SBT/A 19 features selected papers from the Borderless Beckett / Beckett sans frontieres Symposium held in Tokyo at Waseda University in 2006. The essays penned by eminent and young scholars from around the world examine the many ways Beckett's art crosses borders: coupling reality and dream, life and death, as in Japanese Noh drama, or transgressing distinctions between limits and limitlessness; humans, animals, virtual bodies, and stones; French and English; words and silence; and the received frameworks of philosophy and aesthetics. The highlight of the volume is the contribution by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, the special guest of the Symposium. His article entitled "Eight Ways of Looking at Samuel Beckett" introduces a variety of novel approaches to Beckett, ranging from a comparative analysis of his work and Melville's Moby Dick to a biographical observation concerning Beckett's application for a lectureship at a South African university. Other highlights include innovative essays by the plenary speakers and panelists - Enoch Brater, Mary Bryden, Bruno Clement, Steven Connor, S. E. Gontarski, Evelyne Grossman, and Angela Moorjani - and an illuminating section on Beckett's television dramas. The Borderless Beckett volume renews our awareness of the admirable quality and wide range of approaches that characterize Beckett studies.

Partial contents: I. In Dialogue with Dramatists and Writers/En dialogue avec des auteurs dramatiques et des ecrivains. Carla Taban: Le Moliere de Beckett. - Angela Moorjani: Beckett's Racinian Fictions: Racine and the Modern Novel Revisited. - Daniele de Ruyter: Fascination de la tragedie Racinienne: resonances dans Oh les beaux jours. - Arka Chattopadhyay: Worst In Need Of Worse: King Lear, Worstward Ho and the Trajectory of Worsening. - Julie Campbell: Allegories of Clarity and Obscurity: Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Beckett's Molloy."

Inexhaustible Beckett: even as his oeuvre continues to mark today's literary, dramatic and other arts, the man and artist remain alive in the memories of those who knew him personally. Collected here are conversations with the author recalled by translators, scholars, artists, and theatre and media practitioners drawing on unpublished notes of meetings and uncollected (mostly) correspondence with him. Through the varied lenses of their reminiscences, readers will appreciate Beckett's remarkable art of letter writing, his conversation punctuated by pregnant pauses, his exceptional humor and talent for friendship, and his punctilious concern for the translations, interpretations, and performance of his works. The readers of this volume will come to share the exhilaration the encounters with Beckett produced in the writers of these memoirs. Inepuisable Beckett... Non seulement son oeuvre reste vivante et laisse son empreinte dans la litterature, le theatre et les arts actuels, mais sa personnalite d'homme et d'artiste continue a marquer ceux qui l'ont connu personnellement. Ce sont les temoignages de plusieurs d'entre eux que nous reproduisons ici. A travers leurs diverses perspectives, le lecteur pourra apprecier cet art epistolaire propre a Beckett, celui de sa conversation ponctuee de silences lourds de sens, son humour exceptionnel ainsi que son talent pour l'amitie, autant que la rigueur pointilleuse qu'il apportait aux traductions, interpretations et mises en scene de ses oeuvres. Nous esperons que les lecteurs de ce volume pourront partager l'enchantement ressenti par les auteurs de ces memoires lors de leurs rencontres avec Beckett.

Though these days, our celebrity culture tends to revolve around movie stars and pop musicians, there have been plenty of celebrity authors over the years and around the world. This volume brings together a number of contributors to look at how and why certain writers have attained celebrity throughout history. How were their images as celebrities constructed by themselves and in complicity with their fans? And how did that process and its effects differ from country to country and era to era?