Refreshingly free from academic jargon, Andrew Kennedy's "Samuel Beckett" is an acute and insightful examination of Beckett's major works up until "Play." It is also free from a larger critical agenda or theoretical intentions -- while Kennedy feels free to highlight various interpretations of Beckett's works, he careful avoids espousing his own, confining his examinations to the internal dynamics and development of Beckett's writing. Theme, structure, language, and narrative style are emphasized and often brilliantly illuminated by Kennedy's direct yet lyrical prose, and he goes to great lengths to show how each piece is a logical but often revolutionary product of Beckett's growth as a writer, thereby establishing a framework for understanding his oeuvre as whole. Especially worthwhile is Kennedy's discussion of the Trilogy: "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable." In a lucid discussion of the work's complex layers of fiction, metafiction, and meta-narration, Kennedy unravels the Trilogy's jumbled skein of voices to highlight the constant thematic threads tying the three novels together: the diminishment of the self, the authorial burden, and the almost mystical self-consciousness of the act of writing itself.

While perhaps a touch too basic for the Beckett enthusiast, Kennedy's accessible but intelligent book makes a perfect introduction for the student or casual reader. Its only real flaw lies in its limited scope -- a few more chapters on the radio plays, shorter dramatic works, and final novellas would have been much appreciated.

"Mercier and Camier" is the kind of book that people say is great when inside they know it's pretty much terrible. Samuel Beckett gives us a plotless tale of two guys walking around a city, acting like idiots, taking pleasure from a woman's gruesome car accident, and then killing a cop. Unlike comparable 'bad guy' protagonists - such as in "A Clockwork Orange" - Mercier and Camier are not interesting, complex, sympathetic, memorable, or worth our time. And make no mistake, these guys are bad - the fact that they act like brain-damaged five-year-olds doesn't change that.

I think Beckett intended them to represent the mixture of boredom, madness, and detachment which is an essential part of most people's psyche (especially the thoughtful), but he does not achieve this goal in the least. There are a million books which express the desperation and hollowness of life, with a tinge of humor (and indeed there are a few moments of this book which are humorous, or at least attempts at humor). This is perhaps one of the most overrated of this sort of book.

Beckett's writing style is unique and, for the most part, good. My favorite line in this book came at the end of a lengthy descriptive paragraph: "End of descriptive passage." But the actual substance of this book does not live up to the promise provided by the style. While I tend to love the strange and the unique in art (especially books about people who seem at once hideously abornal and yet universal), "Mercier and Camier" proves that not all books about distinctively bizarre characters are good.

You'd be better off seeing "Waiting for Godot," or better yet, read something by Shakespeare.

Written in 1946, "Mercier and Camier" was Samuel Beckett's first postwar novel and his first in French. "Mercier and Camier" captures the time of depression and indecision in Beckett's life. It continues the line of vagabond heroes which begins with Belacqua in "More Pricks Than Kicks" and continues with "Murphy" and "Watt." They are the first of his vaudevillian couples, and this novel is in many ways the precursor of "Waiting for Godot." If there is a chronological line of development in his writing, "Mercier and Camier" surely marks the first tentative approach toward what Beckett calls the "mature" fiction of "Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable." In the trilogy, Beckett relentlessly reduces his characters from pitiful creatures with few possessions--a hat, a pot, a stub of pencil--to voices, who have only the inner torments of their past life to sustain their present existence, doomed to repeat themselves until finally, even the voice, their last vestige of humanity, is stilled. There is no discernible setting, no tie with any real existence, and seemingly, no plot.

In "Mercier and Camier," the journey shapes the plot as the two men parade on an endless quest. Despite its somberness, it is in some ways a warm and funny book, occasionally tinged with stinging sarcasm. There are secondary characters, skillfully and swiftly delineated, so bizarre that even the two oddities of the title are struck by their madness. Mercier and Camier are otherworldly figures themselves, but they need the trappings of the real world in order to give their story coherence, and this is no doubt part of the reason why Beckett chose to abandon them and go on to the Malones and Malloys of his later fiction.

Just about this time, Beckett discovered that writing was for him the most intensely personal experience possible, depending not on verbal virtuosity or on the careful construction of the traditional novel. For him, creation satisfied only when he could plumb the depths of his unconscious, find an incident from his own life, and then work to conceal biography within the framework of his creative consciousness, changing dimensions of time and space according to the whim of his fictional voices. He reduces life to a series of tales, told first by one, then another (perhaps the same) voice, but all the voices are his.

Beckett perfected this method of writing novels when he discovered what he has called the most important revelation of his literary career--the first person monologue. He found he could create a multi-dimensional universe through the use of a voice telling a story. At the same time, this relentless voice could reveal character in its most desperate loneliness, stripping it as never before in contemporary fiction.

