modernism and the beginning of a new sensibility, postmodernism. The modernists of the early twentieth century—James Joyce, W. H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and others—were stunned by the absurdity of their world. Previous generations had filled that world with philosophical, religious, and political meanings, but their orderly vision of reality no longer seemed to apply to life in the early 1900’s. The modernists lacked the faith of their forebears; they had experienced the chaos of the modern world with its potential for global war and the destruction of civilization, and they believed that the order of reality was a fiction, that life was unknowable. In response to their doubts, they turned literature in upon itself, separating it from life, creating an art for its own sake. These writers trusted in language to create new meanings, new knowledge, and a separate, artistic human universe.

As a young man, Beckett also experienced this sense of absurdity and meaninglessness in the modern world, but, unlike his modernist predecessors, he could not even muster faith in his art or in language. Thus, while Joyce could revel in the possibilities and textures of the written word, Beckett could not. Instead, he reduced his fictions, his plays, and his poems to the barest elements, and, throughout his career, he tried to rejoin art and life in his own way. For the pre-modernists, art imitated the world beyond the human mind. The modernists rejected this idea of imitation, and so did Beckett. Instead, his art reflects the inner world, the world of the human voice, the only world human beings can ever really experience. In the pre-modern era, art was successful if it depicted some truth about the world. For the modernists, art succeeded only on its own terms, regardless of the world beyond the scope of the arts. For Beckett, art never succeeds. It is a necessary failure which never manages to link the inner mind to outer reality. As such, art is an exercise in courage, foredoomed to failure, like human life itself. Human beings are human beings not because they can give meaning to the world or because they can retreat into aesthetics but because they can recognize that their world is meaningless and that their lives are leading them only toward death; yet they must continue to live and strive. As a philosopher of failure, Beckett was the first thinker of the post-modern age.

Although Samuel Beckett began to write for publication in the pre-World War II period, he had little success until after the war. His first worldwide acclaim came as a dramatist, with the production of the play En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) first in Paris in 1952, in French, then in 1954 in London, in English. His ultimate reputation was to rest primarily on his plays, but he was also a novelist, again of major importance. His three novels Molloy (1951; English translation, 1955), Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies, 1956), and L’Innommable (1953; The Unnamable, 1958) can be read separately but are, in fact, usually published under the title Trilogy and are his best work in that medium. He is also an interesting literary critic and something of a poet, but his greatest contributions have been to drama and the novel.

Samuel Beckett is the unchallenged master of “absurd” literature, not only in English but also in French, which he often used as the original language for his work. He is, for many critics, the great novelist, and, at the same time, the great dramatist of the second half of the twentieth century, despite the fact that he is not a popular writer; his work is often difficult to read, pays very little attention to pleasing the reader or the audience, and is generally pessimistic and often repetitious.

Despite his late recognition and the lack of much published material in his later years, Beckett was a prolific writer in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and his occasional works after that time, usually in the form of short fictions (which were sometimes cheekily called “novels”), were always received with great interest. There is a large critical industry providing comment upon his work, not only because of its artistic quality or experimental daring but also because of its themes and attitude, which are recognized as authentically, if disturbingly, accurate in representing the relentlessly despairing sensibility of much of the post-World War II intelligentsia, particularly in Europe. His work in general, even when it seems eccentrically ambiguous, has a ring of credibility that mirrors the angst and helplessness of late twentieth century life in the face of worldwide unrest and violence. He has made art out of human beings’ failure to find meaning in a world that has gone so badly off the rails that many have lost confidence in religion, politics, society, or personal relationships. He never makes chiding statements on these problems, but his stories seem to be metaphors for modern humankind’s situation. He is, therefore, unusual in being considered by many to be the greatest writer of the last half of the twentieth century, while rarely read by the general public because his work is considered too difficult.

