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Samuel Barclay Beckett

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Samuel Beckett

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Died: December 22, 1989, in Paris, France

Samuel Barclay Beckett was born without difficulty at Cooldrinach in Foxrock, County Dublin, on 13 April 1906, but grew old enough to fill the air with many different cries. He was the second of two sons of a middle-class Protestant couple (his father managed a surveying firm) and grew up away from the rebellion waged nearby. Though quite energetic, he enjoyed even as a small boy the quiet of solitude. He studied at Earlsfort House in Dublin, and then at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen (where Oscar Wilde had gone) where he first began to learn French, one of the two languages in which he would write. A well-rounded athlete, Beckett excelled especially in cricket, tennis, and boxing in his school days.

Though he continued with sports, his attention turned increasingly to academics when at 17 he entered Trinity College, choosing French and Italian as his subjects. Beckett enjoyed the vibrant theater scene of post-independence Dublin, preferring revivals of J.M. Synge plays. Moreover, he had the opportunity to watch American films and discover the silent comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin that would crucially influence his interest in the vaudevillian tramp.

After graduation, Beckett traveled to Paris where he first met the fellow Dubliner who would become a seminal influence and close friend, James Joyce. In addition to acting as one of Joyce's favored assistants in the construction of the Work in Progress (later to be titled Finnegans Wake), Beckett began writing himself, inspired by the vibrant Parisian literary circle. In 1930, he published his first poem, "Whoroscope," winning a reward of ten pounds in a poetry competition. Shortly after, he published his brief but groundbreaking Proust, a study of the recently deceased author whom Beckett admired so much; the work at once illuminated its subject but also helped the fledgling and unsure artist shape his own aesthetic. When he returned to Dublin later that year to lecture at Trinity, Beckett was writing his first stories- which would later comprise More Pricks Than Kicks (1934).

Beckett was restless in his teaching posts, and his reluctance to settle down in a respectable career worried his family, especially his mother from whom he became estranged for several years. Returning to Paris in 1932, he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women. While reminiscent in its digressive tendencies of Fielding and Sterne, Dream was also highly autobiographical, a powerful indication that Beckett was emerging from Joyce's shadow and developing his own voice. Out of money, he went back to Dublin and then moved temporarily to London where he worked on much of his next novel, Murphy. Still without a steady source of income (his works were not selling, and Murphy, which had been turned down by dozens of publishers, would not appear until 1938), he moved constantly for the next few years before settling permanently in Paris in 1937.

Walking home late one night with some friends, Beckett was nearly killed when he was stabbed by a "pimp." In hospital, Joyce looked after his young friend, paying his expenses and bringing around numerous visitors. Recuperating, Beckett also received attention from a French acquaintance, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dusmesnil, who would soon become his life companion (and wife, though not until 1961).

When Paris was invaded in 1941, Beckett and Suzanne joined the Resistance. Later they were forced to flee when their cell was betrayed, leaving their apartment only hours before the Gestapo arrived. They took refuge in Rousillion, in the south of France, where Beckett worked on a farm in exchange for room and board. There he continued work on a novel he had begun in Paris, Watt. After the Germans were defeated and the couple returned to Paris in 1945, Beckett travelled to Ireland to visit his mother. He claimed to have had while sitting in her room an artistic revelation: "I became aware of my own folly. Only then did I begin to write the things I feel." And only then did Beckett began to write primarily in French, finding greater linguistic possibilities in a language that he famously said had no style. In his second language, he enjoyed a period (1947-1950) that is certainly his most prolific and that many consider his finest. His first French novel, Mercier et Camier--which, with its wandering duo, minimalist style, and insistence on repetition, predicts the concerns and form of Waiting for Godot--, was not published until years later. In this time, he also wrote his famous novel trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable). Also, in 1947, he wrote his first play, Eleutheria, which he would not allow to be published during his lifetime and which, after his death, became a cause of great controversy when Beckett's American publisher, Barney Rosset, released an English translation against the wishes of the Beckett estate. In 1948-49, he also wrote Waiting for Godot. Its production in Paris in January 1953, by the director and actor Roger Blin (with whom Beckett would develop a lifelong friendship), brought the artist his first real public success both in and outside of France.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Beckett's playwriting continued with a series of masterpieces, including Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Days. He involved himself in various productions of his plays across Europe and in the United States, wrote his first radio plays, and created remarkably innovative prose fiction, including the epic How It Is (1961) and the haunting The Lost Ones (1970). Worldwide appreciation of his work growing, he received in 1969 the Nobel Prize (the third Irishman of the century to be so honored). Characteristically, he was unhappy with the increased public attention that accompanied the prize and in response to a demand for a new work chose instead to release the still unpublished Mercier and Camier. At this time, he also underwent successful operations on his eyes to correct the cataracts that had been plaguing him for years.