Written just before "Molloy," "Mercier and Camier" stands on the threshold of Beckett's mature fiction. There are large chunks of dialogue which he later transferred directly into Godot, but here speech is encumbered by a plot with progression and movement, albeit circuitous and often contradictory. There is a narrator, as in "Murphy" and "Watt," who occasionally intrudes to inject an acerbic comment and who thinks nothing of slowing down, speeding up, or otherwise circumventing the progress of the "pseudo-couple" (as they are called in "The Unnamable").

"Mercier and Camier" is about voluntary exile, much like Beckett's own. While it can be read as the odyssey of Beckett and the other young Irishmen who went to Paris in the 1930's hoping to gain the same success as their countryman of an older generation, James Joyce, it can also be read as two aspects of the personality of Beckett himself. Before his departure, he had been easily recognizable in Dublin by his shapeless, dirty raincoat, several sizes too large. He was plagued by recurring idiosyncratic cysts. When he wrecked his own car, he had continuous problems with his bicycle. In a drunken moment, he lost his favorite hat, which he mourned long afterwards.

It is the raincoat, however, which best symbolizes the final division of his first 30 years from the rest of his life, as well as this novel's place in his canon: when he left Dublin, Beckett threw his raincoat away, just as Mercier and Camier, after throwing theirs away, walk off into their own uncertain future, looking back now and again at the heap on the ground--unwilling to go on with it, but hesitant to abandon it...

Mercier and Camier are two, possibly gay or possibly friends, walking philosophies. Beckett's gone beyond the boring term, "existentialism" and given something to fiction that Sartre would wish he could have. Sartre is also a genius, as a philosopher, primarily, and of course his Roads to freedom shoud be read, but Beckett is simply the better, more imaginative, more experimental writer. Excellent conversation and banter betwixt the two Odyseii, reminiscent of Vladimir and Estagon's. Translated by Beckett himself, also a plus.

Sammm, or whatever. i need to set you straight about a few things. get in contact with me quick. you miss the point more times than one would think possible.

Richard Ellman gave the the world the casting for what would be known as the perfect biography, James Joyce. Thus, as Beckett recanted when he stated Celine's Journey to the End of the Night was the greastest novel in the English language before pausing and explaining that Joyce is on a level that no one should have to be compared, I must state this is a good effort on Bair's behalf. The pace is well kept until the end, when things seem rushed. It ends with "1973-." I would love to see her go back and finish the text since Beckett's demise. I would not state that this text gives ample evidence of Beckett's insanity. Anyone wired directly to the world's pulse as we Beckett, will indeed suffer the psychosomatic symptoms that he underwent throughout his life, as do most greast artists. Their illnesses, physical and mental, are defense mechanisms to protect themselves from their selves. Beckett is no different and in some cases to be considered elevation upon the "upper teir" with the world's greatest artists. All in all this is a great text, especially how Bair projects Beckett's comments without interpertation, thus insinuating that he should not be trusted at all times. Case in point: he stated that Godot was a fun project that he didn't take seriously. Considering the complexity of the play, if any human were able to throw such materials onto the page without effort . . . see for yourself.

SAMUEL BECKETT: A Biography. By Deirdre Bair. 736 pages. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. ISBN 0-15-179256-9 (hbk).

In 1971, while casting about for a dissertation topic, Deirdre Bair wrote to Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) to ask if she could write his biography. He replied that, while he was not prepared to help her, he wouldn't hinder her either. As things turned out, he did help her to some extent, as did many others, and the result is this well-written, well-researched, and extremely illuminating account which covers the story of Beckett's life up to 1973. Although it has since been superseded by the fuller biography, 'Damned to Fame,' by Beckett's personal friend and official biographer, James Knowlson, which appeared in 1996 and which covers the whole of Beckett's life, Bair's book seems to me to be still well worth reading. The fact that she was not a personal friend had both disadvantages and advantages. Although it meant that certain things were closed off to her, at the same time it left her a certain freedom, the freedom to say things a friend might be disinclined to say.

Briefly Bair sees Beckett's mother as the key factor in his formation - a cold, frigid, and neurotic woman dominated by notions of class and respectability, and determined to mold him into an ideal son who would be respected by Protestant and materialistic upper middle class Dublin society. Beckett rebelled against this treatment from an early age, and the regular campaigns of psychological torture which his mother launched whenever things didn't go her way were to lead to his years of misery, repeated bouts of serious physical illness, and eventually to the full-blown psychosis which is evident in certain of his works. With a more balanced and loving mother, and one sensitive to her son's aesthetic nature, Beckett might have led a normal and happier life, though it is doubtful he would have arrived at the shattering insights into human nature and reality that helped make him one of the greatest writers of the age.

