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Q&A with the new President of the Samuel Beckett Society
Daniela Caselli
Daniela Caselli

I recently caught up with Daniela Caselli to chat about her new role as President of the Samuel Beckett Society, an international organization of scholars, students, directors, actors and others who share an interest in the writer’s work. I asked how she first encountered Beckett’s writing, and what she sees as the next step for the Society moving forward:

“My entire career has been shaped by Beckett’s work. As a first year student I took an amazing course on modernism, with a focus on Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett, taught by Carla Locatelli. It was a revelation, and I never looked back.”

When asked about her plans for the Society going forward, she replied: ‘I aim to develop a Society that is as inclusive as possible, and to develop themes and priorities that reflect the great diversity of the Beckett community.’

You can read our exchange in full at samuelbeckettsociety.org.

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Carson McCullers at her writing desk.
Carson McCullers at her writing desk.

Spent a few days in London with Jennifer. It’s now become customary for us to walk everywhere we go, tiring us out just in time for pizza on the South Bank.

Read John Williams‘ short but sweet tribute to the American writer Carson McCullers in The New York Times: ‘Feb. 19 was the centenary of the birth of Carson McCullers, one of the most distinctive and ill-fated writers in American history. McCullers died when she was 50, in 1967. She suffered a series of strokes before she was 30, and spent much of her life in pain.’

Looking forward to reading three essay collections by the American writer Marilynne Robinson: The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, and Absence of Mind. I taught Robinson’s Housekeeping a year or two ago, and have become increasingly fascinated by her work ever since.

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The first recording session for Davis’ jazz masterpiece took place on 2 March 1959
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959)
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959)

On this day in 1959, trumpeter Miles Davis entered the Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York to record Kind of Blue. He was joined by John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley (alto saxophone), Paul Chambers (bass), Jimmy Cobb (drums), Bill Evans (piano), and Wynton Kelly (piano on the bluesy second track, ‘Freddie Freeloader’). The album, which was completed in April later that year, would go on to become the bestselling jazz record of all time. (more…)

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British artist Tom Harman discusses how critical theory led him to return to painting
Tom Harman installs abstract paintings at Little Man Coffee Co., Cardiff. Photograph: Rhys Tranter.
Tom Harman installs abstract paintings at Little Man Coffee Co., Cardiff. Photograph: Rhys Tranter.

When did you start painting?

Drawing and painting, for me, was what I always did and was always good at. Throughout school I only ever wanted to paint and couldn’t wait to leave at 16 and begin a BTECH in Art and Design at my local FE college. This was a great experience, at last getting to create visual material all day, every day. I was particularly interested in painting that had some form of social commentary and was influenced by the New Glasgow Boys, painters from the Glasgow School of Art such as Steven Campbell, Peter Howson and Ken Currie, as well as the big names in British painting such as Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. (more…)

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The Journal of Jules Renard, ed. and trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget (Tin House Books, 2008).
The Journal of Jules Renard, ed. and trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget (Tin House Books, 2008).

When in doubt, pick up Jules Renard. His journal is unrivalled. A few choice picks from today’s reading (translated from the French by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget):

  • On the ridiculous: ‘Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it’ (February 1890).
  • On André Gide: ‘He is clean-shaven, has a cold in the nose and throat, an exaggerated jaw, eyes between two welts. He is in love with Oscar Wilde, whose photograph I perceive on the mantel: a fleshy gentleman, very refined, also clean-shaven, who has recently been discovered’ (December 1891).
  • On Oscar Wilde: ‘Oscar Wilde next to me at lunch. He has the oddity of being an Englishman. He gives you a cigarette, but he selects it himself’ (April 1892).
  • On criticising others: ‘All our criticism consists of reproaching others with not having the qualities that we believe ourselves to have’ (July 1895).
  • On observing nature: ‘I want my ear to be a shell that keeps in itself all the sounds of nature’ (September 1895).
  • On modesty: ‘Be modest! It is the kind of pride least likely to offend’ (September 1895).

Rain, wind, moments of bright sunshine. Continuing to enjoy Thomas Merton‘s The Seven Storey Mountain: having completed his undergraduate degree at Columbia, he is now studying William Blake‘s poetry at postgraduate level.