Beckett Remembering/Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration

by James Knowlson, Elizabeth Knowlson

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. Reprint.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Irish Literature, Ireland

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read James Knowlson's most excellent biography of Sam so I was unsure if this would simply be extracts from that great book. Great news its is not a regurgitation but an expansion and additions from different sources, further broadening our knowledge. There can never be too much material about this most unique of writers.

[Zeynep Şen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally done with this book! It's been an absolute pleasure translating :) Look for it in Turkish in January!!

[Henry L. Racicot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel Beckett was regarded as one of the great literary eggheads of the 20th century, and I suppose his reputation is deserved, though the work he is most famous for, the drama Waiting For Godot, is as subtle as the Three Stooges' Oily To Bed, Oily To Rise.

Over-rated as a dramatist, there is an undeniable greatness to his fiction, particularly the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable>. But there is also an undeniable dullness in much of Beckett’s writing. It’s a curious kind of dullness, though. It’s not quite boring enough to get you to close the book, it’s just irritating enough, with just enough of a dash of morbid humor to keep you turning the page. Beckett was the great chronicler of the modern navel gazer, the man with too much time on his hands, who, instead of living, thought about living (what the intellectuals call *existence*) and fretted endlessly about death.

He had keen insight into the kind of stupid, artificial lives most of us live. . .he was the sheeple’s great tragicomedian.

In reading Beckett Remembering, Remembering Beckett, a collection of interviews with Becket and people who knew Beckett, we discover the wellspring of Beckett’s curious literary dullness: it is Becket himself. We have 313 pages of remembrances by and about Beckett, and aside from the fact he grew from a deathly dull schoolteacher to James Joyce’s errand boy and then to the Big Man of the Theater of the Absurd (and taking his plays so ultra-seriously, he believed nobody could stage them correctly, thus he ended up directing them himself--in a prick-like fashion), all we learn about the Great Man of Letters is the following:

He was a tall, thin, quiet, shy man with blue eyes who didn’t like to talk about his work.

This book definitely will only interest the academic crowd. . .

[Goatboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely wonderful way to get a sense of Beckett from the people who knew him, without having to wade through the much longer biography by the same author (which still might be in my future). Recommended to anyone interested in Beckett.

[kabukigal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because the bulk of the book is comprised ofl interviews of Sam Beckett, his friends, family and colleagues, I found entry into an intimate, wonderful new world of Beckett's life and his brilliant work.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

For as much wonderful material as this book contained, it's too bad it wasn't arranged better. For those interested in Beckett, I'd recommend Knowlson's earlier 800-page brick, Damned to Fame, which is less sentimental, better organized, and more erudite.

[Mehmet Giritli · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very useful resource for Beckett lovers. a compact version of "Damned to Fame" and Deirdre Bair's Beckett biography. A note for Turkish readers: read it from the original language if possible. Unfortunately, the Turkish translation is quite unsuccessful and loose.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just really loved some of the reminiscences in this book; though my initial feeling was that it was all tacky and just a collection of things that didn't fit anywhere else.

[Tom Breen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fine expansion of Knowlson's essential biography of Beckett, "Damned to Fame," with memories from people who knew Beckett at every stage of his life, from childhood to his last days in a nursing home. There are also excerpts from interviews with Beckett, which make up the most fascinating part of the book, although his voice is mostly absent from the second half, which is mostly devoted to people who worked with him in the theater or who staged his plays in the US, particularly members of a dramatic troupe at San Quentin Prison. For my tastes, there was a bit too much of this latter material, and some of the recollections of Beckett from theater people and writers came across as a bit rehearsed, which is maybe appropriate. Either way, this book provides many rich insights into one of the 20th century's most fascinating and vital creative voices. I found the material about his early life in Ireland particularly interesting, along with some of the frank, unsentimental memories of comrades from the French Resistance.