On Philosophical Novels

From Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to Sartre and Bernhard

Leo Tolstoy reading, pencil portrait by Ilya Repin (1891)

Jennie Erdal writes a survey of the philosophical novel in the Financial Times, and Geoff Dyer lists five examples of memorable philosophical fiction:

At St Andrews University in the early 1970s, philosophy was still a required subject for entry into an honours course. To leave the way clear for reading modern languages, I decided that the requirement would best be dispatched in my first year. Before I knew it, I was hooked and ended up dropping one of the languages in favour of a joint degree in moral philosophy and Russian. For me it seemed the dream ticket. Russian literature was awash with existential difficulties and moral disorder, from the problem of free will in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880) to the meaning of life itself in Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) – not to mention all the ungovernable passions, suicide, murder and suffering humanity encountered along the way. Philosophy on the other hand, with its categorical imperatives and systematic approach to concepts of right and wrong, would provide a disciplined moral analysis. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Can Literature be Philosophical?
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Poor Folk
• Daily Routines of Writers and Philosophers
• Tolstoy: The Greatest Writer of all Time?
• 'Accursed Questions': Translating Russian Literature
• Byatt on Dostoyevsky and Execution
• Dostoyevsky on Politics and Personal Vanity
• Dostoyevsky: A Writer In His Time

That Other Word: Episode 2

A free online podcast discussing literature and translation

An announcement from That Other Word:

That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).

Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.

In this episode, Scott Esposito eagerly anticipates the Dirty War in Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets, and Daniel Medin shares a delightful description of a freeloader from Nescio’s Amsterdam Stories. They discuss Daniel Sada’s Almost Never and the general robustness of contemporary Mexican fiction, attempt to explain why reading Can Xue’s Vertical Motion is like running downhill in the dark, then hesitate over whether to call Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels a memoir or a work of criticism, but agree that it is about Oulipo and very candid.

Daniel Medin then speaks to Petra Hardt, head of the rights department at Suhrkamp Verlag and author of Rights: Buying. Protecting. Selling. Suhrkamp is one of the most prestigious presses in Germany and in Europe, and since its founding in 1950 has published not only many of the greatest German-language writers of the twentieth century — among them Paul Celan, Theodor W. Adorno, and Thomas Bernhard — but foreign authors as well, including Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, and Julio Cortázar. In a series of wonderfully engaging anecdotes, Petra describes her work in rights and foreign rights, how that work is changing in the digital age, and why her book is intended for new presses in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

That Other Word is available on iTunes (along with the Center for the Art of Translation’s other audio programs) here. Episode 1 has gone over very well and we’re hoping to reach even more listeners this time. We’ll be promoting the podcast throughout this next week via Facebook and Twitter, and we hope you’ll help us spread the word. (And in return, just give us a shout if you’d like us to help spread the word about other related projects!)

In the meantime, happy listening, and stay tuned for episode 3, airing next month and featuring an interview with Benjamin Moser, translator and author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector.

Podcast

Listen to Episode 2 on That Other Word website.

Links

The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and Translators
Center for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
• Praise for The Cahiers Series
• László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
• Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
• George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters

Black Clock 15: Public Reading

Black Clock 15 celebrates at the Mandrake Bar in Los Angeles

To celebrate the fifteenth issue of Black Clock, a journal published by the California Institute of the Arts’ (CalArts) MFA Writing Program, a public reading has been organised at the Mandrake Bar in Los Angeles. Contributors who will be reading include: Anthony Miller, Mark Z. Danielewski, Jonathan Lethem, Claire Phillips, Geoff Nicholson and Matthew Specktor and acclaimed novelist - and Black Clock Editor - Steve Erickson. The event will be held on 29 April from 2pm. [Read More]

About Black Clock

Edited by Steve Erickson, Black Clock has become one of America’s leading literary journals since its inception in 2004. Singular, idiosyncratic and a little mysterious, it has featured such established authors as Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, Miranda July, Joanna Scott, Samuel R. Delany, Aimee Bender, Susan Straight, William T. Vollmann and David Foster Wallace along with a growing roster of striking literary debuts. Work appearing in Black Clock has been anthologized in best-of-the-year collections and nominated for O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, and two excerpted novels have gone on to win the National Book Award. [Read More]

