Lawrence Graver

This volume offers a comprehensive critical study of Samuel Beckett's first and most renowned dramatic work, Waiting for Godot, which has become one of the most frequently discussed, and influential plays in the history of the theatre. Lawrence Graver discusses the play's background and provides a detailed analysis of its originality and distinction as a landmark of modern theatrical art. He reviews some of the differences between Beckett's original French version and his English translation.

Beckett: Waiting for Godot

This is a fresh, comprehensive critical study of Samuel Beckett's first and best-known dramatic work, Waiting for Godot, which has become one of the most frequently performed, widely discussed, and influential plays in the history of the theatre. Professor Graver discusses the play's background and provides a detailed analysis of its originality and distinction as a landmark of modern theatrical art. He reviews some of the differences between Beckett's original French version and his English translation, and discusses the liberating influence of Godot on such important playwrights as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Athol Fugard.

Raymond Federman

Samuel Beckett, the Critical Heritage

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Anne Frank's Diary has been acclaimed throughout the world as an indelible portrait of a gifted girl and as a remarkable document of the Holocaust. For Meyer Levin, the respected writer who helped bring the Diary to an American audience, the Jewish girl's moving story became a thirty-year obsession that altered his life and brought him heartbreaking sorrow. Lawrence Graver's fascinating account of Meyer Levin's ordeal is a story within a story. What began as a warm collaboration between Levin and Anne's father, Otto Frank, turned into a notorious dispute that lasted several decades and included litigation and public scandal. Behind this story is another: one man's struggle with himself—as a Jew and as a writer—in postwar America. Looming over both stories is the shadow of the Holocaust and its persistent, complex presence in our lives. Graver's book is based on hundreds of unpublished documents and on interviews with some of the Levin-Frank controversy's major participants. It illuminates important areas of American culture: publishing, law, religion, politics, and the popular media. The "Red Scare," anti-McCarthyism, and the commercial imperatives of Broadway are all players in this book, along with the assimilationist mood among many Jews and the simplistic pieties of American society in the 1950s. Graver also examines the different and often conflicting ways that people the world over, Jewish and Gentile, wanted Anne Frank and her much-loved book to be represented. That her afterlife has in extraordinary ways taken on the shape and implications of myth makes Graver's story—and Meyer Levin's—even more compelling. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Meyer Levin and the Diary

An Obsession with Anne Frank

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.

Conrad's Short Fiction

Blanche H. Gelfant

This resource provides information on a popular literary genre - the 20th century American short story. It contains articles on stories that share a particular theme, and over 100 pieces on individual writers and their work. There are also articles on promising new writers entering the scene.

The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story

"Lawrence Graver's book is a precise and generous account of dreadful obsession, in which deep issues are reduced by paranoia into misery all around--and work for many lawyers. It's sad, true to my knowledge of Meyer Levin and others enmeshed in the history--infinitely sad."--Herbert Gold, author of Fathers "Beautifully and poignantly told, this story holds a mirror up to American Jewry's own coming to terms with the Holocaust. It is by turns captivating and heartbreaking, the story of both Levin's obsession and his search for Jewish and American identity after the Holocaust. In this literary history, Lawrence Graver also reanimates the diary itself, returning it to the time and place from which it was torn fifty years ago."--James Young, author of Writing and Re-writing the Holocaust and TheTexture of Memory "A gripping account, easy to read in one or two sittings, hard to put down. The balance between sympathy for Levin and criticism of his mounting obsession is exquisitely established and beautifully maintained, culminating in remarkable insight."--Morris Dickstein, author of Gates of Eden "Beyond Anne Frank is so beautiful and thoughtfully written that I really couldn't put it down. Diane Wolf's voice is human and humanistic, without glossing over any painful realities. She probes the subject from an impressive array of angles, considering a wide variety of types of experiences. This book is extraordinarily fine and I enthusiastically recommend it."--Lynn Davidman, author of Motherloss

Meyer Levin and the "Diary"

The Collected Critical Heritage II comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxes sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995. The Critical Heritage series gathers together a large body of critical figures in literature. These selected sources include contemporary reviews from both popular and literary media.

Lawrence Graver

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