The 1970s were a less prolific period, though he managed some new projects, including television plays for the BBC, and continued to interest himself in producions of his theatrical works. In 1977 he began the autobiographical Company and in the early 1980s crafted more prose pieces (including Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstward Ho) as well as more plays (including Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu). His last major work, the prose fiction Stirrings Still, was written in 1986.

In the same year, Beckett began to suffer from onsetting emphysema. After his first hospitilization, he wrote in bed his final work, the poem What is the Word. Moved into a nursing home, Le Tiers Temps, his deteriorating health prevented him from writing, and his efforts were given instead to translation of his works. Suzanne died on 17 July 1989, and Beckett followed her on 22 December. He is buried in Montparnasse Cemetary in Paris.

Three Novels by Samuel Beckett: Molloy, Malone Dies, the Unnamable
Few works of contemporary literature are so universally acclaimed as central to our understanding of the human experience as Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett's famous trilogy.

Waiting for Godot

Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho: Three Novels
In Beckett's fiction, every other word serves to snap the reader back to consciousness.

Mercier and Camier
One of the most accessible examples of Samuel Beckett's dark humor, Mercier and Camier is the hilarious chronicle of two heroes' epic journey.

The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989
Here, for the first time, his short prose is gathered in a definitive, complete volume.

Endgame

Krapp's Last Tape, and Other Dramatic Pieces

Happy Days: A Play in Two Acts
In Happy Days, Samuel Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, to time past and time present.

Beckett on Film DVD Set

Reading Godot
by Lois Gordon

Lois Gordon, author of The World of Samuel Beckett, has written a fascinating and illuminating introduction to Beckett's great work for general readers, students, and specialists. Critically sophisticated and historically informed, it approaches the play scene by scene, exploring the text linguistically, philosophically, critically, and biographically. Gordon argues that the play portrays more than the rational mind's search for self and worldly definition. It also dramatizes Beckett's insights into human nature, into the emotional life that frequently invades rationality and liberates, victimizes, or paralyzes the individual. Gordon shows that Beckett portrays humanity in conflict with mysterious forces both within and outside the self, that he is an artist of the psychic distress born of relativism.

From the Back Cover
"Lois Gordon's new book is a valuable guide to the elasticity of Beckett's best-known play -- its relevance to major developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, psychology, painting, and drama; and its magic appeal to audiences of all ages and nationalities." -Lawrence Graver, author of An Obsession with Anne Frank

About the Author
Lois Gordon, professor of English at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is also the author of The World of Samuel Beckett and the coauthor of American Chronicle, both published by Yale University Press.

Happy Days: The Production Notebook of Samuel Beckett
Edited by James Knowlson

In working so closely on staging his own plays, Beckett has sometimes cut or altered the text, and in particular the stage directions. In the production notes of Happy Days in this volume. Beckett effected substantial cuts in the actual text of the first act, and introduced many changes into Winnie's and Willie's actions, altering in particular the scene of Willie's only front-of-mount appearance at the end of the play. The editor of this volume provides as accurate a record of the cuts as he was able to establish together with a shorthand account of the main changes.

Since he wrote Happy Days in English in 1960-61, Beckett has been closely involved with quite a number of productions of the play in England, France and Germany. He had preliminary discussions and corresponded with Alan Schneider before Schneider directed the world premier in September 1961 at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York. Later he worked with George Devine in London on a Royal Court production and collaborated intensively with Roger Blin in 1963 for the French premier at the Odeon Theatre de France in Paris. In 1971 he was invited to direct Gluckliche Tage (Happy Days) at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt in Berlin, so that his eventual debut as director of the play in the English language in London eight years later had been preceded by his deep involvement in most of the major productions of the play.

Beckett's production notebook of Happy Days, together with his own annotated copies, provides the most comprehensive record of the play as it has been revised in the light of the author's own staging of the work. It is invaluable as a guide to the way Beckett now "sees" his play and how he himself interprets the work on stage. The insights this book provides will be of great interest, and indeed practical help, to scholars, critics and theater directors, and will give the general reader a fascinating view of the creative processes of the theater.

