Plus: Palestinian Artifacts; Maid Life; The Polish Far Right; José Donoso; Samuel Beckett
| 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. After the fall of France many writers and artists fleeing the Nazis ended up in Marseille, desperately seeking a way out of occupied Europe. 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. An exhibition in Paris of archaeological treasures from Gaza served as a reminder of how much of the Strip’s history has been destroyed. It’s been two months now since I became a maid. What do the far right’s fluctuating fortunes in Poland suggest about countries seeking an off-ramp from autocracy? With its brilliant prose and unrelenting darkness and pessimism, José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night towers over Chilean literature. Free from the ArchivesFor 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.” “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.” 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. At the turn of the twentieth century, a Gothic fever swept Europe as artists searched for meaning in a lost age. 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. You are receiving this message because you signed up
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