Research Catalog

Samuel Beckett is closed

Title
Samuel Beckett is closed / Michael Coffey.
Author
Coffey, Michael, 1954-
Publication
  • New York : Foxrock Books, [2018]
  • ©2018

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
Book/TextUse in library JFD 18-1279Schwarzman 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 Following the schema of Samuel Beckett's unpublished "Long Observation of the Ray," of which only six manuscript pages exist, poet and critic Michael Coffey interleaves multiple narratives according to an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.
Subjects
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
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