Friday, April 14, 2006

Beckett's voice again

The 100th year since Samuel Beckett's birth was yesterday, so I suppose it's time for another tedious Beckett post. Actually, this one's sort of interesting. Sort of.

The always interesting Ask Metafilter has a post asking the question, Are there any extant recordings of Samuel Beckett's voice?. So far there's no answers that excite me, although there's a link to a 150 MB .avi of Not I.

I've previously written about my search for Beckett recordings here, here, here, and here.

The most exciting bit of information I've turned up in a long time was actually found in my own damn comments about twenty minutes ago. In the next to the last post I mentioned above, I just saw an anonymous comment I'd overlooked left by someone in 2004 with a UK email address:
There is a recording of Beckett's voice on VHS: "Peephole Art: Beckett for Television" it was put out by Global village NY telephone 212 925-7751

I don't know if this still works

The British library in London also had (has?) a sample from this film on its Voicebox in the foyer
Beckett for Television is available, but for a terrifying $45. (Don't the people who put these things out realize that cheapskates want this stuff, too?) The description doesn't seem to mention a recording of Beckett himself. It's also available (and described) here.

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