The Rumpus Book Club Chat with María Sonia Cristoff and Katherine Silver
Author María Sonia Cristoff and translator Katherine Silver discuss INCLUDE ME OUT.
...more
Posts Tagged: Beckett
Swinging Modern Sounds #86: Transcendentalism!
The point is not to control the medium, the point is to interact with the medium, to find out what’s natural to it and what’s native to it and work with that, respond to that.
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #79: The Rhythm Section Speaks
Maybe there is something important about rock and roll now, rock and roll the neglected past tense of a musical form, and that is that it is the music of adults.
...more
Paul Madonna Moves on to the Next Dream
We are excited to offer a preview of artwork from Paul Madonna’s new book, On to the Next Dream, alongside an interview with our current Comics Editor, Brandon Hicks, and an exclusive excerpt.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Maryse Meijer
Maryse Meijer discusses her debut collection Heartbreaker, the importance of tension in writing, revision as a shield against criticism, and life as a twin.
...moreRemembering Jenny Diski
At n+1, philosopher and writer Justin E.H. Smith remembers Jenny Diski, and shares their correspondence. For Diski, death was always the subject, the knot to admire, wryly, and attempt to untie: …the year before her diagnosis, Jenny invokes the bleak wisdom of Beckett’s line, “Birth was the death of him.” She wonders with Nabokov why […]
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #68: A Way of Life
The thing about Scott Tuma is: the immense pathos of the recordings… Almost no one, frankly, is allowed to sound this sad and continue to have a musical career.
...moreBehind the Scenes with Beckett
In a piece for the Times’s Sunday Book Review, Paul Muldoon leads a fascinating and warm-hearted expedition through the letters and poems of Samuel Beckett, new volumes of which will become available in the coming months. One could argue that Muldoon is prone to hyperbole, at times; he casually describes Krapp’s Last Tape as “the […]
...moreFail Worse
If our current understanding of Beckett’s “fail better” command implies eventual success, what of failure whose endgame is really just failure? Over at Flavorwire, Jonathon Sturgeon makes a case for the value of failure itself (future success optional): When a friend shows you her rejection letter, especially one that details precisely why her manuscript was […]
...more
A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
McBride has said that she wants this book to be read fast, letting it wash over you, but the struggle to make sense and to fill in the unsaid is hard to resist.
...moreUsing French to Find English
Sixty years ago, Samuel Beckett published Waiting for Godot, a self-translated English version of his original French play, En Attendant Godot. Elizabeth Winkler writes for The Millions about how Beckett’s bilingual writing practices influenced his work and vexed scholars.
...moreBeckett Resurrected
Even a writer as great as Samuel Beckett faced some rejection. “Echo’s Bones,” a rejected short story from Beckett’s early days, has just been released. NPR spoke with Beckett scholar Mark Nixon to find out the story behind the story.
...moreToteninsel in English
New in English, Gerhard Meier’s 1979 Isle of the Dead recalls W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn as two friends traverse their town, discussing nature and death in elegant prose.
...moreSomething That Can Never Be Said with Words
The darkness in Jon Fosse’s work is that of human consciousness confronted with mortality. Yet his characters seem to radiate with a luminous urgency.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis is the author of four short story collections, as well as The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis and the novel The End of the Story. A MacArthur Fellow, she has been a finalist for many major book awards and this September will release her translation of Madame Bovary. Much of Davis’s fiction, from […]
...more