David Foster Wallace Symposium

Held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin

From the Harry Ransom Center (with thanks to Danish Arshad): 'On April 5, 2012, the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin launched The David Foster Wallace Symposium with the event "Everything and More: A Conversation About David Foster Wallace." Literary agent Bonnie Nadell and Little, Brown editor Michael Pietsch spoke with Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin about their work with David Foster Wallace.' [Source]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• David Foster Wallace, Oblivion
• Postcard: David Foster Wallace to Don DeLillo
• David Foster Wallace's Annotated Books
• Can Literature be Philosophical?
• David Foster Wallace: Fate, Time, and Language

Reading Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard,
Gathering Evidence including My Prizes

What is the secret behind Bernhard's new popularity?

With the new Vintage reissue of Thomas Bernhard's autobiographical pieces, Gathering Evidence and My Prizes, Sam Allingham explores why the writer has garnered new public attention: 'How did such an unpleasant author fashion such a stunning coup? Is it because he isn’t as unpleasant as everyone says he is? What if all this talk about the Bernhard’s “blood-sport” amounts to a colossal mis-reading of the entire canon, a mis-reading which says more about the readership than it does about Bernhard?' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Thomas Bernhard
• Who is Thomas Bernhard?
• George Steiner on Thomas Bernhard

John Banville on Samuel Beckett's Letters

A look at Beckett's artistic development in post-war Europe

Samuel Beckett and Alberto Giacometti in Giacometti’s studio, Paris, 1961. Photo: Georges Pierre/Sygma/Corbis

John Banville reviews the second volume of Samuel Beckett's correspondence for The New York Review of Books: 'The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume II: 1941–1956 is, like its predecessor, a model of editorial diligence and inspiration. The scholarly apparatus is impeccable. The range of citations of sources boggles the mind—is there anything these Four Masters have not followed up and tracked to its lair? And what a marvel the translator, George Craig, has wrought. Even a glance at a page of one of the letters to Duthuit brings on dizziness—Beckett’s handwriting more and more aspired to the condition of the straight line—but Craig makes his way every time from end to end of the high wire with deceptive ease and aplomb.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
• George Craig on Samuel Beckett's Letters
• John Banville on the Franz Kafka Prize

Thomas Bernhard, My Prizes (Notting Hill Editions)

Frances Hill talks about a new edition of Bernhard's autobiographical work

Notting Hill Editions publishes an English translation of Thomas Bernhard's My Prizes (via Stephen Mitchelmore).

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Thomas Bernhard

Will Self on the influence of J. G. Ballard

Self relates the importance of Ballard's writing to his own work and the wider culture

From Will-Self.com: 'Will Self describes the importance of J.G. Ballard’s writing in this 7 minute video from The Literature Society’s ‘Alternative Good Friday Sermon Event’.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: J. G. Ballard
• Writers: Will Self
• John Gray and Will Self on J. G. Ballard
• Will Self, 'My hero: J. G. Ballard'
• Will Self pays tribute to J. G. Ballard

Judith Butler: How to Read Kafka

The European Graduate School broadcasts online seminars with Judith Butler

Description from The European Graduate School: 'Judith Butler, philosopher and author, talking about how to read Kafka. In this lecture, Judith Butler discusses the relationship between philosophy and literature, how to read parables, the limits of knowledge, theology and the adequacy of the propositional form in relationship to Franz Kafka, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Michel Foucault focusing on reason in history, the messiah, time, space, argumentative structure, playfulness, mediation and the figure of Christ.' [Source]

Description from The European Graduate School: 'Judith Butler, philosopher and author, talking about Kafka's parables and paradoxes. In this lecture, Judith Butler discusses the didactic function of the parable, the structure of command and the communicability and legitimacy of laws in relationship to Franz Kafka, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Immanuel Kant, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Michel Foucault focusing on das Ziel, progressive history, teleology, the messianic, indeterminacy, the politics of arrival and departure, temporal progressions and spatial relations.' [Source]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Franz Kafka
• Judith Butler on Franz Kafka
• How to Read Kafka
• Introducing... Franz Kafka
• 'At last I understand Kafka'

Alfred Hitchcock on Happiness

Excerpt from a television interview with the British filmmaker

Alfred Hitchcock gives his definition of happiness in a television interview (link via 3:AM Magazine and Dangerous Minds).

