From The World of Nabokov’s Stories (1999), by Maxim D. Shrayer:

In an 1971 interview with Stephen Jan Parker, Nabokov said: “In relation to the typical novel the short story represents a small Alpine, or Polar, form. It looks different, but is conspecific with the novel and is linked to it by intermediate clines.” Critics have inquired into the meaning of Nabokov’s statement and the light it sheds upon the study of his short stories. By “conspecificity,” I believe, Nabokov meant most of all that his “short stories are produced in exactly the same way as [his] novels and informed by their [a]uthor and his subtexts [italics added].” Nabokov’s working and somewhat tentative definition, based primarily on the criterion of textual length, lacks a second criterion related to the structure of composition. When working on his “small Alpine forms,” I experienced a need to draw a line between the short stories and the transitional or hybrid forms. The latter include two short novels, Sogliadatai (The Eye, 1930) and Volshebnik (The Enchanter, 1939, published 1986) and two chapters of an abandoned novel (”Solus Rex,” 1940, and “Ultima Thule,” 1942) which appeared in periodicals and collections in the guise of separate short fictions. I have decided to exclude them from my analysis. At the same time, I could not leave several of the early plotless fictions out of my study. Virtually eventless, “Groza” (The Thunderstorm, 1924) satisfies the criterion of length, but not of structure, as I have conceived of it in this study. A few, like the very early “Nezhit”‘ (The Woodsprite, 1921) or “Slovo” (The Word, 1923), correspond to the genre of creative nonfiction. Finally, there is also the exhilarating case of “A Guide to Berlin,” which is not a short story but a sequence of five vignettes of the type that Ernest Hemingway inserted between his short stories in the collection In Our Time (1925).

(Hat tip to Chris Power’s “A brief survey of the short story part 28: Vladimir Nabokov.”)

Favorite books of 2007, third installment:  from Pascale Casanova’s Samual Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary Revolution, translated by Gregory Elliott:

Aside from a brief stay in London (in 1935), he sank slowly and consciously into decline and self-destruction.  His letters to, among others, Thomas McGreevy, with whom he remained in contact by letter until his death in 1967, attest to it.  He was “doped and buttoned up in sadness,” “[a]n insensible mass of alcohol, nicotine, and feminine intoxication.  A heap of guts.  With no end for.”  Beckett became the “family idiot,” the black sheep of a bourgeois family that sought to conceal the vices of a hopeless case from the gaze of the world.  Branded, pointed at, marginal in a prudish society, and unable to bear the burden of the fault for which he was blamed, he slowly destroyed himself.  On 8 October 1932 he wrote to his friend George Reavey in Paris, “I’ll be here till I die, creeping along genteel roads on a stranger’s bike.”

Casanova will be in Chicago later this month, delivering a lecture entitled “The Literary Greenwich Meridian: Reflexions on Literary Time.”

At Chicago’s Irish-American Heritage Center this month:

Samuel Beckett Centenary Display

The IAHC Library is pleased to showcase a traveling Samuel Beckett Centenary Display for the month of November. Probably the most significant Irish playwright of the 20th century, Beckett has influenced generations of directors and talent in film, television and theatre.

The exhibit, which toured the US and Canada, was commissioned by the Cultural Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Ireland to mark the centenary in 2006 of Beckett’s birth. It will showcase his life as a student, director and literary icon. During the exhibit, the library will screen “Beckett On Film,” a project bringing all 19 of Beckett’s stage plays to the screen. The project culled some of the most distinguished directors and actors working today, including Neil Jordan, David Mamet and Jeremy Irons. Friend of the Center, Harry Ward, was the generous donor of the the Beckett films. For more information on the Samuel Beckett display, call the IAHC library at 773-282-7035, ext. 19.

From Jennifer Howard’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Happy Days (and Possible Endgames) for Beckett Collections” (via Maud):

Among them was an item that Mr. Garforth describes as “one of the Holy Grails of Beckett studies”: the Whoroscope notebook, named after an early poem of Beckett’s. It holds jottings from the 1930s in English, French, German, Latin, and Greek on everything from the weight of the Eiffel Tower to musical notations from The Marriage of Figaro.

“It’s devastating, the amount of material there,” Mr. Garforth says. “All sorts of weird and wonderful facts and figures. Sometimes it can be decades later before they surface in another work.”

The notebook, which measures about 4 inches by 6 inches and has a burgundy cloth cover, doesn’t leave its special case very often. It accompanied Beckett on an extended German trip in 1936-37. “It’s obviously been in his pocket the six months he traveled around Germany,” the archivist says. “It looks beautiful. It smells beautiful. You could read it forever and find something new each time you look through it.”

Beckett also had a special fondness for this particular notebook. When he gave it to Mr. Knowlson, he did not just hand it off, he took time to point out what it was. “On this occasion he stopped me and said, ‘Hold on a minute, Jim, hold on a minute. I want to explain what that is. I’ve been holding on to this from 1936.’”

Tonight I was searching for some background on this line from Johnson’s letter to Lord Chesterfield: “The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.”

