Beckett Remembering/Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration - Hardcover

Knowlson, James; Knowlson, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559707720 ISBN 13: 9781559707725

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

A volume released to coincide with the late Nobel Prize-winning writer's one hundredth birthday collects a series of interviews that offer insight into his beliefs about life, his work, and his friends and colleagues, in a profile complemented by essays by contemporaries whom Beckett influenced.

About this title

About the Author

James Knowlson is also the author of Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett among many others. He is the Professor Emeritus at the University of Reading, and, in 2011, he was awarded the title of Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques for “his eminent career devoted to an understanding of European theatre, specifically for his numerous publications on the life and work of the Nobel prize–winner Samuel Beckett, a friend of many years standing, and for his interviews and broadcasts on French radio and television, which have helped to promote the diffusion of the French language and French culture," according to the President of France. He resides in Reading, England.

From Publishers Weekly

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) wrote that we are all "born astride the grave." Now on the centenary of the absurd dramatist and writer's birth, noted Beckett scholar and biographer Knowlson and his wife offer a valuable literary memorial. As the title suggests, the book is a collection of the notoriously private Beckett's reminiscences about his life and remembrances of Beckett from scholars and those who knew, worked or were impacted by him. The abundant glimpses Beckett provides are remarkable for their openness as much as their scarcity: these pieces, drawn from Knowlson's interview transcripts, haven't appeared elsewhere and cover topics like his friendship with painter Jack Yeats ("I think he thought he was the only painter.") and his doomed teaching career ("I didn't intend to be a writer. That only came later when I found out that I was no good at all at teaching."). Childhood friends, family members and a who's who of literary and theater heavyweights-Edward Albee, J.M. Coetzee, Jessica Tandy, Martin Esslin, Ruby Cohn, Billie Whitelaw-contribute memories, stories or essays. Organized chronologically, the anthology includes a chapter on Beckett as a theater director and an appendix containing notes on Beckett's lectures on Racine during his stint at Trinity College. Formatted like George Plimpton's biographies of Edie Sedgwick and Truman Capote or Legs McNeil's oral histories of punk and porn, Knowlson's Beckett tribute straddles the absurdist's immortality.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1559707720
• ISBN 13: 9781559707725
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336