Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

A selective list of online literary criticism for Samuel Beckett, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA guidelines for web sites

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Literary Criticism

Atlas, James. "The Prose of Samuel Beckett : Notes from the Terminal Ward," in Poetry Nation 2, 1974

Burrows, Rachel. Interview. Wonderful interview with Rachel Burrows, who experienced Beckett's teaching in the 1930's, on Beckett's tastes and fascinations as a teacher, Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Calder, John. A review of three Beckett plays performed in NYC in 1983 under the direction of Alan Schneider: Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, and What Where. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Cohn, Ruby. A Beckett Canon. (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2001). Preview at Google Books

Connor, Steven. "Orders of Magnitude," contrasts James Joyce's reach towards omniscience and Beckett's towards ignorance. From The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004). Preview at Google Books.

Connor, Steven. On the themes of ground, falling, balance, gravity, and walking in Beckett and the artist Bruce Nauman. Originally in German, in the catalogue of the exhibition "Samuel Beckett, Bruce Nauman," 2000.

Connor, Steven. "'Traduttore, traditore': Samuel Beckett's Translation of Mercier and Camier." Connor examines the French and English versions of Mercier and Camier to demonstrate that Beckett's self-translations are not always identical twins. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Cronin, Anthony. The first chapter of Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, (1997), with a link to a NY Times review of it by Morris Dickstein,

Davies, Paul. An introduction to Samuel Beckett from the Literary Encyclopedia, 1/8/01

Dearlove, J.E. "The Weaving of Penelope's Tapestry," Beckett's works, rather than breaking down genre, are dependent on the reader's expectations about genre. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Doll, Mary. "The Demeter Myth in Beckett." Contends that Beckett's use of myth has been little explored, and examines the role of the myth of Demeter in his writing. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Esslin, Martin. "What Beckett Teaches Me: His Minimalist Approach to Ethics." Beckett in the 1990s (Rodopi, 1993). At Google Books.

Fitch, Brian. "The Status of the Second Version of the Beckettian Text: The Evidence of the 'Bing/Ping' Manuscripts." On the historical evolution of each of the Bing/Ping texts. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Gigante, Denise. "The Endgame of Taste: Keats, Sartre, Beckett." Romanticism On the Net 24 (November 2001)

Gontarski, S.E. Editing Beckett, - editing errors and the changing texts of Samuel Beckett, in Twentieth Century Literature, Summer, 1995

Gontarski, S.E., ed. Review of Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 (Grove Press, 1995) Studies in Short Fiction, Fall, 1997, reviewed by Eyal Amiran

Guest, Michael. "'Between Contiguous Extremes': Beckett and Brunonian Minimalism, with reference to The Lost Ones." On paradigms for Beckett in Giambattista Vico and Giordano Bruno. Reports of the Faculty of Liberal Arts (1994)

Guest, Michael. "Act of Creation in Beckett's Catastrophe." A reading of Catastrophethat focuses on the theme of aesthetic creation, tracing the dramatic means by which Beckett configures a tragicomic theatrical metaphor for the production of meaning in general - a metaphor in which the coincidence of tragic catastrophe becomes identified with miraculous creation as the comic pole. Reports of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, 1995

Guest, Michael. "Beckett and Foucault: Some Affinities." On how Beckett dramatizes ideas also found in Foucault. Central Japan English Studies, English Literary Society of Japan (1996).

Gullette, David. The author describes a conversation with Beckett, during which most of a bottle of Johnny Walker was consumed. Ploughshares Summer 1972

Hammond, B. S. "Beckett and Pinter: Towards a grammar of the absurd." Journal of Beckett Studies, Number 4, Spring, 1979

Higdon, David Leon. "Samuel Beckett in Outer Space." Discusses Starswarm (1985), a parody of Beckett by Brian Aldiss. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Hornung, Alfred. "Fantasies of an Autobiographical Self: Thomas Bernhard, Raymond Federman, Samuel Beckett." Discusses the trend towards autobiographical writing in contemporary American and European fiction, with its simultaneous nostalgia for and denial of coherence, as exemplified in Beckett and two other writers. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Klein, Herbert G. "The Wonderful World of the Dead: A Typology of the Posthumous Narrative." Discusses works by Beckett, Mary Shelley, Muriel Spark. In EESE 3/2002

Knowlson, James. A review of Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (Simon & Schuster, 1996) "A magnificent biography" by a leading authority, which benefits from five months of revealing interviews with Beckett shortly before his death. NY Times, Nov. 24, 1996

Krance, Charles. "Review Essay: Sam w Polsce/Sam in Poland." Article describes the significant amount of critical attention given to Samuel Beckett's work by Polish scholars. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Libera, Antoni. "Some Remarks on a Sentence in 'Piece of Monologue.'" Brief article discusses the Polish translation of the sentence "Parts lips and thrusts tongue forward. Birth." Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Marculescu, Ileana. "Beckett and the Temptation of Solipsism," on Beckett's exploration of the philosophical notion of solipsism, not as a theme, but a proposition to be played with and ultimately deconstructed. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

McCue, Jim. A review of No Author Served Better: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider. Maurice Harmon, ed., Harvard Univ. Press, the New Statesman, Jan 29, 1999

Mitchell, Breon. Reviews of special Beckett issues in College Literature (1981), Additional articles on a special Beckett issue of the Irish University Review (1984), reviewed by Nicholas Zurbrugg. Also a review of The Shape of Paradox by Bert 0. States (1982), and A Samuel Beckett Reader ed. John Calder (1984), reviewed by Dougald McMillan. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Parks, Tim. Characteristic NY Review of Books approach, a lengthy article on Beckett occasioned by a review of recent books, July 13, 2006.