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Costume and Identity in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo
• Saul Bass and Alfred Hitchcock
• Alfred Hitchcock on Mystery and Suspense
• Truffaut and Hitchcock Audio Interviews
• Alfred Hitchcock on the Dick Cavett Show
• Alfred Hitchcock and his Signature Style
• The Ultimate Hitchcock Cookbook

The Mythology of László Krasznahorkai

David Auerbach reviews two novels by the post-war Hungarian writer

László Krasznahorkai

In a review for The Quarterly Conversation, David Auerbach takes a look at László Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance, and War and War, both translated by George Szirtes:

In the post-war years, many European authors, especially those from Communist states, engaged in surrealism, parable, and allegory as a way of containing the mid-century chaos that spilled over from the war, where the psychology and rationality of modernism no longer seemed capable of fighting the irrationality of Nazism and Communism. While there have been some stunning works by Ludvik Vaculik (The Guinea Pigs), Bohumil Hrabal (I Served the King of England, Too Loud a Solitude), Imre Kertész (Detective Story, Liquidation), and others, this general approach has more frequently produced limp sentimentality and disposable weirdness (Milan Kundera and Victor Pelevin, spring to mind). Within their own works, Günter Grass and Ismail Kadare have met with both success and disaster plowing this field.

It is Krasznahorkai who has, to my knowledge, engaged in the deepest investigation of how these metaphorical understandings are formed, how they succeed, and, most importantly, how they fail. Like Kertész at his best, he questions the process of making meaning. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
• László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside

Werner Herzog on Death, Danger and the Abyss

Steve Rose talks to Werner Herzog about a new documentary on capital punishment

Werner Herzog on the cover of The Guardian's weekend supplement, The Guide, 14 April 2012

In a fascinating interview for The Guardian, Steve Rose talks to filmmaker Werner Herzog about his new documentary, Into The Abyss: A Tale Of Death, A Tale Of Life. Herzog describes his approach to documentary filmmaking, his position on capital punishment, and the myths that have come to surround his name (link via Susan Tomaselli):

Some years ago, Werner Herzog was on an internal flight somewhere in Colorado and the plane's landing gear wouldn't come down. They would have to make an emergency landing. The runway was covered in foam and flanked by scores of fire engines. "We were ordered to crouch down with our faces on our knees and hold our legs," says Herzog, "and I refused to do it." The stewardess was very upset, the co-pilot came out from the cabin and ordered him to do as he was told. "I said, 'If we perish I want to see what's coming at me, and if we survive, I want to see it as well. I'm not posing a danger to anyone by not being in this shitty, undignified position.'" In the end, the plane landed normally. Herzog was banned from the airline for life but, he laughs, it went bust two years later anyway.Herzog tells this story to illustrate how he'll face anything that's thrown at him, as if that was ever in any doubt. Now approaching his 70th birthday, the German film-maker has assumed legendary status for facing things others wouldn't. He's lived a life packed with intrepid movie shoots, far-flung locations and general high-stakes film-making. He has a biography too dense to summarise. But his tale also confirms the suspicion that he's helplessly drawn to danger and death. Or vice versa. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Werner Herzog Interview: Into the Abyss
• Conquest of the Useless: Werner Herzog on Fitzcarraldo
• Werner Herzog, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams
• Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man
• Werner Herzog speaks to Time Magazine
• Will Self on Werner Herzog

John Larroquette on Samuel Beckett

Larroquette on alcoholism and Krapp's Last Tape

In an interview with Joanne Kaufman for The Wall Street Journal, American actor John Larroquette describes his first encounter with Samuel Beckett's work, and how it helped him to cope with alcoholism:

He's been sober for 30 years now. But really, he's just traded one addiction—booze—for another: books. Soon after his last bender, Mr. Larroquette, an avid reader, wandered into a Venice, Calif., store that held bric-a-brac and a shelf with titles by Samuel Beckett, his guiding light.

