Product Description

Increasingly Samuel Beckett's writing is seen as the
culmination of the great literature of the twentieth century - succeeding
the work of Proust, Joyce and Kafka, Beckett is a writer whose relevance to
his time and use of poetic imagery can be compared to Shakespeare's in the
late Renaissance.

John Calder has examined the work of Beckett principally for what it has to
say about our time in terms of philosophy, theology and ethics, and he
points to aspects of his subject's thinking that others have ignored or
preferred not to see.

Samuel Beckett's acute mind pulled apart with courage and much humour the
basic assumptions and beliefs by which most people live. His satire can be
biting and his wit devastating. He found no escape from human tragedy in
the comforts we build to shield ourselves from reality - even in art, which
for most intellectuals has replaced religion.

However, he did develop a moral message - one which is in direct
contradiction to the values of ambition, success, acquisition and security
which is normally held up for admiration, and he looks at the greed,
God-worship, and cruelty to others which we increasingly take for granted,
in a way that is unconventional as as it is revolutionary.

If this study shocks many readers it is because the honesty, the integrity
and the depth of Beckett's thinking - expressed through his novels, plays
and poetry, but also through his other writings and correspondence - is
itself shocking, to conventional thinking. Yet what he has to say is also
comforting. He offers a different ethic and prescription for living - a
message based on stoic courage, compassion and an ability to understand and
forgive.

The author was for many years Samuel Beckett's publisher and friend. He
shares his subject's view of the world and human destiny, which has helped
him to follow through and trace the sources behind Beckett's early
thinking, out of which he created a radical new literature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69312 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
John Calder started his publishing house in 1949 when
manuscripts were plentiful and many books that were in demand were out of
print - the immediate post war years paper was scarce and severely
rationed. During the 1950s he built up a list of translated classics which
included the works of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Goethe and Zola among
others. By the late 1950s, Calder was publishing a group of new writers who
were changing the face of twentieth century literature. One of these was
Samuel Beckett; of whom Calder published all his novels, poetry, criticism,
and some of his plays. Others became synonymous with the school of the
"nouveau roman" or "new novel". These included Alain Robbe-Grillet,
Marguerite Duras, Claude Simon (Nobel Prize 1985), Nathalie Sarraute and
Robert Pinget. Other European novelists, playwrights and poets included
Heinrich Böll (another Nobel Prize winner), Dino Buzzati, Eugène Ionesco,
Fernando Arrabal, René de Obaldia, Peter Weiss and Ivo Andric.