Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Beckett Devotees Mark the Maestro's 100th


NEW YORK -- Happy 100th Birthday, Samuel Beckett!

Celebrations will take place this week for the 100th birthday of Ireland's third Nobel Laureate in Literature, Samuel Beckett (seen left).

Beckett's name is synonymous with his 1952 absurdist drama, Waiting for Godot, in which two tramps wait for the arrival of the mysterious Godot. He also wrote Endgame, Happy Days, Krapp's Last Tape, and the trilogy of novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable. A poet and short story writer as well, Beckett's career spanned nearly six decades, punctuated by the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Often called the last modernist, Beckett used his work to explore the meaning of existence, especially for the downtrodden.

Beckett worked with James Joyce, wrote in French and English, and lived in Paris as an expatriate Irishman. He won the Croix de Guerre for his work with the French Resistance during World War II. He was born in in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock on April 13, 1906, and died in France on December 22, 1989).

Festivals and readings are taking place all over the world, including Tokyo, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Krakow, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Atlanta, and Pittsburgh. Princeton University is celebrating Friday (http://www.princeton.edu/~visarts/Beckett.htm), and the Two Rivers Theatre Company in Red Bank, New Jersey, has a Beckett festival underway(http://www.trtc.org/pages/3about/press%20releases/BeckettFestPR.html)

More information can be found at http://samuel-beckett.net/
-- Patricia Jameson-Sammartano, WGT Culture Editor

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