Research Catalog
Samuel Beckett is closed
- Title
- Samuel Beckett is closed / Michael Coffey.
- Author
- Coffey, Michael, 1954-
- Publication
- New York : Foxrock Books, [2018]
- ©2018
Items in the Library & Off-site
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Book/Text | Use in library | JFD 18-1279 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- 206 pages; 21 cm
- Summary
- A powerful, genre-defying meditation, with Beckett at its origin, that touches on mysteries as varied as literary celebrity, baseball, and why we feel the need to be cruel to one another. Following the schema of Samuel Beckett's unpublished "Long Observation of the Ray," of which only six manuscript pages exist, poet and critic Michael Coffey interleaves multiple narratives according to an arithmetic sequence laid out by Beckett in his notes. This rhythm of themes and genres involving personal memoir, literary criticism, Beckett studies, contemporary political reportage and accounts of state-sponsored torture in appropriated texts, plus an Arabian Tale and even a baseball play-by-play produce a work at once sculptural, theatrical, mathematical and above all lyrical, a new form of narrative answering to a freshened rule set. In executing Beckett's most radical undertaking one scholar referred to "Long Observation of the Ray" as a "monument to extinction" Coffey gives readers access to an open field in which ruminations on writing mix with an engagement with Beckett scholarship as well as the unsettling chaos in today's world. Although Beckett, like any writer, had his share of abandoned works, he was in the habit of "unabandoning" on occasion. Coffey's effort here salvages a Beckett project from a half-century ago and brings it to the surface, with the contemporary markings of its hauling.
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- Call Number
- JFD 18-1279
- ISBN
- 9781944869595
- 194486959X
- LCCN
- 99975783040
- OCLC
- 1019824749
- Author
- Coffey, Michael, 1954- author.
- Title
- Samuel Beckett is closed / Michael Coffey.
- Publisher
- New York : Foxrock Books, [2018]
- Copyright Date
- ©2018
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Other Standard Identifier
- 99975783040
- Research Call Number
- JFD 18-1279