About Beckett

by Bob Borek
Samuel Beckett sympathized with lobsters. A female liaison told one of his biographers, James Knowlson, that when they would dine together at the Iles Marquis in Paris, they would always sit as far as possible from the trout and lobster tanks because of how much they upset “Sam.”
The detail appears in an [...]

The Absent Author: Sylvia Plath’s “A Birthday Present”

     One of the most ignored, but fundamental, issues when reading a text is the question of who is speaking. The problem seems simple and intuitive, but it becomes much more complicated when you realize the multiplicity of options. Is it the name on the spine of book? The character speaking the current bit of dialogue? [...]

Fiery & Vivid: V. S. Naipaul, Nikolai Gogol and the Illumination of Darkness

By Kevin Hilke
So V.S. Naipaul finally gets the prize.
It’s said he’s willing, through unblinking eyes,
To make his observations, then recall
The bleakest Third World countries, warts and all.
While valuing his writing, I still think
It wouldn’t hurt if, now and then, he’d blink.
—Calvin Trillin, “On V. S. Naipaul’s Nobel Prize”
Nobel Prize-winning novelist V.S. Naipaul is a provocative [...]

In A Manner Of Speaking

By Frank Guan
“At once the idea was voiced of having a look at the suicide. The idea met with support: our ladies had never seen a suicide. I remember one of them saying aloud right then that ‘everything has become so boring that there’s no need to be punctilious about entertainment, as long as it’s [...]