Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui: The Trilogy

Is the Trilogy still at the heart of Beckett's work? A new call for papers asks for your ideas

Samuel Beckett. Photograph: Mary Evans.

Call for Papers / Appel à contributions
Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (SBT/A), vol. 26 (2014)
“Revisiting the Trilogy / Revisiter la trilogie”
Coedited by David Tucker, Mark Nixon, Dirk Van Hulle

We are soliciting 5000-word articles in either English or French for SBT/A 26 (2014), “Revisiting the Trilogy.” Submissions should conform to the SBT/A Guidelines for Contributors, available in both languages on The Samuel Beckett Endpage along with model articles. See http://www.ua.ac.be/beckett – “Beckett Journals.”

Deadlines: proposals of approximately 250 words by 31 January 2012; completed articles by 31 January 2013. The results of the refereeing process will be communicated by 31 May 2013.

The years since James Knowlson’s 1996 biography have seen Beckett studies become a considerably broadened field. With recourse to archival materials in the form of correspondence, manuscripts, reading notes, notebooks and diaries, and the adoption of new and innovative critical paradigms taking inspiration from diverse disciplines and rapidly evolving theory, scholars have explored Beckett’s creative processes and their contexts and outcomes in divergent and fascinating ways. During this period, the status held by Beckett’s ‘trilogy’ of novels Molloy, Malone meurt/Malone Dies, and L’Innommable/The Unnamable as a pinnacle of Beckett’s achievements in prose has rarely been put into question. It might therefore be expected that scholarship of the recent period would have a proportionately high focus on these novels. Yet, although there have been some striking new readings, the three novels do not feature as extensively in the critical discourse of the past fifteen years as their often-cited positions of prominence within Beckett’s oeuvre might lead one to expect. With the wealth of resources and critical approaches that are now available, a concerted reengagement with these novels seems not only possible, but also increasingly desirable.

Contributors are free to approach Beckett’s novels as stand-alone works or to situate them in the ‘trilogy’ or to tackle the issue of their place in Beckett’s oeuvre or the canon. Might the scholarly approaches that have brought much light to some of Beckett’s other works add to the new ways of reading these novels? Do these novels pose specific problems for otherwise recently successful approaches? The trilogy, a series of novels so concerned with the very nature and possibility of questions, also raises some important questions for Beckett studies at this time. “Revisiting the Trilogy” will go some way to addressing them.

Download

• Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (SBT/A), vol. 26 (2014): Call for Papers [PDF] (English/French)

Submissions:

Please submit queries, proposals, and completed articles via email to David Tucker:
d.a.tucker@sussex.ac.uk

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett

Terrence Malick's Tree of Life: Official Trailer (HD)

Winner of the 2011 Palme D'Or

The beautiful high-definition trailer for Terrence Malick's new film, Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain. Notably, it picked up the Palme D'Or at this year's Cannes film festival.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Critchley on Nature in Terrence Malick

James Joyce: Dublin Bloomsday Celebrations 2011

4-16 June 2011

James Joyce as a young man

The James Joyce Centre in Dublin has orchestrated another annual celebration of Joyce's work, complete with readings, exhibitions and walking tours. It begins on 4 June 2011, with the Bloom Garden Show in Phoenix Park, and concludes with a whole host events on Bloomsday itself (16 June).

Saturday–Sunday, 4–5 June 2011

12–1pm
‘JOYCE IN BLOOM’ IN THE DUBLIN UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE GARDEN
The BLOOM Garden Show, Phoenix Park

Wednesday 8 June 2011

6.30–8pm
‘IN THE SHADOW OF JAMES JOYCE’ EXHIBITION & BOOK LAUNCH
Photographer Motoko Fujita presents a collection of Joycean inspired images focused on the village of Chapelizod. The Joyce Centre is also pleased to host the launch of Fujita’s companion book (Lilliput Press, 2011) featuring essays by David Norris, Barry McGovern, Sam Slote, John McCullen, Danis Rose, WJ McCormack, Thomas MacGiolla and Shigehisa Yoshizu. The exhibition will run until 24 July 2011.

James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Free. Booking required for the launch event.

12–1.30pm
JOHN A. MCCULLEN – THE SHADOW OF JOYCE IN PHOENIX PARK
OPW Chief Superintendent of Parks John McCullen will guide us through a Joycean history of Dublin’s great Phoenix Park. Drawing on images from the OPW archive, McCullen’s talk will illuminate the historic backdrop of some of Motoko Fujita’s contemporary photographs on exhibition at the Joyce Centre.

James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Free. Booking required. Click here for James Joyce Centre website.

Sunday 12 June 2011

9.30am-2.30pm
JAMES JOYCE BICYCLE TOUR
“Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle.” Come with us on a journey aboard your very own velocipede as we explore dear dirty Dublin’s Northside. Visit the homes that played host to the Joyce family’s spiral into poverty at Fairview and Phibsborough, as well as the sights and spots that inspired the fiction, including Glasnevin Cemetary. Ticket includes a guided tour of the cemetery. Please note: this tour ends at the Brian Boru Pub in Glasnevin, where an optional Joycean lunch is on offer (not included in the ticket).