"I didn't have enough money to buy the signed first edition of 'Krapp's Last Tape.' So I bought the unsigned first edition. And the feeling it gave me was just euphoric—and much like getting high, frankly," recalled Mr. Larroquette as he sat one morning last week at Argosy Bookstore, where he recently bought a first edition of Joan Didion essays for his wife and mulled over an opening-night gift for Mr. Jones. [Read More]

In a 2011 interview with Richard Ouzounian for The Star, Larroquette included Beckett at the top of his list of favourite writers: 'It's his novels that get to me: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. I must have read them 15-20 times.' [Read more]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett

James Joyce Manuscripts Online

The National Library of Ireland to make Joyce manuscripts available on the internet

Terence Killeen of The Irish Times reports on The National Library of Ireland's decision to publish a number of Joyce manuscripts online:

The National Library of Ireland has brought forward plans to publish a major collection of James Joyce manuscripts free on the web after a Joycean scholar published the material in editions priced at up to €250.

It is the first such Joyce collection to be opened to the public in this way.

The library’s move comes in response to the publication by scholar Danis Rose of all the manuscripts, in editions priced between €75 and €250. Mr Rose has also claimed he is now the copyright holder in the EU of these manuscripts. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• James Joyce's Family Passport
• Gordon Bowker's Biography of James Joyce
• James Joyce Children's Story Published

David Foster Wallace, Oblivion

A review from The Quarterly Conversation

David Foster Wallace, Oblivion

Lance Olsen has written an idiosyncratic review of David Foster Wallace's Oblivion over at The Quarterly Conversation.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Postcard: David Foster Wallace to Don DeLillo
• David Foster Wallace's Annotated Books
• Can Literature be Philosophical?
• David Foster Wallace: Fate, Time, and Language
• David Foster Wallace on Literature
• Interview with David Foster Wallace

Beckett and Brain Science: Free Reading Symposium

University of Reading, 27 April 2012

Design: Rhys Tranter

Beckett and Brain Science
AHRC-funded Symposium
University of Reading
27 April 2012

About the Seminar

The symposium will be held in the conference room of the University of Reading Special Collections. The building housing Special Collections and the Museum of English Rural Life is located in Redlands Road.

Timetable

Date & Time: Friday, 27 April 2012, 10.00 to 17.50

10.00 - 10.30	Coffee and Registration
10.30 - 11.30	'... but the brain...': Professor James Knowlson (University of Reading) and Dr Ulrika Maude (University of Reading) in Conversation
11.30 - 12.30	Dr Peter Fifield (St John's College, University of Oxford): 'Seeing Things: The Brain and the Archive'
12.30 - 13.15	Lunch
13.15 - 14.15	Professor Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp): 'Beckett's Manuscripts and the Extended Mind: A Post-Cartesian what is the word'
14.15 - 15.15	Professor Mary Bryden (University of Reading): '"From Chaos to the Brain": Beckett and Deleuze'
15.15 - 15.45	Coffee
15.45 - 16.15	Jonathan Heron (University of Warwick, and Artistic Director, Fail Better Productions): '"Theatre Machines" and "Beckett's DNA"'
16.15 - 17.15	Professor Ronald Schleifer (University of Oklahoma): 'Modernism as Gesture: Popular Music and Performances of Literature'
17.15 - 17.30	Closing Words

Registration

There is no registration fee for ‘Beckett and Brain Science,’ but please send an email with the following registration details to Ulrika Maude at u.maude@reading.ac.uk:

Name:
Affiliation:
Address:
E-mail:

Accommodation

There are a limited number of rooms available in Black Horse House on the University campus. For bookings, please contact Miranda Hogg at blackhorsehouse@reading.ac.uk, tel. 0118 378 8906, quoting ‘Beckett and Brain Science’. The booking code is: 39450.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Samuel Beckett Research Day Seminar 2012
• Samuel Beckett Research Day Seminar 2010
• Samuel Beckett Research Day Seminar 2011
• Beckett and the 'State' of Ireland Conference (2012)
• Samuel Beckett Summer School 2012

