Table Of Content

On Beckett On Beckett Essays and Criticism Edited and with an Introduction by S. E. Gontarski Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com This edition first published in UK and USA 2012 by ANTHEM PRESS 75-76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave. #116, New York, NY 10016, USA Copyright © S. E. Gontarski 2012 The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN-13: 978 0 85728 663 5 (Pbk) ISBN-10: 0 85728 663 3 (Pbk) This title is also available as an eBook. For Jane Sitting prettily between the Vivaldi A Minor and the Bach Double CONTENTS The Essential Beckett: A Preface to the Second Edition xi S. E. Gontarski A Beckett Chronology xvii Acknowledgments xxvii Introduction Crritics and Crriticism: “Getting Known” 1 S. E. Gontarski Preliminaries Beckett and Merlin 15 Richard W. Seaver Samuel Beckett and the Visual Arts: The Embarrassment of Allegory 23 Dougald McMillan When is the End Not the End? The Idea of Fiction in Beckett 36 Wolfgang Iser The Page Murphy and the Uses of Repetition 53 Rubin Rabinovitz Watt 72 Lawrence E. Harvey Mercier and Camier: Narration, Dante, and the Couple 92 Eric P. Levy Molloy’s Silence 103 Georges Bataille Where Now? Who Now? 111 Maurice Blanchot The Voice and Its Words: How It Is 118 J. E. Dearlove viii ON BECKETT The Unnamable’s First Voice? 133 Chris Ackerley Between Verse and Prose: Beckett and the New Poetry 138 Marjorie Perloff Worstward Ho 152 Dougald McMillan The Stage MacGowran on Beckett 157 Interview by Richard Toscan Blin on Beckett 167 Interview by Tom Bishop Working with Beckett 175 Alan Schneider Notes from the Underground: Waiting for Godot and Endgame 189 Herbert Blau Beckett Directs Godot 209 Walter D. Asmus Beckett Directs: Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape 218 Ruby Cohn Literary Allusions in Happy Days 232 S. E. Gontarski Counterpoint, Absence, and the Medium in Beckett’s Not I 245 Paul Lawley Rehearsal Notes for the German Premiere of Beckett’s That Time and Footfalls 253 Walter D. Asmus Footfalls 265 James Knowlson Samuel Beckett and the Art of Radio 273 Martin Esslin Light, Sound, Movement, and Action in Beckett’s Rockaby 292 Enoch Brater CONTENTS ix Beckett’s Ohio Impromptu: A View from the Isle of Swans 299 Pierre Astier Quad and Catastrophe 307 S. E. Gontarski Coda Burroughs with Beckett in Berlin 313 Edited by Victor Bockris Notes on Contributors 318