James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Tickets: €32. Booking strongly recommended. Click here for James Joyce Centre website.

Monday 13 June 2011

6.30–8.30pm
JOYCE AND JEWISH DUBLIN
The Irish Jewish Museum will host an evening of discussion on Irish Jewish culture in the time of Joyce featuring a talk by a member of the Irish Jewish community and a lecture on Jewish elements in Ulysses by James Joyce Centre Research Scholar Terence Killeen. Co-sponsored and hosted by the Irish Jewish Museum, located in the former Walworth Road Synagogue.

Irish Jewish Museum, 3 Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin 8.
Tickets €7/€5. Bookings recommended. Contact the Irish Jewish Museum: 1 453 1797/085 706 7357

Tuesday 14 June 2011

10am-3pm
JAMES JOYCE BUS TOUR
Jump aboard our bus and take a sojourn into Joyce country. Delving into south Dublin’s suburbs, we’ll explore Joyce’s early formative years alongside the locations that became so central to his fiction. Stops will include Dublin’s old Jewish quarter known as ‘Little Jerusalem’, Rathgar and Rathmines, the Martello Tower, Mr. Deasy’s School at Dalkey, and Sandymount Strand. The ticket covers the cost of admittance to the Irish Jewish Museum where a talk will be delivered on the history of the Irish Jewish community; the tour will stop for lunch in the picturesque village of Glasthule.

Tickets €30; booking strongly recommended. Click here for James Joyce Centre website.

6.30-8pm
CARLOS GAMERRO – JAMES JOYCE & JORGE BORGES
Born in Buenos Aires in 1962, Carlos Gamerro is a prominent contemporary Argentine writer. He has authored four novels, including Las Islas (The Islands, 1998) and El secreto y las voces (The Secret and its Voices, 2002) and has translated Shakespeare and Auden. This talk is hosted in association with The Embassy of Argentina. (Mr. Gamerro will also be in conversation with noted Spanish journalist Juan Cruz at the Instituto Cervantes on Wednesday 15 June at 6pm – contact the Instituto Cervantes for details, 1 631 1500).

James Joyce Centre, 35 N. Great George’s St.
Free. Bookings required. Click here for James Joyce Centre website.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

2–4pm
BLOOMSDAY AFTERNOON TEA AT THE WESTIN
Inspired by Leopold Bloom’s gift of Banbury buns to the seagulls on nearby Sackville Bridge, enjoy tea-time treats and traditional fare from Ulysses at Afternoon Tea in The Atrium Lounge. To the accompaniment of live music from the period, including some of Leopold's favourites, Joyce scholar Gerry Dukes will offer a special talk at 3pm sharp.

The Atrium Lounge at The Westin Dublin, Westmoreland Street.
€18 per person, inclusive of a glass of Burgundy. Bookings essential. Contact The Westin +353 1 645 1402

5-7pm
OPERAS & AIRS IN “STEPHEN’S” GREEN
On this first evening of our two-night tribute to Joyce and music tenors John Scott and Morgan Crowley, soprano Deirdre Masterson, pianist David Wray, and violinists Jane Rose and Fiona Regan perform hallmark songs from Ulysses. Hosted by Barry McGovern, this promises to be a romantic night in St. Stephen’s Green. Sponsored by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and supported by OPW and the Joyce Centre.

The Bandstand, St Stephen’s Green
Free. Limited seating. No Bookings.

Bloomsday: Thursday 16 June 2011

8, 9.30, 11am
BLOOMSDAY BREAKFAST AT THE GRESHAM
Join us for a traditional full-Irish Bloomsday Breakfast in The Gresham Ballroom, complete with all the Ulyssean fare you’ve come to expect!

The Gresham Ballroom, O’Connell St.
Tickets: €23. Bookings recommended: Click here for James Joyce Centre website.

9am–5pm
BLOOMSDAY AT THE JOYCE CENTRE
Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Come up to the Joyce Centre, rap at the door of No. 7 Eccles Street and explore Joyce’s world on exhibition. Grab some Bloomsday grub streetside. Eavesdrop on Molly’s musings then head off for one of our special tours of Joyce’s Dublin. It all starts here!
Entry: €5 adults/€4 concession.

11am–2pm
READINGS AND SONGS IN THE GREEN
This year, join us at The Bandstand in St Stephen's Green as Master of Ceremonies Alan Stanford hosts another gala afternoon of readings and songs from Ulysses. Joyceans of all ages and backgrounds are most welcome! Come and read your favourite few words from the book of the day. We’ll be treated to music of the era and songs from the big blue book of Eccles.

The Bandstand, St Stephen's Green
Free and open to the public, limited seating available, no bookings.

3–4pm
O ROCKS!
Keep your eyes peeled for Almidano Artifoni, the evangelist Alexander J Dowie, the Vice Regal Cavalcade and a host of Ulyssean characters as you wander through rocky Dublin this afternoon. They’ll take you by surprise!

Free. No bookings.