Costume and Identity in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo

How clothing constructs and confuses identities in Hitchcock's masterpiece

Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)

Clothes on Film praises the costume design of Alfred Hitchcock's distinctive San Francisco thriller, Vertigo: 'In 1958 Paramount released Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s disturbing tale of death and obsession, love and loneliness. Receiving only average reviews on its release, Vertigo is now hailed as a cinematic masterpiece. Hitchcock’s direction, Bernard Hermann’s score and Robert Burks’ cinematography are particularly praised. Less often celebrated, argues art critic Iris Veysey, is Edith Head’s costume design.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Saul Bass and Alfred Hitchcock
• Alfred Hitchcock on Mystery and Suspense
• Truffaut and Hitchcock Audio Interviews
• Alfred Hitchcock on the Dick Cavett Show
• Alfred Hitchcock and his Signature Style
• The Ultimate Hitchcock Cookbook

J. M. Coetzee on Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther

Coetzee reviews a new translation of the classic German novel

Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther

In The New York Review of Books, J. M. Coetzee surveys the original cultural reception of Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther, and evaluates the methods of Stanley Corngold's new translation: 'The Sorrows/Suffering of Young Werther has not lacked for translators. Among first-rate modern versions are those by Burton Pike, Michael Hulse, and Victor Lange. Corngold’s new translation is of the very highest quality, punctiliously faithful to Goethe’s German and sensitive to gradations of style in this extraordinary, trail-blazing first novel.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Goethe voted greatest German in poll
• Goethe on philosophies of life
• J. M. Coetzee archive acquired by Texas
• David Atwell interviews J. M. Coetzee
• Video Interview with J. M. Coetzee

Postcard: David Foster Wallace to Don DeLillo

David Foster Wallace shares news of his progress, and excitement about DeLillo's Valparaiso

Postcard from David Foster Wallace to Don DeLillo

Electric Literature has uploaded a postcard sent by David Foster Wallace to fellow writer Don DeLillo. Anna Knoebel offers the following transcript:

9-1 (CARDS WERE GIFTS–NO OFFENSE INTENDED)

DEAR D², I AM NOW A LICENSED CA DRIVER, WHICH FROM THE SENSE I GET IS OFFICIAL STATE-CITIZENSHIP IF ANYTHING HERE IS. THERE IS A PALM TREE IN MY BACK YARD THAT’S 11 1/2 FEET AROUND. A BRICK SHITHOUSE OF A PALM TREE. ¶ THANK YOU FOR YOUR NOTE. I HAVE NOT YET READ THE GADDIS, BUT I’M IN CONTACT WITH FRANZEN, WHO’S APPARENTLY BEEN CHARGED THE TASK OF A COMPREHENSIVE GADDIS PIECE BY THE NYer, AND IS ‘STRUGGLING’ WITH IT. ¶ THIS BLOODY MENGENLEHRE BOOK (IT INTIMIDATES ME THAT YOU KNOW THIS TERM) TURNS OUT NOT TO BE DONE — BOTH THE MATH-EDITOR AND THE GENERAL EDITOR WANT REPAIRS — OFTEN THEIR DEMANDS ARE MUTUALLY CONTRADICTORY. I WILL END UP HAVING SPENT 11 MONTHS FULL-TIME ON A PROJECT I’D PLANNED TO KNOCK OFF PART-TIME IN 4. I NEVER WANT TO SEE ANOTHER FOURIER SERIES AS LONG AS I LIVE. ¶ I’D LOVE A CHANCE TO EYEBALL YR. NEW NOVEL IF YOU DON’T OBJECT. AND I HOPE VALPARAISO IS IN GOOD HANDS WITH THE TROUPE.

