alongside the authors and institutions central to shaping his legacies in 20th and 21st century America.

Publishing houses are nearly invisible in modernist studies. Looking beyond little magazines and other periodicals, this collection highlights the importance of book publishers in the diffusion of modernism. It also participates in the transnational turn in modernist studies, demonstrating that book publishers created new markets for modernist texts in the United States, Europe and the rest of the world.

Revisioning Beckett reassesses Beckett's career and literary output, particularly his engagement with what might be called decadent modernism. Gontarski approaches Beckett from multiple viewpoints: from his running afoul of the Irish Censorship of Publications Acts in the 1930s through the 1950s, his preoccupations to “find literature in the pornography, or beneath the pornography,” his battles with the Lord Chamberlain in the mid-1950s over London stagings of his first two plays, and his close professional and personal associations with publishers who celebrated the work of the demimonde. Much of that term encompasses an opening to the fullness of human experience denied in previous centuries, and much of that has been sexual or decadent. As Gontarski shows, the aesthetics that emerges from such early career encounters and associations continues to inform Beckett's work and develops into experimental modes that upend literary models and middle-class values, an aesthetics that, furthermore, has inspired any number of visual artists to re-vision Beckett.

The essays in this collection provide in-depth analyses of Samuel Beckett's major works in the context of his international presence and circulation, particularly the translation, adaptation, appropriation and cultural reciprocation of his oeuvre. A Nobel Prize winner who published and self-translated in both French and English across literary genres, Beckett is recognized on a global scale as a preeminent author and dramatist of the 20th century. Samuel Beckett as World Literature brings together a wide range of international contributors to share their perspectives on Beckett's presence in countries such as China, Japan, Serbia, India and Brazil, among others, and to flesh out Beckett's relationship with postcolonial literatures and his place within the 'canon' of world literature.

This book of collected essays approaches Beckett’s work through the context of modernism, while situating it in the literary tradition at large. It builds on current debates aiming to redefine ‘modernism’ in connection to concepts such as ‘late modernism’ or ‘postmodernism’. Instead of definitively re-categorizing Beckett under any of these labels, the essays use his diverse oeuvre – encompassing poetry, criticism, prose, theatre, radio and film – as a case study to investigate and reassess the concept of ‘modernism after postmodernism’ in all its complexity, covering a broad range of topics spanning Beckett’s entire career. In addition to more thematic essays about art, history, politics, psychology and philosophy, the collection places his work in relation to that of other modernists such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, as well as to the literary canon in general. It represents an important contribution to both Beckett studies and modernism studies.

Surreal Beckett situates Beckett‘s writings within the context of James Joyce and Surrealism, distinguishing ways in which Beckett forged his own unique path, sometimes in accord with, sometimes at odds with, these two powerful predecessors. Beckett was so deeply enmeshed in Joyce’s circle during his early Paris days (1928 - late 1930s) that James Knowlson dubbed them his "Joyce years." But Surrealism and Surrealists rivaled Joyce for Beckett’s early and continuing attention, if not affection, so that Raymond Federman called 1929-45 Beckett’s "surrealist period." Considering both claims, this volume delves deeper into each argument by obscuring the boundaries between theses differentiating studies. These received wisdoms largely maintain that Beckett’s Joycean connection and influence developed a negative impact in his early works, and that Beckett only found his voice when he broke the connection after Joyce’s death. Beckett came to accept his own inner darkness as his subject matter, writing in French and using a first-person narrative voice in his fiction and competing personal voices in his plays. Critics have mainly viewed Beckett’s Surrealist connections as roughly co-terminus with Joycean ones, and ultimately of little enduring consequence. Surreal Beckett argues that both early influences went much deeper for Beckett as he made his own unique way forward, transforming them, particularly Surrealist ones, into resources that he drew upon his entire career. Ultimately, Beckett endowed his characters with resources sufficient to transcend limitations their surreal circumstances imposed upon them.