Samuel Beckett: the last modernist
by Anthony Cronin
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Description
Intensely private, possibly saintly, but perhaps misanthropic, Samuel Beckett was the most legendary and enigmatic of writers. Anthony Cronin's biography is a revelation of this mythical figure as fully human and fallible, while confirming his enormous stature both as a man and a writer. Cronin explores how the sporty schoolboy of solid Protestant bourgeois stock became a prizewinning student at Trinity, flirted with scholarship, and, in Paris, found himself at the center of its literary show more avant-garde as an intimate friend of James Joyce. But he was a young man who struggled with complexities in his own nature as well as with problems of literary expression. In the small provincial city of Kassel, Germany, the cosmopolitan Beckett experienced a faltering entanglement with his cousin--one of the first in a series of problematic encounters with women. The war years, which he spent as a member of the Resistance and a refugee in the South of France, brought Beckett the self-probings and discoveries that led to the great works. Then, with his sudden and astonishing fame, the balloons of myth began to inflate and a stereotype was born--frozen in exile and enigma, solemnity and sanctity. Anthony Cronin bursts these balloons to see more clearly what lies behind. Without moralizing or psychologizing, without pretensions or piety, he uncovers the real Beckett, the way the life was lived, the way the art was made. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Following close on the heels of James Knowlson's tremendous recent biography of Beckett, Damned to Fame, Irish poet and broadcaster Cronin's opus is an altogether different effort. While both start and end at the same place and are similarly lengthy, Cronin's work arrives at the writing of Waiting for Godot (1948) almost two-thirds of the way into his work, concentrating on Beckett's early "modernist" years, with excellent coverage of Vichy France; in contrast, Knowlson offers intensive focus on the writing and production of Beckett's plays. Cronin is a fluid, witty writer who does not refrain from inserting his own editorial comments into Beckett's story; nor does he idolize his subject. Beckett's liaison with Barbara Bray, who is show more Cronin's friend, is fully fleshed here, to the exclusion of other romances, the details of which Knowlson has reliably supplied. While Knowlson cracked every safe to fill in his portrait, Cronin conjures the spirit of the man. show less
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Author Information
26+ Works 504 Members
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Samuel Beckett: the last modernist
- Original publication date
- 1996
- People/Characters
- Samuel Beckett
- Important places
- Dublin, Ireland; Paris, France
- Blurbers
- O'Toole, Finton; Toibin, Colm
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Fiction and Literature, Literature Studies and Criticism
- DDC/MDS
- 848.91409 — Literature & rhetoric French & related literatures French miscellaneous writings 1900- 1900-1999 1945-1999 Individual authors
- LCC
- PR6003 .E282 .Z6242 — Language and Literature English English Literature 1900-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 156
- Popularity
- 208,979
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.91)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 1