Perloff, Marjorie. "The Silence That Is Not Silence: Acoustic Art In Samuel Beckett's Embers." A long article by critic Marjorie Perloff on Beckett's radio art as "abstract and mediumistic, engaging in a dialectic of disclosure and obstacle, information and noise, in which the soundscape -- which includes silence-- provides conflicting, and hence tantalizing, testimony." Perloff explains how this dialectic works in Embers, "in what I take to be, in Hugh Kenner's words, 'the most original use to which Beckett has put radio, and one is tempted to say as original and moving a use of any to which radio has been put.'" In Samuel Beckett and the Visual Arts, (Garland, 1998)

Perloff, Marjorie. "'In Love with Hiding': Samuel Beckett's War." Iowa Review, 35, no. 2 (2005)

Puchner, H. Martin. "Textual Cinema and Cinematic Text: The Ekphrasis of Movement in Adam Thorpe and Samuel Beckett," in EESE 1/99

Rabinovitz, Rubin. "Beckett and Psychology." Considers the various psychological critics of Samuel Beckett and the limitations of psychological theory when applied to Beckett. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Ricks, Christopher. "Deranged Punctilio." A talk presented, in slightly different form, at a PEN Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute to Samuel Beckett

Ricks, Christopher. Publisher's web page for Beckett's Dying Words, The Clarendon Lectures 1990 (Oxford Univ. Press)

Rojtman, Betty. "Une Structure D'Agression: Dis Joe," Contends that "Dis Joe depasse l'enjeu d'une simple 'piece ecrit pour la television' en ce qu'elle figure, par ca structure visuelle meme, en sens dramatique a communiquer." Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Taylor, Neil and Bryan Loughrey. "Murphy's Surrender to Symmetry." In Murphy Beckett uses the game of chess to explore the tension between the mathematical and symmetrical, and the organic and asymmetrical, say the authors. Journal of Beckett Studies, 1989

Uhlmann, Anthony. Review of Beckett and Poststructuralism (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999) Criticism, Summer, 2001, reviewed by Thomas J. Cousineau

Connor, Steven. "Slow Going." Discusses the idea of slowness in Beckett, the slowness of things happening 'by insensible degrees.' From The Critical Beckett conference organized by the School of French Studies, University of Birmingham, 1998 (removed from http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/eng/skc/slow.htm)

Connor, Steven. "Some of My Best Friends Are Philosemites," discusses antisemitism, philosemitism, and the positive attraction towards Jewish history and identity in the work of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. From a panel on questions of Jewishness and Representation, 1995 (removed from http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/eng/staff/skcphil.htm)

Connor, Steven. "Beckett and Bion." Covers what is known about Beckett's experience of being psychoanalyzed for two years by the eminent psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion(removed from http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/eng/skc/beckbion)

Freidman, Melvin. A review of four recent scholarly studies on Samuel Beckett. Eyal Amiran, Wandering and Home: Beckett's Metaphysical Narrative, 1993; S. E. Gontarski, ed., The Beckett Studies Reader, 1993; Rubin Rabinovitz, Innovation in Samuel Beckett's Fiction, 1992; and Christopher Ricks, Beckett's Dying Words. The Clarendon Lectures 1990, 1993. Contemporary Literature, 1995 (removed from http://english.fsu.edu/gontarski/bsrreview.htm)

Gontarski, S.E. "Revising Himself: Performance as Text in Samuel Beckett's Theatre." On the importance of Beckett's work as his own director, his self-collaborations, to our critical understanding of his vision and contributions to the Modernist theatre. Journal of Modern Literature (1998) (removed from http://english.fsu.edu/gontarski/RevisingHimself.htm)

Gontarski, S.E., ed. Review by Fintan O'Toole of The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Volume IV: The Shorter Plays, and of No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, edited by Maurice Harmon. In January 2000 NY Review of Books (removed from http://english.fsu.edu/gontarski/OtooleReview.htm)

Keller, John Robert. "Lucky's Bones: A Sense of Starvation in Watt, Waiting for Godot and Oliver Twist." A psychoanalyst writes about Samuel Beckett's fictional universe as it is "organized by an emerging infantile-self attempting to maintain an enduring contact with a good primary object/mother." In PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for Psychological Study of the Arts, 1999 (removed from http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/articles/psyart1999/keller01.htm)

Introduction

An extended, introductory article on Samuel Beckett's career, includes list of works and a secondary reading list, from the Poetry Foundation

Samuel Beckett's obituary, NY Times, 1989

"Beckett Wins Nobel for Literature," 1969 news article NYTimes

Waiting for Godot. The NY Times review of the first American performance, 1956.

Endgame. The NY Times review of the first American performance, 1958

An 1981 NY Times account of a Paris meeting with Samuel Beckett, who refused to give interviews

Other Reviews

A NY Times review of Samuel Beckett's novel Murphy (1934)

A NY Times review of Beckett's novel Mercier and Camier (1946)

A 1956 NY Times review of Beckett's novel Malone Dies

A 1958 review of Beckett's novel The Unnamable. Reviewed by Stephen Spender in the NY Times

A rather negative review of Beckett's novel Watt, from the NY Times in 1959

A 1961 NY Times review of Happy Days

A 1964 NY Times review of How It Is

Web Sites

The Journal of Beckett Studies formerly edited by S. E. Gontarski and published by the Florida State University English Dept., generously provides links to full-text articles indexed here, and is an up-to-date source for events in the world of Beckett Studies. Now at University of Western Australia in 2008 under the general editorship of Anthony Uhlmann.

Additional reviews and articles for Samuel Beckett from the NY Times

main page | 20th-century literature | modernist novel | about literaryhistory.com

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