Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett - Hardcover

Knowlson, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684808722 ISBN 13: 9780684808727

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1996

Synopsis

Damned to Fame follows the reclusive literary giant's life from his birth in Foxrock, a rural suburb of Dublin, in 1906 to his death in Paris in 1989. Knowlson brilliantly re-creates Beckett's early years as a struggling author in Paris, his travels through Germany in 1936-37 as the Nazis were consolidating their power, his service in the French Resistance during World War II, and the years of literary fame and financial success that followed the first performance of his controversial Waiting for Godot (1953).
Paris between the wars was a city vibrant with experimentation, both in the arts and in personal lifestyle, and Knowlson introduces us to the writers and painters who, along with the young Beckett, populated this bohemian community. Most notable was James Joyce, a fellow Irishman who became Beckett's friend and mentor and influenced him to devote his life to writing. We also meet the women in Beckett's life - his domineering mother, May; his cousin Peggy Sinclair, who died at a tragically young age; Ethna MacCarthy, his first love, whom he immortalized in his poetry and prose; Peggy Guggenheim, the American heiress and patron of the arts; and the strong and independent Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, whom he met in the late 1930s and married in 1961.
Beyond recounting many previously unknown aspects of the writer's life, including his strong support for human rights and other political causes, Knowlson explores in fascinating detail the roots of Beckett's works. He shows not only how the relationship between Beckett's own experiences and his work became more oblique over time, but also how his startling postmodern images were inspired by the paintings of the Old Masters, such as Antonello da Messina, Durer, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio.

About this title

About the Author

James Knowlson is the founder of the Beckett Archive (now the Beckett International Foundation) at the University of Reading, where he holds a Personal Chair of French.

Reviews

In his preface, Knowlson alerts readers that Beckett had notified his British publisher that this work was to be "his sole authorized biography." And Knowlson, the author or editor of 10 previous books on Beckett, leaves no stone unturned in his intricate biography of the Irish writer. Beckett was born in Dublin on April 13, 1906, a Good Friday. He grew up in the affluent suburb of Foxrock, where he enjoyed a loving though sometimes rigid Protestant childhood. Away at boarding school for much of the Irish Uprising, he returned to Dublin in 1923 to enter Trinity College, excelling in English Literature and French. On a visit to Paris he met James Joyce and became his companion and secretary. Back in Dublin in 1930 he became a lecturer in French at Trinity, but found the academic life not to his liking. He left his position and began a 10-year period of drifting as he tried to become a writer. Knowlson probes Beckett's romantic entanglements, including his platonic relationship with Joyce's daughter Lucia, an affair with his first cousin and his long relationship with his eventual wife, Suzanne. During the war Beckett was a member of the French resistance, using his expertise in language to translate documents for the British government. He fled Paris just before the Gestapo closed in on him. With the end of the war came his most productive period. Between 1946 and 1953 he wrote his trilogy of novels, plus Waiting for Godot. Knowlson goes on to look at Beckett's growing fame as his plays were produced around the world; examines his relationship with the likes of painter Jack B. Yeats (the poet's brother) and Irish actor Jack MacGowran, the foremost Beckett actor. Also examined are Beckett's work with Amnesty International, his refusal to allow his plays to be staged in South Africa because of apartheid and the philosophical underpinnings to Beckett's extraordinary art. Knowlson has compiled a meticulously annotated and valuable biography that belongs in the library of every Beckett aficionado.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The long-awaited authorized biography of the reclusive Nobel laureate, written by Knowlson (French/Univ. of Reading, England), who was not only a friend of Beckett's and his choice to do the book, but is also a noted Beckett scholar. This volume--based on access to Beckett's correspondence, papers, friends and colleagues, and most important, five months of interviews with the subject himself--will stand as definitive for the foreseeable future. Knowlson traces the familiar trajectory of Beckett's career in minute detail, from his comfortable, middle-class childhood in Dublin through his difficult period of shuttling between France, Germany, and his parents' home and his abandonment of an academic career. After settling in France more or less permanently, Beckett would become actively involved with the Resistance; one of the great strengths of this volume is the attention paid to Beckett's political views and activities, which were more extensive than generally imagined. In the aftermath of the war and its privations, Beckett underwent a burst of writing activity that included the play that would make him a famous if misunderstood name, Waiting for Godot. Knowlson is preoccupied with relating events and settings to the writings, something that few Beckett observers have troubled to do in such copious detail, and the result is that the first third of the book has a jagged, discontinuous feeling. But once Beckett's career takes off in the postwar period, Knowlson's narrative flows more graciously. He is an astute commentator on the later writings in particular, explaining how Beckett's love of painting and music inspired much of his work, showing how the passing of an entire generation of Beckett's friends and family inflected the darkening vision of his later works. Above all, Knowlson offers a convincing picture of a man who was better-rounded and better-adjusted than the bleak universe he depicted: a man of surpassing wit, generosity, and kindness, deserving not only of the kudos he garnered over his long life but of a well-rounded portrait, which this most definitely is. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Dissatisfied with previous portrayals of Beckett (for example, Deirdre Bair's controversial first biography, Samuel Beckett, LJ 6/15/78), scholars of the Irish novelist, playwright, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 will be champing at the bit for this fondly painstaking sift through Beckett's life and work. Chosen by Beckett as his biographer because of a critical grounding in his writing, Knowlson, the founder of the Beckett Archive in Reading, England, was able to meet with the writer over several months before he died, at age 83, in 1989. Knowlson also recouped a windfall of material from Beckett's family and friends, such as the "unknown diaries 1937-38," in which Beckett recorded his art tour of Germany. Knowlson concentrates on three somewhat unscrutinized facets of the playwright's life: his studied passion for art and music; his later support of those oppressed or imprisoned, such as Vaclav Havel; and his iron loyalty to friends and respected colleagues. If Knowlson errs, it's on the side of understatement. An immensely sympathetic portrait emerges of a deeply erudite, fiercely dedicated artist bewildered by all the fuss over him. An essential work for all libraries.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

At some point while completing Damned to Fame, a comprehensive, exhaustive, personal, and most likely definitive biography of Samuel Beckett, author Knowlson must have uttered the famous closing line from Waiting for Godot: "I can't go on. I'll go on." It seems no reference has been left unexplored, no person deemed too remote to be interviewed. Knowlson traces Beckett's life from his childhood in Dublin through his education at Trinity University, his work with the resistance in occupied France during World War II, and the brilliant literary career that followed. Knowlson, a scholar who has devoted his life to studying Beckett's work, leaves the reader with a portrait of a brilliant, compassionate, conscientious, self-effacing, and humorous man. The author has done the literary world a favor by providing such a thoughtful and thorough biography of such a unique writer as Samuel Beckett. Ted Leventhal

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684808722
• ISBN 13: 9780684808727
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 800