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The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946
Samuel Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot was one of the most influential works for the post-World War II generation, has long been identified with the debilitated and impotent characters he created. In this provocative book, Lois Gordon offers a new perspective on Beckett, challenging the prevalent image of him as reclusive, self-absorbed, and disturbed. Gordon investigates the first forty years of Beckett's life and finds that he was, on the contrary, a kind and generous man who responded sensitively and even heroically to the world around him.
Gordon describes the various places and events that affected Beckett during this formative war-torn Dublin during the Easter Uprising and World War I, where he spent his childhood and student days; Belfast and Paris in the 1920s and London during the Depression, where he lived and worked; Germany in 1937, where he traveled and witnessed Hitler's brutal domestic policies; prewar and occupied France, where he was active in the Resistance (for which he was later decorated); and the war-ravaged town of Saint-Lô in Normandy, which he helped to restore following the liberation. Gordon also portrays the individuals who were important to Beckett, including Jack B. Yeats, Alfred Péron, Thomas McGreevy, and, most significantly, James Joyce, who was a model for Beckett personally, artistically, and politically. Gordon argues convincingly that Beckett was very much aware of the political and cultural turmoil of this period and that the enormously creative works he wrote after World War II can, in fact, be viewed as a product of and testament to those tumultuous times.
Gordon describes the various places and events that affected Beckett during this formative war-torn Dublin during the Easter Uprising and World War I, where he spent his childhood and student days; Belfast and Paris in the 1920s and London during the Depression, where he lived and worked; Germany in 1937, where he traveled and witnessed Hitler's brutal domestic policies; prewar and occupied France, where he was active in the Resistance (for which he was later decorated); and the war-ravaged town of Saint-Lô in Normandy, which he helped to restore following the liberation. Gordon also portrays the individuals who were important to Beckett, including Jack B. Yeats, Alfred Péron, Thomas McGreevy, and, most significantly, James Joyce, who was a model for Beckett personally, artistically, and politically. Gordon argues convincingly that Beckett was very much aware of the political and cultural turmoil of this period and that the enormously creative works he wrote after World War II can, in fact, be viewed as a product of and testament to those tumultuous times.
- GenresBiography
264 pages, Paperback
First published February 21, 1996
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September 14, 2025the local library didn't have the knowlson (edit: which, i have since learned, is the one to read) or the bair (to which this is a response & of which it is a refutation) but they did have this, so i settled for it while waiting to procure a copy of the knowlson. beckett is probably, in terms of time spent, the writer most important to my life, so it was a joy to 'return' to him.
gordon's bio has the advantage of chronicling what is easily one of the most interesting lives of the twentieth century. just in terms of material, this is a pageturner with a striking anecdote in almost every paragraph. i knew a fair amount about beckett going in--including both party trick anecdotes like his driving andre the giant to school, the pimp stabbing him, or his sportsman days, as well as the more esoteric stories like his wanting to study under eisenstein, his translations for nancy cunard's anthology, or the poetry contest he won with a cobbled together last minute entry--& i was still edified & entertained by new discoveries on nearly every page. & it didn't even fit in my favorite stories about him!
she has the further advantage of taking as her premise the laudable notion that beckett did not spring ex nihilo into the literary world but rather emerged from a historical period that shaped him & his work. this means that gordon often takes a panoramic view, sketching out the atmospheres of dublin, london, paris, & even rouissillon (!) that beckett inhaled. the book is better for it, especially in the showstopping chapter on joyce. (the jack b yeats connection is interesting, too, though her claims about his influence on beckett felt a little more tenuous.)
relatedly, she has the advantage of reading beckett not as an existentialist, absurdist (i.e., inane) writer, but rather as a writer whose work was overdetermined by the various strands of modernisms, avant-garde movements, philosophical traditions, & especially the political movements that he encountered & participated in during the interwar era. this isn't just the right reading of beckett (though it is that) but it is the book's greatest asset: it means that gordon spends time with the easter uprising & irish/british conflicts of beckett's youth; it means that she sketches his parisian artistic networks with care; & it means that she takes beckett's work with the resistance seriously. & she tells the wartime history very well. by the time we're in vichy france the book is a nailbiter.