Y.V.T.
DAVID WALLACE :-) [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Don DeLillo
• David Foster Wallace's Annotated Books
• Can Literature be Philosophical?
• David Foster Wallace: Fate, Time, and Language
• David Foster Wallace on Literature
• Interview with David Foster Wallace

Will Self: Walking is Political

Self's inaugural lecture at Brunel University

Photo: Andrew Crowley

The Guardian has published an edited version of Will Self's inaugural lecture as professor of contemporary thought at Brunel University [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Will Self
• My Other Life: Will Self
• Will Self, Walking to Hollywood
• Sweet Smell of Psychosis: Will Self, Walking to Hollywood
• The Independent's Paperback of the Year: Will Self, Walking to Hollywood
• Will Self: Walking out of London

Samuel Beckett Research Day Seminar 2012

University of Reading, 28 April 2012

About the Seminar

The Beckett International Foundation is pleased to announce that the next Beckett Research Seminar will take place on Saturday, 28 April 2012.

The event will be held in the Conference Room of Special Collections at the University of Reading.

As in previous years, our speakers represent a mixture of both local and international research students as well as established scholars, reflecting the current research into Beckett's writing. It is our hope that the quality of the papers will, as in the past, attract a wide and varied audience.

The charge for the day is £20 per participant (£15 unwaged), which includes lunch and refreshments throughout the day. Directions are attached. Please note that parking facilities are available at the venue.

Timetable

Date & Time: Saturday, 28 April 2012, 09.30 to 16.00
Venue: Conference Room, Special Collections, The University of Reading

09.30 - 10.00	Coffee
10.00 - 10.30	Yoshiki Tajiri, University of Tokyo ‘Rethinking the “Pseudocouple” – Comedy, Mechanisation and Nihilism’
10.30 - 10.50	Discussion
10.50 - 11.20	Laura Salisbury, Birkbeck College, University of London ‘Jackson’s Parrot: Beckett and Speech Automatisms’
11.20 - 11.40	Discussion
11.40 - 12.00	Coffee
12.00 - 12.30	Conor Carville, University of Reading ‘Beckett, Absorption and the Image’
12.30 - 12.50	Discussion
12.50 - 14.10	Lunch
14.10 - 14.40	Adam Winstanley, University of York '"A filthy circumstance": the peristaltic rhythm of Molloy
14.40 - 15.00	Discussion
15.00 - 15.30	Angela Moorjani, University of Maryland 'Beckett's Racinian Fictions'
15.30 - 15.50	Discussion

Contact

For further information, please contact:
Dr Mark Nixon
Email: m.nixon@reading.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)118 378 7010

By Post: The Beckett International Foundation
Department of English, University of Reading
Whiteknights, PO Box 218
Reading RG6 6AA

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Samuel Beckett Research Day Seminar 2010
• Samuel Beckett Research Day Seminar 2011
• Beckett and the 'State' of Ireland Conference (2012)
• Samuel Beckett Summer School 2012

That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast

A new online podcast promoting literature and translation

An announcement from That Other Word:

That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).

Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.

In this first episode, the two hosts chat about the accidental poetry and reasonable plausibility of César Aira’s Varamo, the miraculous strangeness of László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango, and the hopping city at the heart of Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories. They also mention recent and upcoming events at their respective centers, including the CWT’s publication of the latest in The Cahiers Series, A Labour of Moles by Ivan Vladislavić, and the upcoming visit of Jay Rubin and J. Philip Gabriel, translators of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, at the CAT.

Afterward, Scott Esposito is joined by Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review and former senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. They discuss editing the English version of Jean-Christophe Valtat’s 03 (translated by Mitzi Angel), procuring the rights to Roberto Bolaño’s works and editing Natasha Wimmer’s translations, failure and what separates translation from other kinds of writing, ‘living with books’, and why The Paris Review publishes what it does. The conversation concludes with Edouard Levé, touching on his aphoristic influences, his humor, his suicide, and his book Autoportrait, which Stein has recently translated from the French.

We're hoping to make That Other Word available on iTunes soon; in the meantime, we invite you to listen to the first episode on either our site or on the CAT's.

Episode 2, which will go live from 17 April, includes an interview by Daniel Medin with Petra Hardt, director of foreign rights at Suhrkamp Verlag.

Podcast

Listen to Episode 1 on That Other Word website.

