Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish-born existentialist writer of novels, plays, short stories and poems. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and a key figure in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd.
Film is a 1965 short film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a 40-leaf shooting script followed thereafter. It was filmed in New York City in July 1964. Beckett and Alan Schneider originally wanted Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel and Jack MacGowran; however, they eventually did not get involved. Beckett then suggested Buster Keaton. James Karen, who was to have a small part in the film, also supported having Keaton. The filmed version differs from Beckett's original script but with his approval since he was on set all the time, this being his only visit to the United States, as stated in the script printed in Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett.
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. Beckett "wrote the short play Catastrophe about control and censorship" and dedicated it to the Czech dramatist Václav Havel, who was in prison at the time. Havel wrote a play called Mistake "as a response to the one Beckett had written in solidarity." "In February 1984, in one of the most significant milestones in the history of Index on Censorship, both plays were published for the first time." In January 2022, after almost 38 years, in 50th birthday celebration of Index, they asked "Iranian playwright Reza Shirmarz to write his own response to Beckett's Catastrophe." Shirmarz wrote his play Muzzled which was published by Index as a dramatic response to Beckett's Catastrophe. Giving his viewpoints on Beckett's play in an interview with Index, Shirmarz said that "Catastrophe is about censored communication, the ritualistic representation and the symbolic image of human relationship constrained by external forces, a deterministic, political and post-dramatic text which demonstrates how humans are coerced to be and live in a torturous limbo. [In Catastrophe], Beckett's Protagonist is deprived of free will by the systems surrounding him and the systematic control imposed by others, except at the moment he moves his head up and looks at the spectators. Despite his psychosomatic pain, he talks through his silence and protests through his immobility. As so-called social factors and audiences, we are reminded by the playwright that we are not able to get out of the cage the sociopolitical conventions have imprisoned us in and we must abide by the unbreachable laws brought in by the global structures and conglomerates in order to survive."
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane. It published a mix of erotic fiction and avant-garde literary fiction, and is best known for issuing the first printed edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Act Without Words II is a short mime play by Samuel Beckett, his second. Like many of Beckett's works, the piece was originally composed in French, then translated into English by Beckett himself. Written in the late 1950s it opened at the Clarendon Press Institute in Oxford and was directed by John McGrath. London premiere was directed by Michael Horovitz and performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, on 25 January 1960. The first printing was in New Departures 1, Summer 1959.
Sordello da Goito or Sordel de Goit was a 13th-century Italian troubadour. His life and work have inspired several authors including Dante Alighieri, Robert Browning, and Samuel Beckett.
Molloy is a novel by Samuel Beckett first written in French and published by Paris-based Les Éditions de Minuit in 1951. The English translation, published in 1955, is by Beckett and Patrick Bowles.
The Unnamable is a 1953 novel by Samuel Beckett. It was originally published in French as L'Innommable and later translated by the author into English. Grove Press published the English edition in 1958.
Money in the Bank is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 9 January 1942 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 27 May 1946 by Herbert Jenkins, London. The UK publication was delayed while Wodehouse was under suspicion of collaboration during the Second World War.
Walter Macken, was born in Galway, Ireland. He was a writer of short stories, novels and plays.
Seán Justin Barrett is a British actor.
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.
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.
Rough for Radio II is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in French in 1961 as Pochade radiophonique and published in Minuit 16, November 1975. Beckett translated the work into English shortly before its broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 13 April 1976. Martin Esslin directed Harold Pinter, Billie Whitelaw (Stenographer) and Patrick Magee (Fox). The English-language version was first published in Ends and Odds as Radio II.
Cascando is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in French in December 1961, subtitled Invention radiophonique pour musique et voix, with music by the Franco-Romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici. It was first broadcast on France Culture on 13 October 1963 with Roger Blin (L'Ouvreur) and Jean Martin. The first English production was on 6 October 1964 on BBC Radio 3 with Denys Hawthorne (Opener) and Patrick Magee (Voice).
Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century.
Richard Woodward Seaver was an American translator, editor and publisher. Seaver was instrumental in defying censorship, to bring to light works by authors such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Eugène Ionesco, E.M. Cioran, D.H. Lawrence, Jack Kerouac, Robert Coover, Harold Pinter and the Marquis de Sade.
The 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction is a list of the 100 best English-language books of the 20th century compiled by American literary critic Larry McCaffery. The list was created largely in response to the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (1999), which McCaffery considered out of touch with 20th-century fiction. McCaffery wrote that he saw his list "as a means of sharing with readers my own views about what books are going to be read 100 or 1000 years from now".
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom is a 2011 adventure novel written by Ann C. Crispin. The book details the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow as a young man after the events of Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow and before the events of Pirates of the Caribbean: Legends of the Brethren Court. This is the final novel written by Crispin, who died in September 2013.
The 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Irish author Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) "for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
