In 1962, Samuel Beckett wrote “Play.” Originally intended to be a stage production, the piece has now been adapted as a short film starring Alan Rickman, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Juliet Stepherson. Come for the Beckett writing (full text can be found here), but stay for the disembodied heads-in-urns.
“Yes, strange, darkness best”
History as Memoir, Memoir as History
It's impossible to deny that memoir writing is having a bit of a moment, as more and more major books delve deeply into authors' lives for material (here's looking at you, Knausgaard). But what happens when memoir meets straight history? According to The Canadian Press, both genres only become more interesting. "[People] think non-fiction is just boring, fuddy-duddy history books, [but] if you look at Canadian literature right now, non-fiction is incredibly exciting."
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The Texas of Africa
“Nigeria did fracture once, however, and it is this story that Chinua Achebe, a giant of African letters, tells. His memoir of the moment describes when the country, yoked together artificially by British colonizers, split apart at a cost of more than a million lives.” The New York Times Book Review on the writer's There Was A Country.
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J. D. Salinger’s Best Unpublished Stories
Writing for Airship Daily, Freddie Moore provides an overview of ten of her favorite unpublished J. D. Salinger stories. She also shares instructions on how to find – while being careful not to link directly toward – a “207-page trove of 22 out-of-print pieces available online.” This is for the best, considering the relationship between the Catcher in the Rye author, his unpublished works, and U.S. copyright.
Spoiling Infinite Jest
There are three kinds of readers of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: those who feel some niggling guilt about that brick on their bookshelf, those who've read it (proudly) but secretly may have no idea what happened in that tangled ending, and the people responsible for this excellent infographic. (Complement with cached commentary at Infinite Summer and a guide to the geography of Wallace's Boston.)
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Why America Needs Indies
Farhad Manjoo thinks corner bookstores are simply comfy and quaint. According to a response by The Christian Science Monitor, he couldn't be more wrong.
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Hardly “has now”. This was released in 2002 as part of the Beckett on Film project.
Yep. The whole series is worth viewing, though, particularly Atom Egoyan’s take on KRAPP’S LAST TAPE.
I was going to say the same–Krapp’s Last Tape is fantastic, as is most of the Beckett on Film series.
Strange little article here but sharing this adaptation of “Play” can never be a bad thing. And, as mentioned, the DVD collection this is from is a great introduction to Beckett’s work.