Samuel Beckett : The Last Modernist

by Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin has insight to, access to and connections with Beckett's world. Cast from the same mould as Beckett - he too is a word-drunk Irish intellectual - Cronin aims to portray Beckett as both a writer of incomparable gifts and a human being with flaws, dreams and anxieties.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Literature, Irish Literature, Literary Criticism

656 pages, Paperback

First published October 7, 1996

About the author

Anthony Cronin was an Irish poet, novelist, biographer, literary critic, commentator and arts activist.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cronin’s Flann O’Brien bio, No Laughing Matter, was a superlative work. This bio, if not reaching similar heights, is liable to remain one of the tippest toppest studies of the moodiest modernist around. From Sam’s meandering beginnings, mooching around his mother’s house, waiting for the Second World War to make a writer of him, to his sluggish slouch towards success and worldwide acclaim, this bio leaves no crevice unprobed. The finest stretch of the bio is Sam’s earlier years, to which Cronin devotes the most time, exploring his strained maternal relationship, his painful sexless romantic affairs, his time hanging with the James Joyce circle in Paris, and his excruciating rich-kid loafage. The latter half fails to devote critical attention to Sam’s short plays and prose, some of which constitute his finest writings, stampeding towards the tense change with rather too much impatience. Otherwise, a singular étude.

[Mike Feher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cronin is to be commended for providing an unmaudlin look at an artist's life which by all accounts is anything but. Beckett's various pains in the world - whether psychosomatic or real - are well-accounted for, and one cannot help but think that the shy and bitter recluse of Beckett was indeed reaching for a world in which he imagined some form of happiness for himself, but could not articulate it. Cronin (blessed with an excellent vocabulary which he uses to great effect to support the book but not cudgel the reader with, and whose favorite word seems to be "advert") takes the reader through the entire life and times, baffling and depressing as they may be, of Beckett, and one is challenged to keep pace and follow his various locales (Ireland, France, Germany, and the United States) and the various characters who enter into Beckett's milieux. Of particular interest to this reader is Beckett's entrée into the circle of Joyce acolytes. While at times dry and abstract in a Schillervision sort of way (leaving the reader puzzling at the meaning of it all), the book is a hearty treatise on Beckett's life and works and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the inscrutable expatriate author of books, plays, and other dramatic works often featuring abstractions such as people buried up to their necks or talking mouths.

A worthwhile read, now over, go on nohow to your next book.

[David Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written biography of a fascinating man.

[S.L. Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read. What an interesting man.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opened my mind up to Sarte and Schopenhauer and instilled further regret that I did not visit Beckett in Paris in 1986

[Marlowe Brennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One imagines Beckett might have offered - as Cronin says he did in regards to Ellmann's Oscar Wilde - that the current work "too long and too detailed, as indeed most modern biographies are." I hope Cronin includes this thought on page 587 for it's ironic value.

Cronin' book IS thorough. He takes us with detail from cradle to grave with few excursions that don't shed light on Beckett's development as a man and as a writer. Certainly worth the investment of time for someone already interested in Beckett the first third was - for me - a bit of a slog. Important perhaps in understanding Beckett's psychological foundation but beyond exhaustive and merely exhausting. Once Cronin gets into the time period he actually experienced of Beckett however the book has more energy and the pacing picks up.

[Vivian Zenari · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book intimidated me by its length and detail, but I have finally finished it. Beckett was a private person, so direct comments from him are not voluminous. Yet the book is full of information about him and the people around him. I didn't know how relatively uneventful his life was before his first play was produced, and that happened when he was middle-aged. I say "relatively" because he did spend much of his young manhood socializing with James Joyce. I feel like I put his work into a context much better than I could before.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicely written, with humour (any book on Beckett needs that), informative, and presenting a good picture of the author and his... characteristics. It helps (in this case) that the author knew his subject. Recommended.

[Stuart Chambers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn’t so keen, I wanted to love this book about a writer I genuinely adore. I didn’t and I didn’t finish the book. That’s rare.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beckett as a man, not Beckett the Nobel Prize Winning Writer... a in-depth and personal appraisal of Samuel Beckett's life and how it ultimately shaped his writings... covers aspects of Beckett glossed over or merely mentioned in other bios... almost a psychological/emotional evaluation and rendering of the man, with ample space utilized to chronicle his life choices and how they created the psyche that manifested itself in his writing and his writing style... at times awkward in what it tells, strange intimacies for such a private person, although it begs the question of which came first, Beckett the Writer (trumpets blaring, or bagpipes maybe?) or Beckett the Person, who then created the persona of the writer... regardless, his genius is evident, as is his breadth and understanding of scholarship as it applied to his craft... Cronin does well in bringing Beckett slightly more down to the rest of us, though Beckett still remains in some ways a mystery and an icon of literature...

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started out as a very readable biography; however, occasionally quite speculative. While I was drawn to the book for the potential discussion of modernism, I abandoned the book when Cronin began to use fiction to fill in details of life. Yes an author can base a character on someone s/he knows, but s/he will most likely tweak details. Therefore to trek to biography from fiction is fraught with errors.

[Helen Tally]

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