plus, she wisely stops her biography right where the godot/molloy period begins. this is an ingenious way to demonstrate her point about history without putting all of the work under the biographical lens. (tangentially, beckett said that he didn't write about himself but that he worked with his 'material.') this is, after all, a book about beckett's world, not his work. because the work already exists--& has been written about ad nauseam--it's more interesting to read about his world.
now onto the disadvantages. first is that gordon's biography has come belatedly, & she is at times tasked with the less prestigious duty of reciting knowlson here, bair there (usually contentiously), ellmann there, etc. while she's certainly done her own research & adds interesting perspectives into this conversation, it's clear that we are largely retreading known terrain, & even her expansion of scope can't quite solve this problem.
secondly, gordon doesn't seem to credit her own premise. i think she should! it's enough to say that beckett was a creature of history & then detail that history. but gordon hurts her case by constant speculative flourishes--beckett could have read this, might have seen that, etc--that ironically undermine her (absolutely correct) point that we are historical beings. beckett is historical not because he intentionally decided to tune into this or that but because history is what molds us without our knowing how. gordon's too frequent, regrettable tic of pedantic speculation--maybe he saw this exhibit or read about this in the news or or or--takes up the space that a more properly historicist analysis could fill.
that absence points up another disadvantage that gordon's bio faces. while her writing about beckett's life is electric, her attempts to extrapolate both about his writing & broader cultural tendencies generally do not reach beyond the shallows, almost as if she's afraid to venture into interpretive waters. (i've dangerously mixed metaphors there.) instead, she usually resorts to hagiography (to be fair, defensively so--again, this is a response to bair) or humanist cliches. but it's a biography, not a work of literary criticism, so we can afford some grace there. & her decision to cut the biography off before what might be called his major period helps to ameliorate this flaw.
where we might have less grace is for imprecision in a scholarly biography. i was often so struck by gordon's claims that i chased them down to learn more. several times, i was disappointed by what i found. for instance, the claim that wyndham lewis's time & western man was an influence on james joyce's finnegans wake is perhaps true on its surface but distorts her source, which claims that joyce mocked lewis's work & inserted a parody of lewis in his book. i suppose that's an influence, but it's not what anyone would infer she means. likewise, the claim that joyce's taste remained consistent throughout his life--citing a handful of writers that he admired (lewis among them, to my surprise!)--was linked to a source that said nothing of the kind. i assume that's an error in the endnotes, rather than a fabrication, but i have no way to know. & then there's the story about suzanne being followed by the gestapo to her apartment only for them to find that beckett had a copy of mein kampf that he had been reading, prompting the gestapo to leave her alone. this endnote--already barely sourced--led me nowhere. maybe it's in the knowlson or the bair--but if so it should be here, too. i know no one can be perfect with such things but this borders at times on being irresponsible scholarship. (on that note, this could've used more editing. often sentences were incredibly misleading in their construction or straightforwardly ungrammatical. and there are typos that shade into factual errors, such as rendering jack b yeats's 1936 novel the amaranthers as a 1934 novel called the amaranthus, et al.)
all that said, this was a delight to read. i'm happy to have read it. but it still needs to be supplemented by other sources. knowlsonward ho.
my favorite detail, i think, was that joyce broke off his friendship with ezra pound after pound was rude to beckett. i also love that joyce memorized & recited lines of murphy, & wrote a limerick about the novel. i love that lucia joyce wrote an essay about chaplin, & that she & beckett used to go to the movies together. i should read that ellmann bio, huh.
gordon's bio has the advantage of chronicling what is easily one of the most interesting lives of the twentieth century. just in terms of material, this is a pageturner with a striking anecdote in almost every paragraph. i knew a fair amount about beckett going in--including both party trick anecdotes like his driving andre the giant to school, the pimp stabbing him, or his sportsman days, as well as the more esoteric stories like his wanting to study under eisenstein, his translations for nancy cunard's anthology, or the poetry contest he won with a cobbled together last minute entry--& i was still edified & entertained by new discoveries on nearly every page. & it didn't even fit in my favorite stories about him!