Samuel Beckett worked in literary forms other than drama. Although his radio plays, film script, and teleplays may be viewed as dramas that differ only in their use of various media, they nevertheless indicate his versatile and experimental approach to literary form. In prose fiction, he wrote both novels and short stories. The trilogy of novels, Molloy (1951; English translation, 1955), Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies, 1956), and L’Innommable (1953; The Unnamable, 1958), written in French between 1947 and 1949, constitutes a major accomplishment in the genre. These works, like the earlier novel Murphy (1938), developed a monologue style of unique tone, with which Beckett had first begun to experiment in his short stories, collected as More Pricks than Kicks (1934). His first published literary work, however, was a poem on time and René Descartes, Whoroscope (1930), which won for him a prize; this work was followed by a collection of poems entitled Echo’s Bones and Other Precipitates (1935). Beckett also turned to translations of Spanish poetry with Octavio Paz’s An Anthology of Mexican Poetry in 1958. In addition, he distinguished himself with his several translations of his own work, from English into French (such as Murphy) and French into English (such as Malone meurt); Beckett continued this practice throughout his career as dramatist, notably with En attendant Godot, which he translated into Waiting for Godot, and Fin de partie, which he translated into Endgame.

Samuel Beckett is famous for his fiction and drama, which he wrote both in French and in English. Waiting for Godot established the Irish Beckett as a unique writer because he elected the French language as his primary means of composition and English as his secondary one. The success of Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape, as well as his trilogy of French novels, led to Trinity College’s awarding Beckett an honorary doctorate in 1959. Beckett also explored radio, cinema, and television for his art. So conscious was he of style that people disappeared into mere voices, mere echoes, and his plays could be called, as one was, ironically, simply Play, performed in 1963 at about the same time as his screenplay, Film, was being made. In 1961, Beckett received the International Publishers’ Prize with Jorge Luis Borges, and in 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prizein Literature for artistic achievements that define the ironic stance of modern reactions to an increasingly meaningless existence.

Samuel Beckett produced work in every literary genre. His first book, published in 1931, was the critical study Proust, and during the next fifteen years, Beckett published a number of essays and book reviews that have yet to be collected in book form. After struggling with an unpublished play titled Eleutheria in the late 1940’s (which was eventually published in 1995), he began publication of the series of plays that are as important as his novels to his current literary reputation. These include, notably, En attendant Godot (pb. 1952; Waiting for Godot, 1954),“Fin de partie,” suivi de “Acte sans paroles” (pr., pb. 1957; music by John Beckett;“Endgame: A Play in One Act,” Followed by “Act Without Words: A Mime for One Player,” 1958), Krapp’s Last Tape (pr., pb. 1958), Happy Days (pr., pb. 1961), and many short pieces for the stage, including mimes. In addition to these works for the stage, he wrote scripts for television, such as Eh Joe (1966; Dis Joe, 1967); scripts for radio, such as All That Fall (1957; revised 1968); and one film script, titled Film (1965). Most, but not all, of Beckett’s many short stories are gathered in various collections, including More Pricks than Kicks (1934), Nouvelles et textes pour rien (1955; Stories and Texts for Nothing, 1967), No’s Knife: Collected Shorter Prose, 1947-1966 (1967), First Love, and Other Shorts (1974), Pour finir encore et autres foirades (1976; Fizzles, 1976; also known as For to Yet Again), and Collected Short Prose (1991). Beckett’s poetry, most of it written early in his career for periodical publication, has been made available in Poems in English (1961) and Collected Poems in English and French (1977). Many of the various collections of his short pieces mix works of different literary genres, and Richard Seaver has edited a general sampling of Beckett works of all sorts in an anthology titled I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On: A Selection from Samuel Beckett’s Work (1976).

Samuel Beckett did not begin to write his most important works until he was forty years of age, and he had to wait some time beyond that for widespread recognition of his literary achievements. By the time he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, however, he had established a solid reputation as one of the most important and demanding authors of plays and novels in the twentieth century.

In the 1930’s, when he began to write, Beckett seemed destined for the sort of footnote fame that has overtaken most of his English and Irish literary companions of that decade. His work appeared to be highly derivative of the avant-garde coterie associated with Transition magazine and especially of the novels of James Joyce, who as an elder Irish expatriate in Paris befriended and encouraged the young Beckett. By the time Beckett was forty years old and trying to salvage a literary career disrupted by World War II, his anonymity was such that his own French translation of his first novel, Murphy, had sold exactly six copies. At the same time he presented his skeptical Paris publisher with another manuscript.

