Headaches Among The Overtones

Samuel Beckett produced some of the most powerful writing – some of the funniest but most devastating – of the twentieth century. He described his plays, prose and poetry as ‘an unnecessary stain on the silence’, but the extraordinary combination of concision and richness in his writing stems from his peculiar sensitivity to the sounds and rhythms of words. Moreover, music forms a part of Beckett’s comic aesthetics of failure: it plays a role in his exploration of the possibilities and failures of the imagination, and the ever-failing attempt to forge a sense of self. No wonder, then, that so many composers have taken inspiration from Beckett, setting his words to music or translating into music the dramatic themes or contexts of his work. Headaches Among the Overtones considers both music in Beckett and Beckett’s significance in contemporary music. In doing so, it explores the relationship between words, music and meaning, examining how comparable philosophical concerns and artistic effects appear in literature and music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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.

Contents: The Difficult BirthóAn Image of Utterance in Beckett, Paul Lawley; Less equals MoreóDeveloping Ambiguity in the Drafts of "Come and Go," Rosemary Pountney; Seeing is PerceivingóBeckett's Later Plays and the Theory of Audience Response, Karen L. Laughlin; Mutations of the Soliloquy, "Not I" to "Rockaby," Andrew Kennedy; Anonymity and IndividuationóThe Interrelation of Two Linguistic Functions in "Not I" and "Rockaby," Lois Oppenheim; Walking and Rocking, Ritual Acts in "Footfalls" and "Rockaby," Mary A. Doll; Beckett's Other Trilogyó"Not I," "Footfalls" and "Rockaby," R. Thomas Stone; Perspective in "Rockaby," Jane Alison Hale; Know HappinessóIrony in "Ill Seen Ill Said," Monique Nagem; Reading "That Time," Antoni Libera; The Speech Act in Beckett's "Ohio Impromptu," Kathleen O'Gorman; "Make Sense Who May," A Study of "Catastrophe" and "What Where," Annamaria Sportelli; "Catastrophe" and Dramatic Setting, Hersh Zeifman; A Political Perspective on "Catastrophe," Robert Sandarg; The Quad PiecesóA Screen for the Unseeable, Phyllis Carey. Irish Literary Studies Series No. 30.

This book offers a radical reappraisal of the intellectual affinities between Theodor W. Adorno and Samuel Beckett, in particular with regard to freedom and its reconceptualization by Adorno.

Discusses playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet, Jean Tardieu, Jean Vauthier, Henri Pichette, Michel de Ghelderode, Jacques Audiberti, and Georges Schehade.

This comprehensive and authoritative casebook includes cornerstone essays on Pinter's creative process, his politics, film adaptations, and acting career. It also includes a collection of photos found nowhere else that document Pinter's "golden time"--his early acting days in Ireland--, a substantial introduction, a chronology, and bibliography.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.