Everything Is Trash: A Samuel Beckett Discussion

How about a two for one deal? We're covering two film pieces, "Eh Joe," and "...but the clouds..." Will Beckett's style translate to the screen? And what network today would give his work a green light? Does Samuel Beckett have a place in today's media landscape?

More, More, More Resources:

The Letters of Samuel Beckett. Edited by Martha Dow Feshenfeld George Craig, Dan Gunn, Lois More Overbeck, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Beckett, Samuel, & Paul Auster. Dramatic Works. Grove Press, 2006.

Fox, Michael David. “‘There’s Our Catastrophe’: Empathy, Sacrifice, and the Stageing of Suffering in Beckett’s Theatre.” New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 4, 2001, pp. 357-72.

Contributors, Individual Chapter. Deleuze and Beckett. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Kirschner, Julianna. “Performing in Space and Place.” Liminalities, vol. 11, no. 5, 2015, pp. 1.

Tubridy, Derval. Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Full Text of Eh Joe and …but the clouds…: https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4472355/mod_resource/content/1/Beckett%20Peças%20televisivas%20Eh%20Joe%20Ghost%20Trio%20but%20the%20clouds.pdf

Everything Is Trash does their best not to get caught in a time loop as we dive into the longest short play out there. "Krapp's Last Tape" addresses a life wasted, opportunities squandered, and yet another bleak future of desolate nothingness. So where's the hope? Listen to find out!

Here's the folks we looked to for info:

Beckett, Samuel. Proust and Three Dialogues With George Duthuit. Calder, 1970.

The Letters of Samuel Beckett. Edited by Martha Dow Feshenfeld George Craig, Dan Gunn, Lois More Overbeck, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Beckett, Samuel, & Paul Auster. Dramatic Works. Grove Press, 2006.

Fox, Michael David. “‘There’s Our Catastrophe’: Empathy, Sacrifice, and the Stageing of Suffering in Beckett’s Theatre.” New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 4, 2001, pp. 357-72.

Contributors, Individual Chapter. Deleuze and Beckett. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Full Text of Krapp’s Last Tape: https://coldreads.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/krapps-last-tape.pdf

The fellas are back for more as Everything Is Trash takes on "Happy Days." Will and Cody do their best to mine some hope from this bleak hellscape of a world...and also from the text.

More resources? MORE RESOURCES?! Sure thing:

Bates, J. Beckett’s Art of Salvage: Writing and Material Imagination. 2017.

Beckett, Samuel. Proust and Three Dialogues With George Duthuit. Calder, 1970.

The Letters of Samuel Beckett. Edited by Martha Dow Feshenfeld George Craig, Dan Gunn, Lois More Overbeck, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Beckett, Samuel, & Paul Auster. Dramatic Works. Grove Press, 2006.

Nixon, Mark. Beckett’s German Diaries 1936-37. Continuum, 2011.

Performance of Happy Days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3y_5WfHkCY

The inaugural episode of "Everything Is Trash: A Beckett Discussion" finds hosts Will Bixby and Cody Tinsley at the peak of the first pandemic wave. Recorded in the fall of 2020, "Endgame" seemed oh so appropriate at the time, and even more so looking back!

More resources, you ask? Here ya go:

The Letters of Samuel Beckett. Edited by Martha Dow Feshenfeld George Craig, Dan Gunn, Lois More Overbeck, Cambridge University Press,

Beckett, Samuel, & Paul Auster. Dramatic Works. Grove Press, 2006.

Brater, Enoch. 10 Ways of Thinking About Samuel Beckett: The Falsetto of Reason. Methuen Drama, 2011.

Calder, John. The Philosophy of Samuel Beckett. Calder Publications, 2001.

Driver, Tom F. “Beckett by the Madeleine.” Columbia University Forum, vol. 4, 1961, pp. 21-25.

Gontarski, S. E. Beckett Matters: Essays on Late Modernism. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. Bloomsbury, 1997.

Full Text of Endgame: https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/3346220/mod_resource/content/1/ENDGAME%20BY%20SAMUEL%20BECKETT.pdf