Samuel Beckett

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

Waiting for Godot

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Great shape for an older copy. Page edges and back cover a little discolored; remainder mark on the bottom edge (pictured).

Vermont

The volume brings together six previously uncollected works by the Nobel Prize-winning writer, among them a major work of fiction, First Love, which he began in French in 1946 but didn't finish translating into English until 1972. Also included is the stage work, Not I, which premiered at Lincoln Center in New York in 1972.

The story of First Love, a man's musings about his youth occasioned by his visit to his father's grave, is designated by its title. Christopher Ricks, in New Statesman, described it as follows: "The cracked and crackling narrator of First Love who tells of how he met a woman on a bench, went back to live with her, and left her as she was giving birth to his child-has all the pertinacity of that bone-deep fatigue which gives Beckett's decrepit figures (ruined leech-gatherers) their ruthless strength, their rigor, not mortis but of moribundity."

In Not I, a Mouth resembling a throbbing wound in the dark, discharges words that, in Ruby Cohn's phrase, 'musically shape a Beckettian life. Beginning with birth-"out into this world" -a female voice tells of a sudden April onslaught of words, undergone by a woman nearing the age of seventy." At its premiere, Clive Barnes in The New York Times called it 'superb," and Martin Gottfried of Women's Wear Daily said it was "a major theatrical and literary event . . . very beautiful and deeply moving-a small and unique masterpiece."

From an Abandoned Work, written in English in 1956, tells the story of a narrator's three-day journey in his youth, turning his back on his weeping mother. Imagination Dead Imagine, written in French in 1965 and translated by the author two years later, focuses on two white bodies, each inscribed in its semi-circle, in a rotunda empty of objects. Enough, written in French a few months after Imagination Dead Imagine, and also translated into English in 1967, has a nameless narrator in a timeless presence reliving her activities "with him."

The volume concludes with Ping, one of the three French pieces written during 1965-66 and translated in 1967, and the short piece for the stage, Breath, which comes from the same period. Of Ping, Ruby Cohn has said: "In its text of 1030 words (in English), a mere 120 are permuted and combined into one of the most remarkable verbal melodies ever written."

Few writers have explored more genres than Samuel Beckett-essay, poem, story, novel, play, mime, radio play, and film.

First Love and Other Shorts

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Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is tight. Price sticker on back cover.

New York

Mississippi

Georgia

A Tragicomedy in Two Acts

Two old tramps wait on a bare stretch of road near a tree for Godot.

North Carolina

A classic of modern theatre and perennial favorite of colleges and high schools. "One of the most noble and moving plays of our generation . . . suffused with tenderness for the whole human perplexity . . . like a sharp stab of beauty and pain".--The London Times.

New Hampshire

Mercier and Camier, Beckett’s first postwar novel and his first in French, has been described as a forerunner of his most famous work, Waiting for Godot. Like the play, Mercier and Camier revolves around two wandering vagabonds. Their journey is described as relatively easy going, with no frontiers or seas to be crossed. The reader never knows where the journey starts or where it ends and the novel is less about the characters’ physical progress than their exchanges regarding the meaning of their journey, their goals, and life in general. One of Beckett’s more accessible works, Mercier and Camier is one of his early endeavors to experiment with structure and reimagine the novel as it had been known.

Mercier and Camier

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Good used condition, no rips, tears, or stains. Some weiting and underlining.

Illinois

California

Connecticut

See pictures. Book was part of a classroom library 

Delaware

Florida

A Samuel Beckett Reader

Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and acknowledged as one of the greatest writers of our time, Samuel Beckett has had a profound impact upon the literary landscape of the twentieth century. In this one-volume collection of his fiction, drama, poetry, and critical writings, we get an unsurpassed look at his work. Included, among others, are:

- The complete plays Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape, Cascando, Eh Joe, Not I, and That Time
- Selections from his novels Murphy, Watt, Mercier and Camier, Molloy, and The Unnamable
- The shorter works “Dante and the Lobster,” “The Expelled,” Imagination Dead Imagine, and Lessness
- A selection of Beckett’s poetry and critical writings

With an indispensable introduction by editor and Beckett intimate Richard Seaver, and featuring a useful select bibliography, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On is indeed an invaluable introduction to a writer who has changed the face of modern literature.

I Can't Go on, I'll Go On

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Massachusetts

From an inauspicious beginning at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone in 1953, followed by bewilderment among American and British audiences, "Waiting for Godot" has become one of the most important and enigmatic plays of the past fifty years and a cornerstone of twentieth-century drama. As Clive Barnes wrote, "Time catches up with genius. . . . "Waiting for Godot" is one of the masterpieces of the century." The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone--or something--named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett's language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existential post- World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.

A littke warped (see photo) but otherwise very good.

Maryland

Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt) and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience.

Molloy

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Some bent corners and it still has the label on it from the used book store

New Jersey

Michigan

Some underlining and marginal notes. Otherwise physically like new. 

Company, Ill Seen, Ill Said, Worstward Ho

Now compiled in one volume, these three novels, which are among the most beautiful and disquieting of Samuel Beckett's later prose works, work together with the powerful resonance of his famous Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. In Company, a voice comes to "one on his back in the dark" and speaks to him. Ill Seen Ill Said focuses attention on an old woman in a cabin who is part of the objects, landscape, rhythms, and movements of an incomprehensible universe. And in Worstward Ho, Beckett explores a tentative, uncertain existence in a world devoid of rational meaning and purpose. Here is language pared down to its most expressive, confirming Beckett's position as one of the great writers of our time.

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Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

First Love and Other Shorts

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

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Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Mercier and Camier

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

I Can't Go on, I'll Go On

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Molloy

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Molloy

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