Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist - Softcover

Cronin, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007330049 ISBN 13: 9780007330041

Publisher: Flamingo, 2009

Synopsis

Intensely private, possibly saintly, but perhaps misanthropic, Samuel Beckett was the most legendary and enigmatic of writers. Anthony Cronin's biography is a revelation of this mythical figure as fully human and fallible, while confirming his enormous stature both as a man and a writer. Cronin explores how the sporty schoolboy of solid Protestant bourgeois stock became a prizewinning student at Trinity, flirted with scholarship, and, in Paris, found himself at the center of its literary avant-garde as an intimate friend of James Joyce. But he was a young man who struggled with complexities in his own nature as well as with problems of literary expression. In the small provincial city of Kassel, Germany, the cosmopolitan Beckett experienced a faltering entanglement with his cousin--one of the first in a series of problematic encounters with women. The war years, which he spent as a member of the Resistance and a refugee in the South of France, brought Beckett the self-probings and discoveries that led to the great works. Then, with his sudden and astonishing fame, the balloons of myth began to inflate and a stereotype was born--frozen in exile and enigma, solemnity and sanctity. Anthony Cronin bursts these balloons to see more clearly what lies behind. Without moralizing or psychologizing, without pretensions or piety, he uncovers the real Beckett, the way the life was lived, the way the art was made.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"A splendidly rich account of a key literary figure of this century."
BRUCE ARNOLD, 'Irish Independent'

"With lightly worn erudition, Cronin charts his subject's evolution from one of several gifted 'literati' in 1930s Dublin into the international giant whose Nobel Prize was a recognition of real originality... Stylish, and written with a nonchalant elegance that would have pleased Beckett."
JOHN FLETCHER, 'New Statesman'

"Anthony Cronin, in his beautifully personal slant on Beckett's life, undercuts the myth of nobility and saintliness that sometimes surrounds Beckett these days... Cronin is a sort of ambassador of Beckett's humanness and humanity, not always the same thing, and of his greatness as a mature writer... An extraordinary account."
SEBASTIAN BARRY, 'The Times'

"A witty and compulsively readable narrative which not only gives us the facts but enters imaginatively into the mental and emotional life of the subject and goes much of the way towards explaining the nature of both the man and the work... For its warmth and realism, no less than for its literary expertise, this is the one to get."
DEREK MAHON, 'Sunday Independent'

"Stylishly, readably illuminates Beckett's Irishness, makes him part of the literary life of three countries and provides close readings of his work... Cronin rises admirably to the challenge of portraying a man famous for being as inaccessible in life as he remains in his writing."
DAVID COWARD, 'Sunday Telegraph'

"Cronin charts ground left little explored by other biographies; has a more incisive feel for 'Frenchness' and Parisian life; more graphically describes pubs, heavy drinking, brothels and nocturnal wanderings; has a more realistic grasp of the ambiguity of writer-publisher relations; and is more willing to take risks in making lively deductions... Engrossing."
JOHN TAYLOR, 'TLS'

About the Author:

Anthony Cronin is a poet, novelist, broadcaster, editor, and author of No Laughing Matter, a celebrated biography of Flann O'Brien. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0007330049
• ISBN 13: 9780007330041
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 668