6–8pm
POEMSONGS & BALLADS IN STEPHEN’S GREEN
Join us in St Stephen’s Green for the second session of our two-part tribute to Joyce and music. Lyric tenor Noel O’Grady and pianist Eamon Keane will join musician and poet John Sheahan of The Dubliners and classical guitarist Michael Howard to perform a Bloomsday bouquet of music and melodies. The Eastern Harps trad band will delight us with soulful and rollicking ballads from Finnegans Wake. With Danis Rose as Master of Ceremonies, this Bloomsday soirée is not to be missed. Sponsored by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and supported by OPW and the Joyce Centre.

The Bandstand, St Stephen’s Green
Free. Limited seating. No Bookings.

8.30pm-late
THE GREAT HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS PUB QUIZ
“Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub.”
So you think you know Dublin? Or do think you know yer Joyce? Gather a team of four and test your knowledge of 1904 Dublin at our grand Charity Pub Quiz! Great prizes from our sponsors for the winner and runner-up plus dozens of wonderful raffle prizes including accommodation, travel, dining, literature and much more! Proceeds will support SHINE, Ireland’s largest mental health charity.

The Mint Bar at The Westin, Westmoreland St. (Just north of Tommy Moore’s roguish finger).
All welcome. €10 per person to play (€40 per team). To register your team, call the Joyce Centre or click here for James Joyce Centre website.

Walking Tours

11 – 16 June starting at the James Joyce Centre
Join us for one (or all!) of 4 tours of Joyce’s Dublin. Be sure to book ahead: the Bloomsday Walk is €8 per person; all others are €10 per person (€8 concessions). Click here to access the online box office

In the Footsteps of Leopold Bloom – Sunday 12/2pm; Monday 13/11am; Tuesday 14/2pm; Wednesday 15/11am

This tour explores the background to Joyce’s Ulysses and to Bloom’s thoughts as he crosses the city in search of something to eat in the ‘Lestrygonians’ episode. A humorous contrast of well-fed and under-fed citizens is mixed with a commentary on city buildings, and the presence of police constables reminds us of the realities of Dublin as a colonial city. In these footsteps, food becomes the central issue of social, cultural and political life in Dublin in 1904. The tour starts from the James Joyce Centre and finishes at the National Museum.

Joyce Circular – Saturday 11/11am; Sunday 12/12pm; Monday 13/1pm; Tuesday 14/11am; Wednesday 15/1pm

On our andante dander around the Hibernian metropolis, we take in North Earl Street and the ‘Prick with the Stick’; the house where Oliver ‘Buck Mulligan’ Gogarty was born; the setting of the Dubliners story ‘The Boarding House’; the house in which Sean O’Casey was born; the site of 7 Eccles Street, home of Leopold & Molly Bloom; and Belvedere College, which Joyce attended in the 1890s. The tour starts from and returns to the James Joyce Centre.

Dubliners – Saturday 11/2pm; Monday 13/2pm; Wednesday 15/2pm

Join our guide on a ramble through the city of Joyce’s first and most accessible work, Dubliners. Completed in 1907, Dubliners skilfully treats both turn-of-the-century Dublin and Joyce’s surroundings in continental Europe where the stories were written. The tour examines Joyce’s life in Dublin and the Dublin he created in his stories, as well as looking at how the city has commemorated its famous son. Joyce’s Dublin was a city of politics and intrigue, of religious devotion and disaffection, as well as a city in which the pressures and ties of family and society were never far off. The tour starts from the James Joyce Centre and finishes near Trinity College.

Bloomsday Walk – Wednesday 16 10am/10.30am/11am/11.30am/12pm/12.30pm/
1pm/1.30pm/2pm/2.30pm/3pm/3.30pm/4pm

This special Bloomsday walk features some of the most important Northside locations from Joyce's Ulysses. Our hour-long wander will take in Belvedere College, Eccles Street, Leopold and Molly Bloom’s residence, and variety of key locations along Parnell Square and O'Connell Street.

Website: James Joyce Centre

Also at A Piece of Monologue

• James Joyce: Political Controversialist
• Literary Mentorships: James Joyce and Samuel Beckett
• Joycean Literature: Literature & Poetry 1910-2010
• James Joyce: Death and Wake
• Is Modernism Boring?
• 'A House of Life': Anthony Burgess on James Joyce
• Re Joyce

Philip Roth: Man Booker International Interview

30 Minute Interview with the American novelist

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Philip Roth

Apocalypse Now Storyboards

The Guardian publishes storyboard images from Coppola's Vietnam war epic

Image: Zoetrope Studios

Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war epic, Apocalypse Now!, loosely based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, is being re-released this month in a restored digital print (27 May). It's to be followed by a Blu-ray release on 13 June. In celebration, The Guardian's Guide supplement has published the original storyboards of one of the film's most memorable scenes.

See the Gallery: 'The Apocalypse Now Storyboards', The Guide, The Guardian, 22 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Revisiting the Heart of Darkness
• Heart of Darkness: Graphic Novel

Philip Roth wins Man Booker International prize

American novelist receives prestigious literary award

American novelist Philip Roth has been announced as the winner of the fourth Man Booker International Prize, with a financial award of £60,000:

Philip Roth is today announced as the winner of the fourth Man Booker International Prize at a press conference at the Sydney Opera House. Roth was chosen from a list of 13 eminent contenders.