Nevertheless, it was at that time—the late 1940’s—that Beckett blossomed as a writer. He withdrew into a voluntary solitude he himself referred to as “the siege in the room,” began to compose his works in French rather than in English, and shed many of the mannerisms of his earlier work. The immediate result was the trilogy of novels that constitute his most important achievement in prose fiction: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. This period also produced Waiting for Godot, and it was this play that first brought Beckett fame. Waiting for Godot, considered a formative influence on the Theater of the Absurd, stimulated the first serious critical treatments of Beckett’s work. Although Beckett himself attached more importance to his novels than to his plays, it was not until the 1960’s that critics went beyond his plays and began to bring his prose works under close scrutiny. Then, as now, most criticism of Beckett’s fiction focused on the trilogy and the austere prose fiction in French that followed it.

In the years since then, Beckett’s novels have risen in critical estimation from essentially eccentric if interesting experiments to exemplars of self-referential “postmodern” fiction commonly cited by literary theorists. Disagreements about the nature of particular works and skepticism about the bulk of commentary generated by very brief prose fragments have also inevitably accompanied this rather sudden enshrinement of a difficult and extremely idiosyncratic body of work. However, even the most antagonistic later analyses of Beckett’s novels grant them a position of importance and influence in the development of prose fiction since World War II, and they also accept Beckett’s stature as one of the most important novelists since his friend and Irish compatriot James Joyce.

What might be the reasons for Samuel Beckett’s dismissing his anti-Nazi activities as “Boy Scout stuff”?

Is Waiting for Godot political? Explain the basis of your conclusion.

The word “endgame” is taken from chess but pertains to the stage of a game before a decision is actually reached. What implications does this word have as the title of Beckett’s play?

To what extent are Beckett’s puns and jokes important in his mature novels and plays?

English is considered a large and resourceful language, but Beckett often wrote in French. What characteristics of English seem to be contrary to his writing habits?

In Molloy, there is a scene about sucking pebbles. Does it have reference to the story of Demosthenes, who thereby developed his oratorical powers, or is it about a man trying to solve a problem of rotation, or is it something else entirely?

Does James Joyce’s influence continue to pervade Beckett’s mature work, or has he by this time succeeded in overcoming that influence?

Acheson, James. Samuel Beckett’s Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama, and Early Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. An examination of Beckett’s literary viewpoint as it expressed itself in his drama and early fiction. Bibliography and index.

Alvarez, Alfred. Beckett. 2d ed. London: Fontana, 1992. A short, lively, and sometimes opinionated discussion of Beckett by a critic who does not altogether trust the author and who knows how to argue not only for his strengths but also against his limitations. Contains a good short discussion of the intellectual climate that precipitated absurd literature.

Bair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. 1978. Reprint. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Although Beckett was often reluctant to talk about himself, he cooperated with Bair. It is the fullest, most helpful version of his life in print, and to know his life is to understand his art. Contains good illustrations. The criticism of the specific texts is often limited, but Bair is very good at putting the work in conjunction with his very odd life.

Beckett, Samuel. Comment C’est, How It Is and/et L’image: A Critical-Genetic Edition. Edited by Edouard Magessa O’Reilly. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001. The English and French language versions of the works, side-by- side, plus Beckett’s own appendices and O’Reilly’s editorial assistance to the reader of these difficult texts.

Birkett, Jennifer, and Kate Ince, eds. Samuel Beckett. New York: Longman, 2000. A collection of criticism of Beckett’s works. Bibliography and index.

Bryden, Mary. Samuel Beckett and the Idea of God. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. The strength of Bryden’s book is the very limitation of its method: to show that though Beckett may have despised God, at least he did not ignore His scriptures, acolytes, ministers, priests, theologians, or mystics. What she has labored to produce is an indispensable compendium, virtually a concordance, of religious reference in Beckett.

Carey, Phyllis, and Ed Jewinski, eds. Re: Joyce’n Beckett. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. This collection of essays on the relationship between Joyce and Beckett includes two essays that discuss their influence on the short story. One compares Joyce’s “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” with Beckett’s “Fingal,” and another compares the hero of Beckett’s More Pricks than Kicks with Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus.

Cronin, Anthony. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. A fully documented and detailed biography of Beckett, describing his involvement in the Paris literary scene, his response to winning the Nobel Prize, and his overall literary career. For a review of this work see Magill’s Literary Annual review.

