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Samuel Beckett Is Closed
A baseball game. Officially sanctioned torture. A chance encounter at a bar. A conversation between a parent and child. News reports of terrorist attacks.
These—plus a meditation on the transformative power of the undying work of Samuel Beckett—make up the interwoven strands of this short work by poet and critic Michael Coffey. Written according to a sequence laid out by Beckett in his notes to the unpublished “Long Observation of the Ray,” of which only six manuscript pages exist, this rhythm of themes and genres comprises a complex, mesmerizing work of fiction that has its roots in reality.
These—plus a meditation on the transformative power of the undying work of Samuel Beckett—make up the interwoven strands of this short work by poet and critic Michael Coffey. Written according to a sequence laid out by Beckett in his notes to the unpublished “Long Observation of the Ray,” of which only six manuscript pages exist, this rhythm of themes and genres comprises a complex, mesmerizing work of fiction that has its roots in reality.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published December 1, 2017
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About the author
Michael Coffey
51 books6 followersMichael Coffey received his B.A. in English at the University of Notre Dame and an M.A. from Leeds University in Anglo-Irish Literature. Former co-editorial director at Publishers Weekly, he has published three books of poems, a collection of short stories, a book about baseball’s perfect games, and co-edited a book about Irish immigration to America.
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January 8, 2018
Samuel Beckett came of age when artists were moving fast and breaking things. In painting, sculpture, music and literature, it was fashionable to go abstract. And Beckett, working with Joyce, leapt to the forefront in his multifaceted use of French and then English. Samuel Beckett Is Closed tries hard to do in structure what Beckett did in language. The title refers to Beckett’s later writings, all interiors, dimness and darkness, inward looking and often grim. He was full of negations, contradictions and reversals. And everything he wrote could be both interpreted and spoken in different ways, for completely different effects. He employed the vagueness of language like Shakespeare manipulated emotions. Michael Coffey emphasizes Beckett’s message that we must go on, even when we can’t.
Samuel Beckett is Closed is a braid of several streams. They are distinguished by different fonts, weights and spacing on the same page. Following them all is not difficult, just puzzling, like much of Beckett. It’s all very stagey. You can easily picture three or four actors standing on an empty stage, reciting the words of their separate universes. They eventually morph into straight criticism and appreciation by Coffey, and then suddenly become a short play, showing Beckett’s influence. This is about as far from standard criticism as you can get. I think Beckett would approve.
As Coffey says early on: “When you read the whole of Beckett, even if you think you are caught going nowhere, you are going somewhere.”
David Wineberg
Samuel Beckett is Closed is a braid of several streams. They are distinguished by different fonts, weights and spacing on the same page. Following them all is not difficult, just puzzling, like much of Beckett. It’s all very stagey. You can easily picture three or four actors standing on an empty stage, reciting the words of their separate universes. They eventually morph into straight criticism and appreciation by Coffey, and then suddenly become a short play, showing Beckett’s influence. This is about as far from standard criticism as you can get. I think Beckett would approve.
As Coffey says early on: “When you read the whole of Beckett, even if you think you are caught going nowhere, you are going somewhere.”
David Wineberg
Displaying 1 of 1 review