The Man Booker International Prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It is presented once every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or widely available in translation in the English language. It has previously been awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Alice Munro in 2009.

Philip Roth is a literary giant and one of the world's most prolific, celebrated - and controversial - writers. Born in March 1933 in New Jersey, Roth is best known for his 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint, and for his late-1990s trilogy comprising the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000).

Rick Gekoski, Chair of the judging panel, commented today:

"For more than 50 years Philip Roth's books have stimulated, provoked
and amused an enormous, and still expanding, audience. His imagination has not only recast our idea of Jewish identity, it has also reanimated fiction, and not just American fiction, generally.

"His career is remarkable in that he starts at such a high level, and keeps getting better. In his 50s and 60s, when most novelists are in decline, he wrote a string of novels of the highest, enduring quality. Indeed, his most recent, Nemesis (2010), is as fresh, memorable, and alive with feeling as anything he has written. His is an astonishing achievement." [Read more]

Source: 'Philip Roth wins Man Booker International Prize 2011', themanbookerprize.com, 18 May 2011

From around the web:

• Alison Flood, 'Philip Roth wins Man Booker International prize', guardian.co.uk, 18 May 2011
• Jason Boog, 'Philip Roth Wins Man Booker International Prize', GalleyCat, 18 May 2011
• Alison Flood, 'Judge withdraws over Philip Roth's Booker win', guardian.co.uk, 18 May 2011
• Benjamin Markovits, 'Everyman: A morality story by Philip Roth', Times Online, 6 May 2006
• 'Philip Roth: Wit and Misery in quotes', telegraph.co.uk, 18 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Philip Roth

J. G. Ballard's Final Words

A retrospective of Ballard's life and work

Photograph: Mark Tucker

Rob Latham reflects on the life and career of British novelist J. G. Ballard. His article reviews Ballard's final novel, Kingdom Come (2007) alongside his memoir Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton and Norton's recent edition of The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard (link via Susan Tomaselli):

British author J.G. Ballard died on April 19, 2009 of an inoperable cancer that had spread from his prostate to his ribs and spine—a diagnosis he details in the final chapter of his 2008 memoir Miracles of Life with the calm, clinical directness characteristic of the author. During the 1960s, Ballard made a name for himself in the science fiction genre with a trilogy of disaster stories—The Drowned World (1962), The Drought (1964), and The Crystal World (1966)—that challenged just about every convention of the genre. Rather than battling doggedly to preserve the remnants of civilization in the face of monumental adversity, his protagonists pursued a psychic accommodation—almost a mystical fusion—with the forces destroying their worlds. Ballard was widely condemned by hard-SF types for this perverse connivance with catastrophe, so at odds with the genre’s standard defense of scientific reason and heroic action. Indeed, his work was at the center of furious debates surrounding the so-called “New Wave” science fiction movement in both the US and Britain, with his 1970 anti-novel The Atrocity Exhibition marking either a high point of sophisticated experimentation (from the perspective of the pro-New Wave faction) or a nadir of cynical incomprehensibility (in the view of the anti-New Wave crowd).

But Ballard wasn’t finished shocking sensibilities: his mid-career trilogy—Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1973), and High-Rise (1975)—was no less apocalyptic despite its abandonment of overt SF scenarios. Scathing evocations of contemporary culture, the novels exposed the secret pathologies lurking beneath the veneer of advanced urban life: the soaring motorways, the glass-and-steel skyscrapers, the vast apparatus of consumerist mass-media only served to stimulate “the infantile basis of our dreams and longing” (as Ballard put it in the introduction to a French edition of Crash). Modern technology had done little more than “provide us with hitherto undreamed-of means of tapping our own psychopathologies”—as in Crash’s harrowing depiction of a subterranean cult of car-crash worshippers, or High-Rise’s corrosive vision of a luxury apartment house descending into tribal warfare. This conviction that technoscientific progress is intimately entwined with psychosexual and moral regression is Ballard’s most quintessential theme, linking his early SF with his most recent fictional work, a quartet of novels—Cocaine Nights (1996), Super-Cannes (2000), Millennium People (2003), and Kingdom Come (2006)—that explore the deviant pleasures of crime and terrorist violence in a high-tech suburban world. So consistent and recognizable is his vision of the world that the term “Ballardian” has even made it into the Collins English Dictionary as a reference to “dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social and environmental developments.”

In Miracles of Life, Ballard credits his doctor, a renowned cancer specialist, with giving him the courage to tackle the writing of his autobiography, support for which we can all be grateful since the book is an eloquent and moving chronicle. Little in it qualifies as new information, however: his novels Empire of the Sun (1984) and The Kindness of Women (1991) had already laid out the basic narrative of Ballard’s fraught childhood in Shanghai, including his two-year internment by the Japanese during WWII, and his postwar life in Britain as a medical student, RAF trainee pilot, widowed father, and celebrated writer of SF and avant-garde fictions. But those works were artistic inventions that took occasional liberties with the facts in order to produce compelling and carefully crafted stories. Empire of the Sun, for example, is one of the most brilliant treatments of the figure of the war orphan in contemporary literature, and a large measure of its impact stems from Ballard’s decision to edit his parents out of his account of his years of confinement in Lunghua Camp. While Empire was “firmly based on true experiences,” as he testifies, “some of the events described are imaginary” —and part of the pleasure of reading Miracles of Life is ferreting out the various changes Ballard made to his life in his fiction.