she has the further advantage of taking as her premise the laudable notion that beckett did not spring ex nihilo into the literary world but rather emerged from a historical period that shaped him & his work. this means that gordon often takes a panoramic view, sketching out the atmospheres of dublin, london, paris, & even rouissillon (!) that beckett inhaled. the book is better for it, especially in the showstopping chapter on joyce. (the jack b yeats connection is interesting, too, though her claims about his influence on beckett felt a little more tenuous.)
relatedly, she has the advantage of reading beckett not as an existentialist, absurdist (i.e., inane) writer, but rather as a writer whose work was overdetermined by the various strands of modernisms, avant-garde movements, philosophical traditions, & especially the political movements that he encountered & participated in during the interwar era. this isn't just the right reading of beckett (though it is that) but it is the book's greatest asset: it means that gordon spends time with the easter uprising & irish/british conflicts of beckett's youth; it means that she sketches his parisian artistic networks with care; & it means that she takes beckett's work with the resistance seriously. & she tells the wartime history very well. by the time we're in vichy france the book is a nailbiter.
plus, she wisely stops her biography right where the godot/molloy period begins. this is an ingenious way to demonstrate her point about history without putting all of the work under the biographical lens. (tangentially, beckett said that he didn't write about himself but that he worked with his 'material.') this is, after all, a book about beckett's world, not his work. because the work already exists--& has been written about ad nauseam--it's more interesting to read about his world.
now onto the disadvantages. first is that gordon's biography has come belatedly, & she is at times tasked with the less prestigious duty of reciting knowlson here, bair there (usually contentiously), ellmann there, etc. while she's certainly done her own research & adds interesting perspectives into this conversation, it's clear that we are largely retreading known terrain, & even her expansion of scope can't quite solve this problem.
secondly, gordon doesn't seem to credit her own premise. i think she should! it's enough to say that beckett was a creature of history & then detail that history. but gordon hurts her case by constant speculative flourishes--beckett could have read this, might have seen that, etc--that ironically undermine her (absolutely correct) point that we are historical beings. beckett is historical not because he intentionally decided to tune into this or that but because history is what molds us without our knowing how. gordon's too frequent, regrettable tic of pedantic speculation--maybe he saw this exhibit or read about this in the news or or or--takes up the space that a more properly historicist analysis could fill.
that absence points up another disadvantage that gordon's bio faces. while her writing about beckett's life is electric, her attempts to extrapolate both about his writing & broader cultural tendencies generally do not reach beyond the shallows, almost as if she's afraid to venture into interpretive waters. (i've dangerously mixed metaphors there.) instead, she usually resorts to hagiography (to be fair, defensively so--again, this is a response to bair) or humanist cliches. but it's a biography, not a work of literary criticism, so we can afford some grace there. & her decision to cut the biography off before what might be called his major period helps to ameliorate this flaw.
where we might have less grace is for imprecision in a scholarly biography. i was often so struck by gordon's claims that i chased them down to learn more. several times, i was disappointed by what i found. for instance, the claim that wyndham lewis's time & western man was an influence on james joyce's finnegans wake is perhaps true on its surface but distorts her source, which claims that joyce mocked lewis's work & inserted a parody of lewis in his book. i suppose that's an influence, but it's not what anyone would infer she means. likewise, the claim that joyce's taste remained consistent throughout his life--citing a handful of writers that he admired (lewis among them, to my surprise!)--was linked to a source that said nothing of the kind. i assume that's an error in the endnotes, rather than a fabrication, but i have no way to know. & then there's the story about suzanne being followed by the gestapo to her apartment only for them to find that beckett had a copy of mein kampf that he had been reading, prompting the gestapo to leave her alone. this endnote--already barely sourced--led me nowhere. maybe it's in the knowlson or the bair--but if so it should be here, too. i know no one can be perfect with such things but this borders at times on being irresponsible scholarship. (on that note, this could've used more editing. often sentences were incredibly misleading in their construction or straightforwardly ungrammatical. and there are typos that shade into factual errors, such as rendering jack b yeats's 1936 novel the amaranthers as a 1934 novel called the amaranthus, et al.)
all that said, this was a delight to read. i'm happy to have read it. but it still needs to be supplemented by other sources. knowlsonward ho.
my favorite detail, i think, was that joyce broke off his friendship with ezra pound after pound was rude to beckett. i also love that joyce memorized & recited lines of murphy, & wrote a limerick about the novel. i love that lucia joyce wrote an essay about chaplin, & that she & beckett used to go to the movies together. i should read that ellmann bio, huh.
