All Strange Away

Last updated

All Strange Away is a short prose text by Samuel Beckett first published in English in 1964. [1] A special signed edition with illustrations by Edward Gorey was published in 1976, and in a trade edition by Grove Press (New York) of collected texts titled, Rockaby and Other Short Pieces in 1981. Beckett's British publisher, John Calder, also printed the work independently in 1979 and again, in 1990, in a collection of late prose works under the title, As the Story was Told.

Samuel Beckett Nobel-winning modernist Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, translator and poet

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator who lived in Paris for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French.

Edward Gorey American writer, artist, and illustrator

Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his illustrated books. His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in Victorian and Edwardian settings.

Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. He partnered with Richard Seaver to bring French literature to the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its publisher, Morgan Entrekin, merged with Grove Press in 1991. Grove later became an imprint of the publisher Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Contents

Plot

In a monologue with himself "in the last person", [2] the nameless unseen protagonist begins with the words, "Imagination dead imagine". He then describes an enclosed space of bare walls that are "five foot square, six high [3] and lit on and off from no visible source. Evoking a theatrical setting, he imagines light fading up on a stool surrounded by walls displaying women's faces while, in a corner, he perceives the "tattered syntaxes of Jolly and Draeger Praeger Draeger". [4] The size and description of the space with "no way in, none out" [5] is subject to change depending on the clarity of the protagonist's failing memory as he attempts to recall a love affair with Emma.

Notes

  1. ↑ Ackerley and Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett, 10
  2. ↑ Beckett, "All Strange Away", 42
  3. ↑ Beckett, "All Strange Away", 41
  4. ↑ Beckett, "All Strange Away", 42
  5. ↑ Beckett, "All Strange Away", 41

Sources

Primary

International Standard Book Number Unique numeric book identifier

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.

Secondary

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

Related Research Articles

Breath is a notably short stage work by Samuel Beckett. An altered version was first included in Kenneth Tynan's revue Oh! Calcutta!, at the Eden Theatre in New York City on June 16, 1969. The UK premiere was at the Close Theatre Club in Glasgow in October 1969; this was the first performance of the text as written. The second performance, and the English premiere, was at a benefit held at the Oxford Playhouse on March 8, 1970. “The first accurate publication appeared in Gambit 4.16 (1969): 5–9, with a manuscript facsimile.”

Act Without Words I is a short play by Samuel Beckett. It is a mime, Beckett's first. Like many of Beckett's works, the play was originally written in French, being translated into English by Beckett himself. It was written in 1956 following a request from the dancer Deryk Mendel and first performed on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. On that occasion it followed a performance of Endgame. The original music to accompany the performance was written by composer John S. Beckett, Samuel's cousin, who would later collaborate with him on the radio play Words and Music.

Ohio Impromptu is a "playlet" by Samuel Beckett.

Rough for Theatre II is a short play by Samuel Beckett. “Although this discarded piece of theatre is dated ‘circa 1960’ in End and Odds, a manuscript from two years earlier exists in Trinity College, Dublin, Library. This situates a first version, written in French [as Fragment de théâtre II] and different from that eventually published in 1976 as between the English plays Krapp's Last Tape and Embers.”

Catastrophe is a short play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1982 at the invitation of A.I.D.A. and “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” It is one of his few plays to deal with a political theme and, arguably, holds the title of Beckett's most optimistic work. It was dedicated to then imprisoned Czech reformer and playwright, Václav Havel.

Roger Blin was a French actor and director notable for staging world premieres of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 1953 and Endgame (play) in 1957.

Patrick Magee (actor) Northern Irish actor

Patrick George McGee, known professionally as Patrick Magee, was a Northern Irish actor and director of stage and screen. He was known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as creating the role of the Marquis de Sade in the original stage and screen productions of Marat/Sade. He also appeared in numerous horror films and in two Stanley Kubrick films, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.

The Lost Ones is the English translation of Le Dépeupleur, a short story abandoned by Samuel Beckett in 1966 and completed in 1970. The Lost Ones was published in French in 1970 and translated by the author in 1971.

Rough for Theatre I is a one-act theatrical sketch by Samuel Beckett. Also known simply as Theatre I it began life originally in French in the late fifties as Fragment de théâtre and was later translated into English by Beckett himself. The first production was at the Schiller Theatre, Hamburg in 1979, directed by Walter Asmus. It was staged as Fragment for Theater I at the Magic Theater, San Francisco in September 1986 by Stan Gontarski with Robert Wagner (A) and Tom Luce (B).

For the song "That Time" by Regina Spektor see Begin to Hope

<i>Eh Joe</i> play by Samuel Beckett

Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author's fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May. “It [was] followed by six undated typescripts .”

<i>Watt</i> (novel) book by Samuel Beckett

Watt was Samuel Beckett's second published novel in English, largely written on the run in the south of France during the Second World War and published by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press in 1953. A French translation followed in 1968.

<i>Mercier and Camier</i> book by Samuel Beckett

Mercier and Camier is a novel by Samuel Beckett that was written in 1946, but remained unpublished until 1970. Appearing immediately before his celebrated "trilogy" of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, Mercier et Camier was Beckett's first attempt at extended prose fiction in French. Beckett refused to publish it in its original French until 1970, and while an English translation by Beckett himself was published in 1974, the author had made substantial alterations to and deletions from the original text while "reshaping" it from French to English.

<i>From an Abandoned Work</i> 1956 play written by Samuel Beckett

From An Abandoned Work, a "meditation for radio" by Samuel Beckett, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Third Programme on Saturday, 14 December 1957 together with a selection from the novel Molloy. Donald McWhinnie, who already had a great success with All That Fall, directed the Irish actor Patrick Magee.

Stories and Texts for Nothing is a collection of stories by Samuel Beckett. It gathers three of Beckett's short stories and the thirteen short prose pieces he named "Texts for Nothing"(1950–1952). All of these works are collected in the Grove Press edition of Beckett's complete short prose.

Ghost Trio is a television play, written in English by Samuel Beckett. It was written in 1975, taped in October 1976 and the first broadcast was on BBC2 on 17 April 1977 as part of the Lively Arts programme Beckett himself entitled Shades. Donald McWhinnie directed with Ronald Pickup and Billie Whitelaw. The play's original title was to be Tryst. "On Beckett’s notebook, the word was crossed out vigorously and the new title Ghost Trio written next to it. On the title page of the BBC script the same handwritten title change can be found, indicating that it must have been corrected at the very last minute."

Stanley E. Gontarski specializes in twentieth-century Irish Studies, in British, U.S., and European Modernism, and in performance theory. He is a leading scholar of the work of Samuel Beckett, and is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University.

The Complete Short Prose 1929–1989 is a collection which includes all of Samuel Beckett's works written in prose, with the exception of his novels, novellas, and More Pricks Than Kicks which is considered "as much a novel as a collection of stories". The book was edited by S. E. Gontarski and published by Grove Press in 1995.

Imagination Dead Imagine is a short prose text by Samuel Beckett first published in French in Les Lettres nouvelles in 1965. Its first English publication was a translation in The Sunday Times in 1965 followed by a trade edition by Beckett's London-based publisher, Calder and Boyars, later that year.