Illustrated Lives: Samuel Beckett

by Gerry Dukes

Samuel Beckett was perhaps the most unconventional playwright of the twentieth century. Born in Ireland, he spent the Second World War in France and wrote in both French and English about the bizarre tragedy of life itself. Gerry Dukes knew Beckett personally, and gives us a unique insight into this intensely private and troubled man. PENGUIN ILLUSTRATED LIVES is a new series of photographic biographies that allows you to step into the world of your favourite writers. Each book contains a brief text (15,000 words), integrated with over one hundred images, many in colour, allowing an immediate, intimate understanding of their life.

Genres: Biography

161 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[K.D. Absolutely]

I read this book prior to my attempt to read the whole canon of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) works. I recently bought a whole brand-new 4-volume set of his writings worth P2,295.00 (approximately US$55 - already very expensive in my standard) and I wanted to make sure that I knew something about the man.

* He was an Irish.

* Like Nabokov, he was a multi-lingual writer: English, French and Italian. He did not write any of his works in Italian though. Nobokov wrote in Russian, English and French.

* He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 ”for his writing, which – in new forms for the novel and drama – in the destruction of modern man acquires it elevation.” I am still to read his works but in the book, I did not see anything political about him. In fact, his works offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour. Question in my mind: was he an exception to the rule?

* He was a friend of and was strongly influenced by James Joyce (1882-1941) and helped him write Finnegan’s Wake.Both of them are considered as modernists. Their friendship turned sour when Beckett rejected the advances of Joyce’s daughter Lucia owing to her progressing schizophrenia. Funny, because later, he was stabbed by a prostitute who thought that he was a pimp in a dark street.

* He was born on a Good Friday. His father was a surveyor while his mother was a nurse. They lived in a house called Cooldrinagh that is huge and with a garden.

* He attended a school that Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) also attended. He was a very athletic boy/young man.

* His novels that I have to read in my quest to finish all the 1001 books: (2006-2010): Murphy (1938), Molloy (1951), and Malone Dies (1951). There were also those in the original 2006 version: Watt (1945), Mercier et Comier (1946) , The Unnamable (1953), How It Is (1961) and Worstward Ho (1961). Only his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932) did not make it to the 1001 list.

And those are enough for me to think that his works, even if expensive, are worth reading.

[Jasmine]

Minus one star for not shedding enough light on Beckett's amourous affairs. Otherwise, an excellent companion book to Beckett's canon, complete with the political backgrounds of Ireland and France during his lifetime, an insightful commentary on all of his bibliography, and never before published pictures of him at work. The fact that Gerry Dukes (the author) was relatively close to Beckett and met him in person for one or two times (which is something to be raised an eyebrow at given how frugal Beckett was when granting his presence to journalists and scholars who duly requested for it) did much more than little to take this palm-sized book seriously.

For those who thought or might think this book is inadequate as a biography sketch of the enigmatic modernist after having read the book itself or the reviews here, the series is not dubbed 'Overlook Illustrated Lives' for nothing.

[Neal Alexander]

This pocket Samuel Beckett photo book works surprisingly well. The 150 small pages contain almost 100 photos, ranging from family holidays, to rehearsals of plays and films, to studio portraits, to production stills. The accompanying text is a well-informed and concise description of Beckett’s life and writing.

[Mr. C.]

A very simplistic, informative and concise work upon the life of Beckett. The author has woven the time line of Becketts days together with an honest and accessible voice, and is set off with some wonderful images in tandem with anecdotes of his subjects experience.

A great introduction to one of Ireland's finest.

[Nick]

A quick, summary read. Not pretending to be anything else either. Honest effort, worthy of my stars.

[Zeerak Ibrahim]

It does not give a very extensive insight of how he use to write and direct the plays for which he won the Nobel prize

[Sam Oxford]

I like the pictures. The writing was kind of a long Encyclopedia Britannica/Wikipedia article which wasn’t bad but not amazing and I didn’t learn much.

[Leif]

Not the best biographical sketch I've read of Beckett by any means, this one certainly vies for the one with the most pictures. And you know what? I think that with Beckett that's a fair thing to be looking for. Dukes is a fair writer also, which helps.

[David Markwell]

A brief introduction to Beckett and his works. Fairly well written with some nice photos of Beckett and his world.