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LINDA BEN-ZvI that a well-known, established scholar in our group mocked as being irrelevant to Beckett studies, but that the group, after considerable and sometimes heated but civil discussion, decided was a new, significant avenue into the study of Beckett’s plays, one that should be explored and not dismissed out of hand. Another feature of the Beckett Working group that set it apart from other academic meetings was its format. Traditionally, those wishing to participate in a conference submit abstracts and, if accepted, are placed on a panel of three or four people researching a similar subject. At the meeting itself, they are usually given 15—20 minutes to read their prepared essays; and at the end of the presentations, 15-25 minutes are reserved for audience comments and questions, although in practice since papers tend to run longer than planned, little time, if any, is left for discussion. That means someone may spend months researching and writing a paper, travel to a different city or even country, and then have a quarter of an hour to present their work and a few minutes, if they are lucky, to answer any questions or receive responses. Not so in the Beckett Working Group. I believed that if we were true to our name, this would be a ‘working’ group, the papers presented often works-inprogress, and—most important—each would be given sufficient time for the group to express their reactions and suggest possible revisions or additions. To achieve this end, we put a cap of twenty on the number of participants and instituted a structure whereby the papers were sent to members of the group one month prior to our meeting, so that they could read and consider each essay carefully. When we met, instead of the presenter reading the entire essay, we allotted 10-15 minutes for each to present an oral (not written) summary of the main thesis and supporting ideas, leaving between 30-40 minutes for the group to interact with the writer and discuss each essay in depth. This method, I am convinced, has led to the high quality of the essays that have emerged from our sessions and have appeared in the two prior volumes that the Beckett Working Group has published. Drawing on Beckett: Portraits, Performances, and Cultural Contexts’ brought together twenty-one original essays by authors from eleven countries and presented for the first time in one volume twenty-four sketches of Samuel Beckett executed by his good friend, the Paris-based Israeli artist Avigdor Arikha. Beckett at 100: Revolving It All* emerged from the 2006 scholarly and creative outpouring around the world that marked the hundredth anniversary of Beckett’s birth; the essays were gathered from the special Beckett Working Group chosen to be the central academic conference convened at Trinity College Dublin, Beckett’s Linda Ben-Zvi (ed.): Drawing on Beckett: Portraits, Performances, and Cultural Contexts, Tel Aviv, Assaph Books, 2003. ? Linda Ben-Zvi - Angela Moorjani (eds.): Beckett at 100: Revolving It All, New York, Oxford University, 2008. * 10°