Many of the scenes described in Empire of the Sun are included here in their full vividness: the beggars dying on the Shanghai sidewalks while the wealthy Europeans drive past in their gleaming Packards; the youthful Jim bicycling through the war-ravaged streets; the casual brutality of Japanese soldiers beating Chinese peasants; the Lunghua prisoners consuming weevils to keep up their protein intake; American fighter planes swooping over the camp amidst exploding flak from anti-aircraft guns mounted on a pagoda, and so on. Other deeply affecting scenes—such as Jim watching teenage kamikaze pilots preparing for departure, or witnessing from afar the flash of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki—are absent from Miracles, but one understands (and is grateful for) the aesthetic license that led Ballard to include them in the novel. Still, it is amazing how much of that extraordinary work was rooted in real events, as Miracles of Life makes plain; it is evidence of just how formative these early experiences were on the author that almost half this autobiography is devoted to his first fifteen years of life. [Read more]

Rob Latham, 'A Malaise Deeper Than Shopping'

lareviewofbooks.org, 6 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: J. G. Ballard
• J. G. Ballard, Complete Short Stories
• J. G. Ballard: The Inner Man
• J. G. Ballard, Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton

Anthony Burgess: Unpublished Work Discovered

Archive contains writer's previously unseen fiction, drama and music

Anthony Burgess. Photograph: Getty Images.

Source: Stephen Bates, 'Researchers find 20 unpublished Anthony Burgess stories', guardian.co.uk, 11 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• 'A House of Life': Anthony Burgess on James Joyce

J. G. Ballard: The Inner Man

John Baxter's new book explores the life of the influential writer

John Baxter, The Inner Man: The Life of J. G. Ballard (W&N, 2011)

Ballardian has very usefully pointed me in the direction of a new book from John Baxter. Entitled The Inner Man: The Life of J. G. Ballard (W&N, 2011), the book details the way twentieth century history and culture influenced the late writer, and, in turn, how the writer's work impacted upon that culture. The following is taken from the book's product description on amazon.co.uk:

To many people, J.G. Ballard will always be the schoolboy in Steven Spielberg's movie Empire of the Sun, struggling to survive as an internee of the Japanese during World War II. Others remember him as the author of Crash, a meditation on the eroticism of the automobile and the liebstod of the car crash. The book he styled 'the first pornographic novel about science' dramatised the reality behind his formula for the twenty-first century - 'Technology x sex = the future'. It too became a film, and a cause celebre for its frank depiction of a fetish which, as this book reveals, was no literary conceit but a lifelong preoccupation. Uniquely among his contemporaries, Ballard understood and exploited the language of advertising and promotion. Because of him, the term 'inner space' and phrases like 'the only alien planet is Earth' passed into the language. So did the adjective 'Ballardian' - 'resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard's novels and stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments'. In this first biography, John Baxter draws on an admiration of and acquaintance with Ballard that began when they were writers for the same 1960s science fiction magazines. With the help of the few people whom he admitted to his often hermit-like existence, it illuminates the troubled reality behind the urbane and amiable facade of a man who was proud to describe himself as 'psychpathic'.

Find out more: John Baxter, The Inner Man: The Life of J. G. Ballard, amazon.co.uk

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: J. G. Ballard
• J. G. Ballard, Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton
• J. G. Ballard Manuscripts at the British Library
• Moorcock remembers J. G. Ballard
• J. G. Ballard's Top Ten Writers

Walter Benjamin, Early Writings 1910-1917

A new collection sheds light on the thinker's early development

Walter Benjamin

In a recent review for The Tablet, Adam Kirsch takes a look at Walter Benjamin's Early Writings 1910-1917, translated by Howard Eiland. Kirsch explores how the life of this young intellectual was shaped by Jewish identity, and Jewish twentieth century history:

In April 1911, the 18-year-old Walter Benjamin took a hiking trip with a friend in the Thuringian Forest. His diary of the trip is one of the first items included in Early Writings 1910-1917, the latest volume to appear in Harvard University Press’ Benjamin edition—an exemplary scholarly project that has now been ongoing for 25 years. Nothing especially noteworthy seems to have happened on the trip, and the diary, which is just a few pages long, contains fairly cursory accounts of the natural splendors Benjamin saw (“The sunset was marvelous after the rain … the woods were irradiated with red, and individual branches and tree trunks along the path were glowing”).

The most interesting thing about the diary is its Jewish subtext. Benjamin notes that it’s Passover, and that the pension he’s staying in is owned by a Jewish man who “kept saying, ‘So, what do we make for Yontev?’ ” Benjamin parses the word in a way that suggests it is new to him: “One does not say ‘Good day’ but ‘Good Yontev.’ ”

Similarly, the proprietor subscribes to the Israelitisches Familienblatt (“Jewish Family Journal”), and Benjamin notes that the magazine contains advertisements for “dishes for the Seder.” It takes his traveling companion to explain to him what these Seder plates are: “The latter are used for the Passover feast and have different compartments for different foods. So says Steinfeld.” Later Benjamin complains, “with coffee there was matzoh, and that’s how it will be; for … we are in Pesach week.” But while the pension seems to keep kosher for Passover, there is no actual Seder, which seems to both relieve Benjamin and disappoint him: “Thank God they didn’t do Seder. It might well have been very interesting and might even have moved me, but it would have seemed to me like theater, nothing holy.”

Much can be gleaned about Benjamin’s Jewishness, and that of his whole class, from this short diary. He is evidently completely unobservant—more, ignorant of the basic details of Jewish practice—and he feels a nervous disinclination to be “claimed” in any way by Judaism; a 20th-century man, he could find “nothing holy” in organized religion. Yet at the same time, it is impossible not to notice that Benjamin is surrounded by Jewishness like a fish by water. His traveling companion is Jewish; the house he’s staying in is Jewish. As his friend Gershom Scholem, a product of a similar background, would note, it was quite normal for assimilated German Jews never to enter a Gentile home or invite a Gentile to theirs. Jewish identity was much more durable than Jewish belief. [Read more]

Adam Kirsch, 'Youth in Revolt'

The Tablet, 10 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Walter Benjamin's Library Card
• Shane Weller, Modernism and Nihilism
• The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
• Bliss of the Collector
• Peter Mendelsund's Book Designs
• On Listening
• The State of Criticism in 2011

Pauline McLynn in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days

Irish actress and author to play starring role in Sheffield production

Pauline McLynn as Winnie in Happy Days

Pauline McLynn, an actress known to many for her role in the hit Irish sitcom Father Ted, is taking on the role of Winnie in a forthcoming production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. In a recent interview with The Observer, she spoke to Kate Kellaway about her preparations for the role.

Read more: Kate Kellaway, 'Pauline McLynn: 'For Winnie the rule is: I talk therefore I am'', The Observer, 8 May 2011

The production, which celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Beckett's play, runs from 31 May at the Crucible in Sheffield.

As McLynn prepares for opening night, she discusses rehearsals on her official blog:

6 May 2011:we’ve come to the point in rehearsals where i just HAVE to know my lines in order to be able to move on. it’s PAINFUL trying to learn them though. Sam Beckett is a bit of a pervert when it comes to changing a seeming repetition just slightly enough for it to mess you up as you approach it. every so often our director, the wonderful jonathan humphreys, reads me a piece of an actor’s recollection of performing Beckett or working with him and it’s usually just how i’m feeling and i suddenly don’t feel quite so alone…though, in fairness, i WILL be alone each night trying to remember what comes next. i fear i may not have enough brain cells left to hold what i need to hold and unleash on the good people of Sheffield each night…SO, all seems to be going to ‘plan’ then for this paint in preparations… [Read more]

A more recent entry:

8 May 2011: we attempted a run through of the play HAPPY DAYS on saturday, here at the crucible in sheffield, and i was left in tatters with panic about how much work i still have to do. the only solution was to have a lovely time with Himself who is here to visit and then 14 glorious hours of blessed sleep. a much rested pauline then spent a relaxing day of nailing lines and i am READY for next week. sounds plucky, i know, but it has to be done so onwards i go. still feel like part of my brain is now on permanent vacation but, if so, the rest of it will just have to kick in… [Read more]

I'm sure I'm not the only one wishing McLynn the very best of luck on opening night, with what is undoubtedly a very challenging role.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett

Public Intellectuals in the UK

Why doesn't the United Kingdom celebrate its intelligentsia?

French philosophers Jean Paul-Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

In an article in The Observer, John Naughton explores the phenomenon of the 'public intellectual'. Noting the popularity of figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in France, Naughton wonders why a similar respect and admiration is not afforded to similar figures in the United Kingdom.

Source: John Naughton, 'Why don't we love our intellectuals?', The Observer, 8 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Sartre: 'Adventures are in books'
• Jacques Derrida on Jean-Paul Sartre

Woody Allen: Films Outside New York

Online gallery of Allen films made beyond Allen's beloved Manhattan

Still from Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979)

The New York Times posts an online photo gallery of films Woody Allen has made outside Manhattan. Inspired by his latest film, Midnight in Paris (2011), the slideshow includes stills from the recent You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (set in London, 2010), and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Spain, 2008).

View the gallery: 'Allen Abroad', New York Times, 8 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Woody Allen's Favourite Books
• Celebrity Bookshelves

Woody Allen's Favourite Books

American film director traces his top literary influences

Woody Allen

Woody Allen speaks to The Browser about his literary influences and inspirations:

• J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
• Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues
• S. J. Perelman, The World of S. J. Perelman
• Machado de Assis, Epitaph of a Small Winner
• Richard Schickel, Elia Kazan: A Biography

Allen on literature and love:

When it comes to romance, when it comes to love, everyone is in the same boat. The issues that Euripides and Sophocles and Shakespeare and Chekhov and Strindberg struggled with are the same unsolvable problems that each generation deals with and finds its own way of complaining about. I describe them in a certain way and entertained with them in my movies. Other people did it, in their day, using their own icons and idioms.

