Ping: Correspondence: Letter from Roger Reynolds to Samuel Beckett; page 2

Film, Audio, Video and Digital Art

Performing Arts (including Performance Art)

In 1967, while living in Tokyo, I read a short story by Samuel Beckett, "Ping", published in the English magazine, Encounter. I was fascinated by this text, and decided immediately that I wanted to make it the basis of an inter-media work. I wrote to Encounter that referred me, in turn, to Beckett's American publisher, Grove Press. The obtaining of rights for the use of Beckett's publications was complicated by a very committed and problematic French Publisher, Les Éditions de Minuit. As it happened, however, Grove Press allowed me to write directly to Beckett for permission, permission which he granted in a postcard sent to me. As my original ideas about how the work would proceed altered over time, various difficulties arose as to whether I had exceeded my permissions or not, and, if so, what should be done about this. Further complexity was added when the score was published, first , informally, as a Newsletter distributed widely by The Institute of Current World Affairs (the organization that was supporting Karen and me in Japan), and later in the magazine, SOURCE, edited by then U.C. Davis Professor Larry Austin, and his collaborator Stanley Lunetta.

UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 (https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/contact)

Based on: Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989. Ping