Beckett and Philosophy
by Richard Lane

Samuel Beckett: Photographs
Photographs by John Minihan
with an introduction by Aidan Higgins

The most remarkable thing about this collection of photographs of Samuel Beckett is that it exists at all, for Beckett was notoriously elusive throughout his life. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, journalists were unable to locate him for interviews and photographs; he did not even go to Stockholm to accept the prize. Collected here is a series of photographs by the Irish photographer, John Minihan, that presents a view of Beckett that has long been missing.

Minihan's photographs take a rare and intimate look into the life of this intensely private person. Beckett is seen at work directing several of his plays and relaxing in the cafes he loved; he is seen alone and with friends. Writing with wit and affection, Aidan Higgins says in his introduction: "Despite his frigid bearing and frosty mien, there was something warm and endearing about him. Few if any ever called him Samuel: it was always Sam...One was privileged to know Sam Beckett, for his likes will not come again; such generosity of spirit was rarer than radium." This book will introduce Beckett anew and will add the reader to those who are privileged to know him.

John Minihan was born in Dublin in 1946 and spent his childhood in Athy, County Kildare. He is now a photographer on the staff of the Evening Standard.

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927. His books include Langrishe, Go Down, Balcony of Europe, Helsingor Station & Other Departures, and Ronda Gorge & Other Precipices.

The Insanity of Samuel Beckett's Art
by Richard J. Stephenson

The extraordinary story of twentieth century literature is that critics canonize Samuel Beckett's writings as works of genius when they are records of atrophy brought about by Beckett's mental illness.

Samuel Beckett is not a great writer; he is not even a good writer. He is a failed writer.

Beckett, not his characters not his narrative voice, Beckett himself hated art. Hated it. Hated it as he hated life. After having tried to kill imagination in "Imagination Dead Imagine" in 1965, after having, for sixty years, destroyed plot and characterization and theme and setting, now in Ill Seen Ill Said, 1981, Beckett attacks the very paper on which he writes.

About the Author
I have a Ph.D. in English from S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from West Chester University. I did post doctoral study at the Philadelphia School for Psychoanalysis, studying under Dr. Hyman Spotnitz. In training, I took patients at the Philadelphia Mental Health Institute. For years I practiced psychoanalytic therapy in private practice, in social agencies and a in prison. I have a Certificat from the Sorbonne and studied at the University of Besancon as well as the University of Phonetiques in Paris. I spent five years writing this book, having read 90%+ of the mountainous criticism on Beckett and having read all of his work in French and in English.

No Author Better Served: Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider
by Maurice Harmon

The Cambridge Companion to Beckett
by John Pilling

Chronology of Beckett's life
Beckett as essayist - RUPERT WOOD
Beckett's English fiction - JOHN PILLING
Three novels and four nouvelles - PAUL DAVIES
Waiting for Godot and Endgame - MICHAEL WORTON
From Krapp's last tape to Play - PAUL LAWLEV
Texts for nothing and How it is - H. PORTER ABBOTT
The radio and television plays, and Film - JONATHAN KALB
The 'dramaticules' - KEIR ELAM
From the Residua to Stirrings still - ANDREW RENTON
Beckett's poems and verse translations - ROGER LITTLE
Beckett as director - ANNA McMULLAN
Beckett's bilingualism - ANN BEER
Beckett and the philosophers - P. J. MURPHY
Further reading

Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist
by Anthony Cronin

Samuel Beckett has always been something of an enigma. Born and raised in Ireland, he moved to France as a young man and remained there, risking his life during the war in his work with the French Resistance. Kind, generous, and often funny in real life, his plays and novels are implacably dark, filled with despair, need, and isolation. In Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, biographer Anthony Cronin limns a deft portrait of the great writer using Beckett's letters, early fiction, and Cronin's own acquaintance with both his subject and several of Beckett's friends in Dublin. Taken together, these sources reveal a multifaceted man.

Beckett passed through many phases on his way to greatness: a French teacher at Dublin College, a member of the Paris circle that formed around James Joyce in the late 1920s, and later an active participant in the French Resistance. The years following World War II proved a fertile time in Beckett's creative life, encompassing his transition from the autobiographical to the modernist impersonal--perhaps his greatest works. Anthony Cronin admirably balances his portrayal of the man and the artist, rendering the details of Beckett's uneventful life and his rich imagination in a way that fleshes out the man even as it celebrates the genius.