Latest news with #JohnFletcher
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
John Fletcher obituary
My father, John Fletcher, who has died aged 87, was an academic and literary critic best known for his work on Samuel Beckett. He helped demystify the Irish playwright to generations of scholars with A Student's Guide to the Plays of Samuel Beckett, which he co-wrote with his wife and literary collaborator, my mother, Beryl. John discovered Beckett as an undergraduate, after his brother gave him a copy of his novel Molloy. John found it heavy going at first but persevered and ultimately decided to study Beckett for his master's thesis at Toulouse University. His studies moved him closer to Beckett's orbit in Paris and an opportunity to meet the playwright came in 1960, when the wife of a theatre director who had staged Waiting for Godot for the first time in France offered to introduce him. Beckett invited John to his flat on the understanding that 'I can't discuss my work, and I never do …' and got on so well with him that at the end of the meeting Beckett lent him a typescript of his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women. It was the start of a long friendship and correspondence lasting until Beckett's death. John collaborated with Raymond Federman to produce the first Beckett bibliography, Samuel Beckett: His Works and His Critics (1970), which became a landmark in Beckett studies. John was born in Barking, Essex (now east London), to Roy Fletcher, who worked at the Ford plant in Dagenham, and Eileen (nee Beane), who had been a telephonist before marriage. When Roy, who had been a technical civil servant in the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate during the second world war, was seconded to the Control Commission for Germany in 1945, John boarded at King Alfred school, in Plön, in Schleswig-Holstein. After the family returned to Roy's home town of Yeovil, John attended the grammar school there. He won an exhibition to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated in languages and philosophy in 1959. He had fallen in love with France as a sixth former, and returned there to do a master's and doctorate (written in French) at Toulouse. It was there that he met Beryl, who was studying in Montpellier on a year abroad, and they married in 1961. They stayed in France while John completed his PhD, then returned to the UK in 1964 for him to take up a lectureship at Durham University. In 1966 he moved to the newly founded University of East Anglia as a senior lecturer and soon after professor, where he established the French department and worked until early retirement in 1998, when he and Beryl moved to Canterbury, Kent. From the mid-1980s, John and Beryl had started doing literary translation work together. Their translation of The Georgics, by Claude Simon, won the 1990 Scott Moncrieff prize. In retirement, John continued to work on translations, his last major work being Voltaire: A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, which he translated for an Oxford World's Classics edition (2011). Beryl died in 2021. John is survived by two sons, Edmund and me, a daughter, Harriet, and six grandchildren.
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Yahoo
Eviction court sees 361 cases in one day as Knox County urged to fund legal aid
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Advocates are pushing for change after 361 cases were on the docket for Knox County eviction court on Tuesday. John Fletcher was evicted last month after he withheld his rent, due to what he called an 'insect infestation' at his apartment. In some states, tenants have the right to withhold rent if landlords fail to repair major problems. Tennessee is not one of them. 'I have been couch surfing, I have had a couple of friends help me out, I bought a storage unit, but right now the priority is just graduating, so I've been trying to keep my head down, I don't have a permanent place right now,' he said. Fletcher is set to graduate college in a few weeks. He is a disabled veteran and a father of a 4-year-old girl. North Knoxville developments reflect city effort to add middle, infill housing Despite the ruling on his eviction happening last month, he found himself back in eviction court on Tuesday. He said his now former landlord is suing him for damages. This time in court was different though, as he was surrounded by hundreds of people in the same boat. 'It's nauseating. That's a symptom of a much, much deeper problem. And I'm begging our lawmakers, I know they want the stadium and I know they want Knoxville to grow, this isn't the way to do it. This is, to me, gentrification,' he said. Legal Aid's Eviction Prevention Office provides free legal assistance to those facing eviction. 'We try to get to the highest priority cases that we can to prevent an eviction judgement on somebody, because if they have that judgment, it makes it extremely hard for them to rent the next apartment that they need. It's a huge hit to their credit, it may cause them to be homeless,' Michael Davis, managing attorney with the office, said. Median sale price of East TN homes up 7.11% since last year The office has taken on 577 cases over the past year. Of the 338 eviction cases already resolved, 91% have successfully avoided a judgement on the tenant's record. In total, 275 children have lived in those households. However, funding for the office is set to run out in May. Adam Hughes, with Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment or SOCM, helped advocate for the creation of the office, and hopes local government will step up to provide the needed funding. 'They have been so helpful in streamlining the court process, helping tenants find new houses, so we're hoping that the city and the county can find $600,000 to keep this office open, to keep lawyers being able to have a presence in court. We think the entire court process for landlords, judges, tenants, everyone, gets easier when you have this support in court,' Hughes said. The University of Tennessee's Appalachian Justice Research Center (AJRC) estimates that every dollar spent on funding the office, returns $6.14 in downstream education, medical, and housing costs to the city and county. Currently, the office is funded by Knox County, through the American Rescue Plan Act. Sevierville Police lieutenant dedicated to building trust one person at a time Eviction filings began increasing after the pandemic, but Davis says that's not the sole reason behind the spike. 'I think the way a lot of people thought about it, whether this was true or not, was that these were people that just choose not to pay their rent or that there's some failing on their part, but with the situation that we got now, we're seeing people with two incomes, with full time jobs on a single income because they're maybe a single parent, that are not able to keep up with something like rent doubling in a month. We've seen cases of that. It's not always 50%, sometimes it's 100% rent increase. No one can plan for that,' he said. According to the AJRC, eviction filings increased by 53% between 2022 and 2023 in Knox County, and that trend is expected to continue. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