I may have different cosmetics, but in the end we’re all writing about the same thing. This is the reason why I’ve never done political films. Because the enduring problems of life are not political; they’re existential, they’re psychological, and there are no answers to them – certainly no satisfying answers. [Read more]

Read more: Eve Gerber, 'Woody Allen on Inspiration' in The Browser, 5 May 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Celebrity Bookshelves

Literary London 2011

Representations of London in Literature: An Interdisciplinary Conference

The following Call for Papers has been taken from literarylondon.org:

Literary London 2011
Representations of London in Literature: An Interdisciplinary Conference
Hosted by the Institute of English Studies, University of London
20-22 July 2011

Organised by the University of Northampton, Kingston University, London, and the Institute of English Studies, University of London

About the Conference

Plenary Speakers Include:
Markman Ellis (Queen Mary, University of London)
Greg Garrard (Bath Spa University)

The 10th Annual Literary London conference will be hosted by the Institute of English Studies, University of London. The Institute is located in Bloomsbury, at the centre of literary London, and just a few minutes walk from such attractions as the British Library, the British Museum, and the clubs, pubs, and restaurants of Soho. It is at the heart of London: one of the world's major cities with a long and rich literary tradition reflecting both its diversity and its significance as a cultural and commercial centre. Literary London 2011 aims to:

• Read literary and dramatic texts in their historical and social context and in relation to theoretical approaches to the study of the metropolis.
• Investigate the changing cultural and historical geography of London.
• Consider the social, political, and spiritual fears, hopes, and perceptions that have inspired representations of London.
• Trace different traditions of representing London and examine how the pluralism of London society is reflected in London literature.

Celebrate the contribution London and Londoners have made to English literature and drama.
This year, almost 100 papers are scheduled which between them consider virtually all periods and genres of literature about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its environs, from the city’s roots in pre-Roman times to its imagined futures. In addition to this wide range of topics, many papers address this year’s conference theme of ‘Green London’. Topics that are being considered include:

• Representations of London’s parks, commons, and other green spaces
• Ecocritical approaches to London literature
• The relationship between the city and the country
• London’s leafy suburbs
• ‘The smoke’: polluted London
• The Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum, and other environmental organisations
• ‘Natural London’: the city as a habitat for wildlife
• Imagined environmental catastrophes in fiction

Call for Papers

The deadline for proposals passed on 31 March 2011. We received many excellent proposals, and if you submitted a proposal you should hear from us with a decision by the end of April.

Although we are quite full this year, we may be able to consider a late proposal, particularly if people drop out, as sometimes happens. Please send abstracts of about 250 words for 20-minute papers to: contact@literarylondon.org. We cannot guarantee that we can accept late submissions, but we will do our best.

Registration

Registration is now open. Registration is handled by the Institute of English Studies. The cost is £75 for Standard Registration and £55 for Speakers, IES Members, and Concessions (students/unwaged/retired). To register, please go to:

http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2011/literarylondon2011/index.htm

Accommodation

Participants must make their own arrangements for accommodation. London is a large city with many accommodation options. The area around the Institute of English Studies (Bloomsbury) is particularly well-known for its wide range of hotels. For more information on accommodation, please visit the Institute's accommodation page.

Click here to open the IES accommodation page

Literary London Organizing Committee

Dr Lawrence Phillips (University of Northampton) and Dr Brycchan Carey (Kingston University, London). Please direct any queries related to this conference to to: contact@literarylondon.org.

The Annual Literary London Conference is mutually supportive of the e-journal of the same name.

Website

http://www.literarylondon.org/

Simon Schubert's Paper Art

Remarkable paper-folding artist cites Samuel Beckett as an influence

Image: Simon Schubert

Flavorwire is promoting a fascinating collection of interior sketches, which use neither pen nor pencil, chalk or paint:

Made solely by folding and creasing white paper, his renderings of buildings (mostly interiors) have a ghostly feel, their spare medium complemented by the absence of any living thing. According to his British gallery, Saatchi, Schubert is fascinated with “the concept of ‘disappearing’ — as a moral and psychological erasure” and sees the surrealists and Samuel Beckett as touchstones. We would add that his work reminds us of two more masters of disorientation, M.C. Escher and David Lynch (those zig-zag floors!).