December 25, 2021
Lois Gordon's partisan portrait, focused as it is on Samuel Beckett's surroundings more than on the man himself, is intended to be a corrective to Deirdre Bair's well-known, warts-and-all biography of the Nobel Laureate. Not exactly a hagiography, "The World of.." is nevertheless committed to recasting its subject as a literary hero, free from neuroses and negativities. But built as it is around maybes, could haves, and might haves, the author never achieves her intended shine despite a tirelessly vigorous polish. Her conjectures come across as wishful thinking; her connections, not credible; her goal, out of reach.
September 7, 2016
The Samuel Beckett of this fine biographical portrait is an inspiring artist. Gordon presents an alternative view of Beckett that follows the playwright and novelist from his birth until age 40, when he began to find himself as a writer. She parts ways with the popular understanding of Beckett as a grim, rattled existentialist introvert who barely clung to sanity. His life is presented within a larger historical context, following him from his conservative, morally minded, upper-class rearing in a well-heeled suburb of Dublin, to his academic and athletic successes before and during study at Trinity College, his rebellious immersion in bohemian Paris and in economically devastated 1930s London, and finally his involvement as a WW II Resistance fighter in France. Gordon's craft and her scruples are impressive. The focus is on the world from 1906 to 1946 in which Beckett matured and became the great writer that we know. With fascinating depiction of his involvement with the Red Cross and French Resistance we learn about the life that helped make the man.
Gordon seeks to put us in his shoes by describing in detail, for example, the probable impact on Beckett of his close friendship with James Joyce in terms that help us to feel it, and the political-cultural circumstances leading up to the rise of the Vichy government so that a reader can judge Beckett's likely motives and emotions in opposing it. Avoiding extensive discussion of his work and choosing not to emphasize the testimonials of people who knew him, Gordon relies mainly on external events to support her thesis. Of course, her conclusion- -``Beckett was not a fragile and reclusive man set apart from the real world. He was a sensitive and courageous man marked by and responsive to the world''--is arguable, but she significantly extends the scholarship about her subject. The clarity of Gordon's writing, never marred by willfulness or anxiety, is ideally suited to posing her challenge. Her study also draws us in by sheer narrative force. This is an exemplary glimpse of a literary enigma.
Gordon seeks to put us in his shoes by describing in detail, for example, the probable impact on Beckett of his close friendship with James Joyce in terms that help us to feel it, and the political-cultural circumstances leading up to the rise of the Vichy government so that a reader can judge Beckett's likely motives and emotions in opposing it. Avoiding extensive discussion of his work and choosing not to emphasize the testimonials of people who knew him, Gordon relies mainly on external events to support her thesis. Of course, her conclusion- -``Beckett was not a fragile and reclusive man set apart from the real world. He was a sensitive and courageous man marked by and responsive to the world''--is arguable, but she significantly extends the scholarship about her subject. The clarity of Gordon's writing, never marred by willfulness or anxiety, is ideally suited to posing her challenge. Her study also draws us in by sheer narrative force. This is an exemplary glimpse of a literary enigma.
March 7, 2012
I highly recommend this book. Although I don't entirely agree with some of the New Historicist methodology, which sometimes slows down the pace and doesn't prove causation, the author makes a good case for overturning previous portraits of Beckett as disturbed recluse. I have always found Beckett's novels and plays to be touching and humane celebrations of life underneath the modernist aesthetic. I was glad to hear of a Beckett as a humble, gentle soul who felt a great sense of moral obligation to helping others. That is what I mostly take away from Endgame and Godot.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews