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”
Tell Me Something New
Recommended Listening: Part One of Jhumpa Lahiri’s conversation with Paul Holdengraber at Lit Hub. “You know, tell me about something I don’t know. Tell me about a musician I’ve never heard of. Tell me about a poet I should be reading. Tell me something about the world, a situation that someone can explain to me in more detail.”
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The Thoreau Diet
"Thoreau did kill, cook and eat a woodchuck that was eating his beans. But he decided that was a lousy way to treat a woodchuck and he never did it again." In celebration of his bicentennial, NPR sets straight five myths about Henry David Thoreau's diet, including the pernicious canard that he stole pies from neighbor's windowsills. See also "My Summer with Henry," on reading Thoreau's Cape Cod on Cape Cod.
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“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”
"You want to know who I am? If I wanted to have anything written on my tombstone, I would have, 'Ask my children or ask my students.' I actually never thought of it quite that way. That wouldn’t be a bad epitaph." An excerpt from Studs Terkel's oral history of death, Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, is now available online.
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Digital (and Australian?) Shakespeare
Now that the Folger Shakespeare Library is working to digitize the complete works of the bard, it's worth asking the question, just what did that dude sound like?
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Casting Call
"Marta Reale, 10, her smile broad, her bangs blanched, made her way to a recreation center’s doorway through the dense crowd of other children, sunlit cigarette smoke and mothers fanning themselves on the seats of scooters. Above her, more children were hanging out the window, and above them, more were crammed onto a balcony." Jason Horowitz files from Naples, Italy for The New York Times about a casting call for HBO's upcoming adaptation of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, noting that it "has already drawn 5,000 children, the vast majority of whom have never heard of Elena Ferrante, and injected a mix of hysteria and hope into parts of Naples that are poor in resources but rich in real characters." Pair with this piece about The Neapolitan Quartet‘s scope and impact.
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He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Elected
J.K. Rowling says Donald Trump is worse than Voldemort. The Harry Potter author has come out against the presidential hopeful, tweeting that “Voldemort was nowhere near as bad.” Yes, she even said his name.
The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance
(Reluctantly) Recommended Reading: On the surprising racism of children's books.
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.