Sponsored by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Today in The New York Review of Books: Maurice Samuels follows desperate refugees on their flight from the Nazis; Madeleine Schwartz visits an exhibit of priceless Palestinian artifacts; Françoise Ega narrates life as a domestic; Joy Neumeyer gleans lessons from the rise, fall, and rise of the right in Poland; Larry Rohter reads José Donoso; and, from the archives, Fintan O’Toole on Samuel Beckett.

Maurice Samuels
Rescuing the Refugees

After the fall of France many writers and artists fleeing the Nazis ended up in Marseille, desperately seeking a way out of occupied Europe.

Advertisement

Introducing Private Life, Our New Podcast

In the first episode of Private Life, The New York Review’s new podcast, Darryl Pinckney talks with host Jarrett Earnest about his close friend and former teacher Elizabeth Hardwick. Pinckney discusses her inimitable voice on the page, her love of literature’s most “terrific losers,” and the people in her inner circle.

Listen and Subscribe Today

Madeleine Schwartz
Pieces of Gaza

An exhibition in Paris of archaeological treasures from Gaza served as a reminder of how much of the Strip’s history has been destroyed.

Françoise Ega, translated and with an introduction by Emma Ramadan
‘Fill It with Reality’

It’s been two months now since I became a maid.

Joy Neumeyer
Poland: Halfway to Democracy

What do the far right’s fluctuating fortunes in Poland suggest about countries seeking an off-ramp from autocracy?

Advertisement

Larry Rohter
Chasing Ghosts

With its brilliant prose and unrelenting darkness and pessimism, José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night towers over Chilean literature.

Free from the Archives

For the erudite romantic in search of a tender sentiment, Samuel Beckett might seem a strange source to turn to, but every now and then a particularly lovely line from his 1936 poem “Cascando” appears on a social media post or, as Fintan O’Toole observed in the Review’s April 2, 2015, issue, engraved on a tombstone in the “lachrymose ending” of a recent movie: “If you do not love me I shall not be loved.” Alas, in their original context, Beckett’s flights of lyricism do “not work quite so well as…sentimental consolations”:

if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

“We are unlikely to see that on a Valentine’s Day greeting card anytime soon,” O’Toole notes. But then, years later, beginning sometime in the mid-1950s, female characters started to appear in Beckett’s work, and with them “a gradual letting-in of three things he had fought to exclude from his writing—womanliness, memory, and the possibility of love.”

Fintan O’Toole
Beckett in Love

“It would be crude to suggest that this crucial shift is merely or solely a response to Beckett’s exploration of his feelings for MacCarthy: Nell and Mrs. Rooney predate her illness. But it is obvious that those feelings have a profound effect on the way Beckett allows his female figures to bring into his world memory, erotic desire, even tenderness. Obvious, that is, from Krapp’s Last Tape and what Beckett writes about it to his correspondents.”

Advertisement

New Subscriber Benefit!

Subscribers are now able to share unlocked versions of our articles with friends, family, and social media channels. When signed in to your account, look for this gift box icon in any of our articles.

Recently in the Review

Beatrice Radden Keefe
The Undefined Gothic

At the turn of the twentieth century, a Gothic fever swept Europe as artists searched for meaning in a lost age.

Vanessa Ogle
Rolling with the Economic Tides

Ian Kumekawa’s Empty Vessel follows the lifespan of one barge, from bunkhouse to floating prison to barracks and back, as it traces the shadowy outer limits of the maritime economy.

Special Offer
Subscribe for just $1 an issue

Get the deal

Politics   Literature   Arts   Ideas

You are receiving this message because you signed up
for email newsletters from The New York Review.

Update your address or preferences

View this newsletter online

The New York Review of Books
207 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016-6305