Links

The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and Translators
Center for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Praise for The Cahiers Series
• László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
• Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
• George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters

Samuel Beckett Summer School 2012

15-20 July 2012

Samuel Beckett Summer School
15-20 July 2012
Hosted by the School of Drama, Film and Music and the School of English,
Trinity College Dublin

About the Event

Trinity College Dublin is honoured to present the annual Samuel Beckett Summer School, a weeklong celebration and exploration of the works of one of its most famous graduates. Each year we will invite the world’s foremost Beckett scholars to present new lectures and seminars on all aspects of Beckett’s works.We hope that the School will appeal to a wide range of Beckett enthusiasts by providing the opportunity to savour and study Beckett’s works in the context of the university where he began his intellectual life.

Each year the Summer School will offer ten lectures on a variety of topics; two of these lectures will be devoted to a specific theme, which will change from year to year. One of the four seminars will also address this theme. There will be two lectures every morning, and a choice of seminars will be available in the afternoon. In the first year we will run four seminars; enrolled students will choose which seminar they wish to attend when they register. In the evenings we will offer a range of activities, including cultural events, performances, field trips, an opening reception and a closing banquet.

The Patron of the Summer School is Edward Beckett.

Lecture Programme

Sunday
Rodney Sharkey: ‘“Local” Anaesthetic for a “Public” Birth: Beckett, Parturition and the Porter Period’

Monday
Declan Kiberd: ‘Samuel Beckett: Mystic?’
Seán Kennedy: ‘Beckett, Yeats and the Big House, 1933’

Tuesday
Andrew Gibson: ‘Samuel Beckett, How It Is and the Irish Misanthropic Tradition’
Emilie Morin: ‘Beckett and Radiophonic Sound’

Wednesday
Enoch Brater: ‘Beckett’s Dramatic Forms, Considered and Reconsidered’

Thursday
John Pilling: ‘Six Notebooks In Search of a Novel: Beckett writing Murphy’
Ulrika Maude: ‘'Convulsive Aesthetics: Beckett, Chaplin and Charcot’

Friday
Terence Brown: ‘Beckett: Memories and Sounds’
Jonathan Heron: ‘Theatre Laboratories, Performance Genetics and “Beckett’s DNA”’

The Sunday lecture starts at 6 pm (although this may change in the final schedule). The weekday lectures are from 9.30-11 and 11.30-1, except for Wednesday when there is just one lecture, which runs from 11.30-1.

Seminars for 2012:

Beckett and Irish Culture, 1929–1949 (Seán Kennedy)
Beckett’s Manuscripts (Mark Nixon & Dirk Van Hulle)
Performance Workshop (Rosemary Pountney & Jonathan Heron)
Reading Group (John Pilling)

Contact

To contact the Samuel Beckett Summer School, or for more information about the event, registration or accommodation, visit the website: Samuel Beckett Summer School.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Samuel Beckett Summer School 2011
• Beckett and the 'State' of Ireland Conference (2012)

Beckett veterans unite in US production of Waiting for Godot

L.A. Times reviews new production, starring Barry McGovern and Alan Mandell

Alan Mandell (left) and Barry McGovern (right). Photograph: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

Margaret Gray reviews Michael Arabian's recent production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, starring Barry McGovern, Alan Mandell, Hugo Armstrong and James Cromwell in the Los Angeles Times:

On the awesomeness scale, the pairing of Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" is off the charts, a fantasy face-off in a league with George Washington versus Abe Lincoln or giant octopus versus giant squid — even though "Godot" is not the most action-packed of the existential classics.

Mandell and McGovern are two of the most experienced and widely admired interpreters of Beckett's work, and beginning Wednesday at the Mark Taper Forum, they will perform together for the first time.

So indelibly does Estragon and Vladimir's mysterious vigil under their lone tree sum up the human condition that "Godot" (1953) has permeated our cultural consciousness almost to the point of cliché. Without giving away any spoilers, let's just say that even people who have never seen or read it probably won't check the program to see who's playing Godot.

Yet major productions of this caliber — Michael Arabian directs; the cast also includes James Cromwell and Hugo Armstrong — are rare. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive
• Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies 2012