Beckett Remembering Remembering Beckett A Centenary Celebration

Knowlson (French, emerita, Univ. of Reading, U.K.) was a friend of Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett and wrote "Damned to Fame", the authorized and still definitive Beckett biography. Here, with his wife, Elizabeth, he offers a companion volume of reminiscences and commissioned pieces timed to commemorate the centenary of Beckett's birth. The first part, which chronicles Beckett's life through his work with the French Resistance, features edited versions of Knowlson's interviews with the writer that were only partially quoted in the authorized biography along with the personal reflections of those associated with Beckett during that period. The second part, which focuses on the postwar period through the author's death in 1989, includes dozens of short contributions by those who knew or were influenced by Beckett, among them editor and translator Richard Seaver, actress and director Shivaun O'Casey, author Paul Auster, and writer and film director Anthony Minghella. Also included is a brief appendix featuring the previously unpublished student notes of a Grace McKinley on two of Beckett's Trinity College lectures on French dramatist Jean Racine