The influence of Samuel Beckett is perhaps more apparent in another of Simon Schubert's works (thanks to Volker Frick for this second image):

Portrait of Samuel Beckett, by Simon Schubert

Source: Judy Berman, 'Gallery: Simon Schubert’s Ghostly, Creased-Paper Interiors', Flavowire, 3 May 2011

Shakespeare, Justice and Modern Law

A new book explores Shakespeare's influence on contemporary law

Al Pacino as Shylock in a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Eric A. Posner reviews Kenji Yoshino's A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare’s Plays Tell Us About Justice (via Litblog):

The law plays an unacknowledged role in much of Shakespeare’s work. Trials—real trials, quasi-trials, mock trials—recur. In many plays, characters refer to contemporary laws and legal institutions; and the plays raise larger questions about justice and the workings of the law. Lawyers, then, can help to illuminate Shakespeare’s plays, and many have done so by explaining the early modern legal background and Shakespeare’s exploitation of persistent legal puzzles for dramatic purposes.

Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at NYU, argues that Shakespeare’s plays contribute to modern debates about law and justice, and he draws crisp lessons from twelve of those plays. He argues that Titus Andronicus teaches us that in a world devoid of the rule of law, individuals protect their interests by taking revenge against those who violate them—and that revenge begets revenge in a cycle of retribution that spins out of control and throws society into chaos. Portia’s character in The Merchant of Venice illustrates the hazards of legal rhetoric: lawyers can manipulate law for private ends, subverting justice and social order. Measure for Measure proves that legal decisionmakers should avoid the two extremes of rigid legalism and excessive mercy, and strive to take a path down the middle. Othello illustrates the hazards of legal fact-finding; the four Henry plays the fallibility and the trickery of sovereigns; and Macbeth the fallacy of natural justice—the view that justice will prevail even without human intervention. Hamlet warns that intellectuals make bad rulers because their idealism interferes with the pragmatics of governance. King Lear teaches us of “the unavoidable injustice of death.” The Tempest argues that great leaders voluntarily relinquish power. [Read more]

Eric A. Posner, 'The Court of Literature'

The New Republic, 14 April 2011

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Humanity and King Lear
• Shakespeare's Hamlet: Polonious on Conduct

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Polymath

The Guardian reports the many talents of the leading twentieth century philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Mark Brown, 'Ludwig Wittgenstein: a philosopher of many talents', guardian.co.uk, 26 April 2011

Working with Samuel Beckett

Billie Whitelaw, Jean Martin and others share their memories of the renowned modern playwright

I'll never cease to be amazed by the wealth of material freely available on Youtube. Yesterday afternoon I chanced upon the above clip, a nine-minute excerpt from a documentary where a number of Samuel Beckett's friends and colleagues are interviewed.

Samuel Beckett with the original cast of En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot)

The first, lengthy part of the clip begins with Jean Martin, who played Lucky in the original French production of Waiting for Godot. Martin, who is no longer with us, shares his astonishment and enthusiasm for the role, while giving insight into some elements of his performance.

Production designer Jocelyn Herbert is next, discussing nights out with Beckett, friends and colleagues. A number of their favourite haunts are mentioned, accompanied by images of the locations filmed at the time the documentary was made: the Rosebud bar, Iles Marquises, Les Closerie des Lilas, and the Falstaff. Herbert recalls being joined by Eugene Ionesco on one such night, when the group planned to see a play together; Beckett, who did not go to the theatre very often, instead 'went out for a walk and then came back'.

Samuel Beckett rehearses Willie in a London production of Happy Days
Photograph: Jack Raby

Billie Whitelaw shares her experiences working with Beckett as a director, on plays such as Not I and Happy Days in London. On Not I, she recalls meeting in the rehearsal space each morning and launching 'straight in without a word'. She recalls it was like 'working with not only a writer and a director, but working with a painter, and a sculptor, and a musician, and a conductor'. Whitelaw gives an impression of Beckett as a meticulous and conscientious figure.

Samuel Beckett plays out Willie's ascent of the mound in Happy Days
Photograph: Jack Raby

One of the most notable moments of the clip comes from an interview with Jack Raby, one of the crew responsible for stage lighting on Happy Days. Raby cites, with amusement, an anecdote where, during a quiet lunchbreak, Beckett began rehearsing Willie's movements on the mount for his own clarification. Raby was quick with his camera, and his covert photography is included with the interview.

Samuel Beckett plays out Willie's ascent of the mound in Happy Days
Photograph: Jack Raby

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Waiting for Beckett Documentary
• Jean Martin 1922-2009
• Billie Whitelaw on Beckett and Play

Dante on Pleasure and Pain

An excerpt from Purgatorio

Dante Alighieri

As Dante and Virgil begin their ascent of the mountain, a spirit keeps them listening for three hours - although it appears only moments have passed:

When one of our faculties is given over
to pleasure or to pain,
our soul will focus on that alone

and seem to pay no mind to any of its other powers—
revealing the errors in the doctrine that maintains
among other souls within us one is more aflame.

And therefore when we see or hear a thing
that concentrates the soul,
time passes and we're not aware of it,

for the faculty that hears the passing time
is not the one that holds the soul intent:
the one that hears is bound, the other free.

This I truly understood,
listening to that spirit in amazement,
for the sun had already climbed fifty degrees

Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, IV, 1-15

The Divine Comedy

Translated by Jean Hollander & Robert Hollander

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova
• Dante, Beckett and The Divine Comedy
• Greek Philosophers in Dante's Inferno
• Primo Levi on Dante and Arachnophobia