Davis, Robin J., and Lance S. Butler, eds. Make Sense Who May: Essays on Samuel Beckett’s Later Works. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1988. Contains fifteen essays culled from “Samuel Beckett at Eighty,” a conference held in August, 1986, at Stirling University. The essays look at Beckett’s work in the 1970’s and 1980’s in terms of poststructuralism and deconstruction. For advanced students.

Ellman, Richard. Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett. New York: George Braziller, 1988. Examines the Irish roots in Beckett’s plays and novels and their subsequent influence on Irish writing. A lively and interesting study of four Irish writers, suitable for all students.

Essif, Les. Empty Figure on an Empty Stage: The Theatre of Samuel Beckett and His Generation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. A look at the criticism of Beckett’s theatrical works over time. Bibliography and index.

Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961. This volume is specifically about Beckett’s work in the theater, but Esslin’s discussion of the absurd in general is perhaps the clearest, most succinct and helpful definition of the movement.

Esslin, Martin, ed. Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965. Esslin is the editor of this collection of major essays by some of the best Beckett critics. Includes essays on all phases of his work, no only by English-speaking critics but also by European writers, who see Beckett not as a writer in English but as a part of the European tradition.

Hill, Leslie. Beckett’s Fiction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990. In his preface, Hill briefly characterizes previous criticism and finds it reductive. Chapters on the trilogy, on duality, repetition, fables of genealogy, experiment, and failure. Includes notes and bibliography.

Kenner, Hugh. A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. Part of the dependable Reader’s Guide series, this volume allows Kenner to comment clearly and simply on the individual texts and is an essential companion for anyone determined to get Beckett to make some kind of sense. Beckett’s work will never be completely clear, but with Kenner, it sometimes makes sense, if only for the moment, which is all Beckett wanted.

Kenner, Hugh. Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Kenner is probably the best commentator on Beckett. He has been writing about him since early in his career and has continued to do so. He is lively, imaginative, and extremely good at placing Beckett in the Irish tradition, as well as assessing his part in the movement of experimental literature.

Kim, Hwa Soon. The Counterpoint of Hope, Obsession, and Desire for Death in Five Plays by Samuel Beckett. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. An analysis of several psychological aspects present in Beckett’s plays, including death and obsession. Bibliography and index.

Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. A comprehensive biography with much new material, detailed notes, and bibliography. For a review of this work see Magill’s Literary Annual review.

McCarthy, Patrick A., ed. Critical Essays on Samuel Beckett. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Includes essays on how the collection More Pricks than Kicks suggests the majority of Beckett’s later thematic and aesthetic preoccupations and how the most familiar story from that collection, “Dante and the Lobster,” was revised by Beckett to sharpen its comic incongruity.

McMullan, Anna. Theatre on Trial: Samuel Beckett’s Later Drama. New York: Routledge, 1993. An examination of the later plays created by Beckett. Bibliography and index.

Pattie, David. The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett. New York: Routledge, 2000. A reference volume that combines biographical information with critical analysis of Beckett’s literary works. Bibliography and index.

Pilling, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. A comprehensive reference work that provides considerable information about the life and works of Beckett. Bibliography and indexes.

Pireddu, Nicoletta. “Sublime Supplements: Beckett and the ‘Fizzing Out’ of Meaning.” Studies in Short Fiction 29 (Summer, 1992): 303-314. Argues that the constitutive element of the stories in Fizzles is the fiasco of narration itself, the idea of an aborted endeavor. Provides a detailed Derridean analysis of the stories, suggesting that they embody the ritual of deterioration and that they replace the paternal figure of the Romantic sublime with a sense of exhaustion and belatedness typical of postmodernism.

Rabinovitz, Rubin. The Development of Samuel Beckett’s Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. An interesting discussion of the radical techniques that Beckett brought into his early work as a fictionist, and how they marked his art throughout his career.

Ricks, Christopher B. Beckett’s Dying Words the Clarendon Lectures, 1990. New York: Clarendon Press, 1993. Rick’s lectures illuminate the theme of dying in Beckett’s writings, then extends his treatment of that theme to philosophy and literature. For a review of this work see Magill’s Literary Annual review.

Worth, Katharine. Samuel Beckett’s Theatre: Life Journeys. New York: Clarendon Press, 1999. A look at the production history and psychological aspects of Beckett’s plays. Bibliography and index.