Oddly, one of the first things Google turns up for this phrase is David Gullette’s recollection of an afternoon he and a friend spent with Samuel Beckett in 1962:

He told us that when he was younger he had memorized Johnson’s letter to Chesterfield, and remembered in particular a line that went (and here he started pacing in front of the big picture window): “The Shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a Native of the Rocks.” (Pause.) We talked about how Johnson’s personality is reflected, sometimes unconsciously, in his minor writing. B. singled out the Prayers and Meditations, especially the passages where Johnson recalls his dead wife.

Also check out Beckett’s answer when he’s asked to name his “favorite American book.”

A good reminder this morning from Chicago Magazine’s Marquee newsletter:

Were Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright, novelist, and poet Samuel Beckett alive today, he would celebrate his 100th birthday this year. The Museum of Contemporary Art and Curious Theatre Branch could find no better reason to organize No Danger of the Spiritual Thing: 100 Years of Beckett, an inventive presentation of the prolific writer’s shorter pieces (about 20 minutes long) to be performed at the museum (220 E. Chicago Ave.; 312-397-4010) from January 13th to 15th at 7:30 p.m. The plays will be performed simultaneously in different parts of the museum. The viewers each evening will be divided into small groups and taken through the museum to each performance. (More of Beckett’s works will grace the stage of the Prop Theatre (3502-4 N. Elston Ave.; 773-267-6660) on Fridays and Saturdays from January 20th to February 5th. Tickets for all shows are $15; Prop will offer a pay-what-you-can policy to budget-conscious culture vultures.)

By the way, I just noticed that the Chicago Magazine website enables you to register online for Victoria Lautman’s “Writers on the Record” interview series. How convenient. Lautman interviews James McManus in the next event, on January 22.

This sounds incredibly fun. Let’s try to get it done before the Beckett estate gets wind of it.

The Beckett Project Honors Writer Samuel Beckett

The Blonk/Merlin/Vandermark Trio combines music, text, dance, and sound poetry in an hour-long exploration of the austere and touching writings of Samuel Beckett. “The Beckett Project” is a collaboration between Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark, Dutch vocalist Jaap Blonk, and Swedish choreographer Lotta Merlin. Chicago painter Richard Hull created the stage sets for the piece. This new work, commissioned by Experimental Sound Studio for the 2005 Outer Ear Festival of Sound, receives its world premiere in the Chicago Cultural Center. Each performance is followed by a roundtable discussion with the artists and the audience.

Sunday, December 11, 3 pm
Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater
Free

Raymond Federman, whom the Forward recently called “an almost unknown genius … an heir to Samuel Beckett … and a writer whose entertainment quotient is all out of proportion with the supposed difficulty of his endeavor,” blogs about “the books that made me.” I liked the bit about Sam B:

But one day Godot entered into my life. Beckett replaced Diderot in my dissertation. The evening when Godot entered into my vocabulary, I told myself, one day I’ll write a book about Thomas Beckett. Yes, that’s what I wrote in my little black notebook after I saw Waiting for Godot. It was in New York. I told Beckett about what I had written, and he said to me, Raymond you cannot imagine how many times I’ve been called Thomas.

Federman has a new memoir, My Body in Nine Parts, and is making a rare appearance in Chicago this Friday at a colloquium at UIC.

(I learned of Federman through Dan at The Reading Experience.)

Is there anything I can do, that’s what I ask myself, to cheer them up? I have given them bones, I have talked to them about this and that, I have explained the twilight, admittedly. But is it enough, that’s what tortures me, is it enough?

Lesson: Do more than is required. When the minimum requirements have been met, true leaders are just getting started.
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Yes, gentlemen, I cannot go for long without the society of my likes, even when the likeness is an imperfect one. From the meanest creature one departs wiser, richer, more conscious of one’s blessings.

Lesson: Never underestimate the power of informally talking with your subordinates.
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Follower: I had a dream.
Leader: Don’t tell me!
Follower: I dreamt that . . .
Leader: DON’T TELL ME!

Lesson: Encourage creativity and risk-taking.
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A moment ago you were calling me Sir, in fear and trembling. Now you’re asking me questions. No good will come of this!

Lesson: Create a favorable culture and climate.
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Leader: I’d very much like to sit down, but I don’t quite know how to go about it.
Follower: Could I be of any help?
Leader: If you asked me perhaps.
Follower: What?
Leader: If you asked me to sit down.
Follower: Would that be a help?
Leader: I fancy so.
Follower: Here we go. Be seated, Sir, I beg of you.
Leader: No, no, I wouldn’t think of it. (Pause: Aside.) Ask me again.
Follower: Come, come, take a seat, I beseech you, you’ll get pneumonia.
Leader: You really think so?
Follower: Why it’s absolutely certain.
Leader: No doubt you’re right. (He sits down.) Done it again! Thank you, dear fellow.

Lesson: Share responsibility and authority
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Up pig! Up hog!

Lesson: Be succinct and consistent in your communication.

Don’t fight the market economy, Stephany. Clearly you’ve hit upon the board book sensation of the year:

For instance, a photograph of a baby wobbling on the verge of her first step will feature the text “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

First baby: That passed the time.
Second baby: It would have passed in any case.
First baby: Yes, but not so rapidly.

I’m advocating your complete and total submission to market forces because a) I think your idea is brilliant, and b) your book would be the ideal companion to my own fondly envisioned Beckett on Leadership.

Would people buy it? Of course! Beckett knew that too:

Estragon: People are bloody ignorant apes.