cover image Beckett Remembering Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration

Beckett Remembering Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration

. Arcade Publishing, $27.95 (313pp) ISBN 978-1-55970-772-5

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) wrote that we are all ""born astride the grave."" Now on the centenary of the absurd dramatist and writer's birth, noted Beckett scholar and biographer Knowlson and his wife offer a valuable literary memorial. As the title suggests, the book is a collection of the notoriously private Beckett's reminiscences about his life and remembrances of Beckett from scholars and those who knew, worked or were impacted by him. The abundant glimpses Beckett provides are remarkable for their openness as much as their scarcity: these pieces, drawn from Knowlson's interview transcripts, haven't appeared elsewhere and cover topics like his friendship with painter Jack Yeats (""I think he thought he was the only painter."") and his doomed teaching career (""I didn't intend to be a writer. That only came later when I found out that I was no good at all at teaching.""). Childhood friends, family members and a who's who of literary and theater heavyweights-Edward Albee, J.M. Coetzee, Jessica Tandy, Martin Esslin, Ruby Cohn, Billie Whitelaw-contribute memories, stories or essays. Organized chronologically, the anthology includes a chapter on Beckett as a theater director and an appendix containing notes on Beckett's lectures on Racine during his stint at Trinity College. Formatted like George Plimpton's biographies of Edie Sedgwick and Truman Capote or Legs McNeil's oral histories of punk and porn, Knowlson's Beckett tribute straddles the absurdist's immortality.