The story of Beckett's life and his extreme sufferings and spiritual anguish, as told by Deirdre Bair, is both horrifying and fascinating, and she does seem to have done her best to present it as objectively as possible, though she does allow her distaste for certain of his views to peek through at times. From her account, which covers far more than his devastating love-hate relationship with his mother, and which I can't even begin to do justice to here, we come away with an enhanced understanding of Beckett that should help anyone to better understand and appreciate his somber and often difficult works.

It's true that as a mere graduate student she could hardly be expected to have a grasp of Beckett's works as extensive as that of a seasoned professor such as Knowlson. It's also true that there appear to be a number of errors and misunderstandings in her work, possibly because of her limited access to materials. But her less unctuous attitude to her subject leads me to feel that we are perhaps getting a more objective portrait of Beckett, though one that in some respects is not as detailed as that provided by Knowlson, and the serious student will want to read them both.

For those interested in Beckett, Abbott's study is of little use. For those interested in Beckett Studies, it is perhaps essential.

The only problem is this: Beckett Studies has little to do with Beckett--with understanding Beckett. Instead, it is wrapped in its own terminology, abstracted from the texts it attempts to uncover. Abbott's only real contribution to our understanding of Beckett's WORK is the idea of "oevure". However, one need not read Abbott in order to see in Beckett's prose an ongoing process of self-discovery. One need only read Beckett.

For the most part, Abbott's work is unimportant, obscured mostly by the critical arena into which it speaks.

Breath is the testing ground on the merit not only of Samuel Beckett, but modern drama as a whole. When people (like my mother) want to sneer at either, they refer to 'Breath', a 45 second play of a heap of rubbish, a light fading up and out, two cries and a breath, breathing in and out. You could argue that the linking of the inhaling and exhaling breath with the lighting offers a profound comment on the nature of theatre. You might say that this linking of breathing, rubbish, crying, light and darkness is an allegory for life, although not as beautiful a one as the opening paragraph of Nabokov's 'Speak Memory' which uses similar terms. You could, but you'd just look pretentious and ridiculous.

It is important to remember, however, that 'Breath' was conceived as a joke. The critic Kenneth Tynan was putting on his infamous, erotic revue 'Oh Calcutta' and asked Beckett for a contribution. The dramatist responded with a comically literal interpretation of heavy breathing, a sardonic comment on the revue to follow. However, the biter was bit, as Tynan added unclad ladies to the rubbish to Beckett's fury (see James Knowlson's Beckett biography, 'Damned to Fame'). Serves him right!

This book is a collection of correspondence, and like al collected correspondence, it must be taken with a grain of salt. Samuel Beckett was a brilliant, albeit incredibly self-indulgent author, and in this collection his personality is on full display. For example, he disregards bad reviews and cold audience reaction to his plays, because by and large he felt that they were not getting the joke, and that his writing was too complicated for the Philistines in the audience to appreciate.

Fans of Beckett will enjoy this book becuase it will help them understand who he was and where he was coming from in his absurd plays. Also, people who work in theater will be able to relate to the author-director relationship and understand how both artists shape what appears on stage. For those who are not Beckett experts (like myself), there is still much delight to be obtained from Beckett's prose. He won the Nobel Prize because he was an excellent writer, and this book provides otherwise unavailable pieces written by him -- his correspondence. However, unless the reader has a deep interest in one of the two corresponders it can get a little dry.

I knew I was in trouble when the first poem Whoroscope had notes half as long as the poem. I don't mind poems requiring multiple readings to be understood but I don't enjoy treating a poem as an encryption problem.

On more accessible poems such as "Vulture" or "Cascando" the power of the language more than carried the poem - the cadence of the words being the characteristic first noted, then his play on words.

Ultimately, the pleasure of the poems that are immediately accessible outweighs the annoyance at the poems requiring deciphering. Hence, I will probable read additional poetry by Beckett and encourage the brave-hearted to read this volume.

Probably the most famous of Beckett's last works, 'Rockaby' features an old woman rocking mechanically on her chair, listening to a recorded poem evoking a life perhaps similar to her own, solitary, staring out of her window at the shuttered windows opposite, yearning for a glimpse of humanity to justify a life she is close to cursing. It reads like a skittish remix of a story from Joyce's 'Dubliners'.

Like most of Beckett's late stage works, this doesn't really work on the page - the rhythmic combination of words, images, lighting and the mechanical rocking of the chair create a startling visual-aural effect that can only be incompletely imagined. Many believe it to be staggeringly moving, though.

An amazing book with a stylish touch that explores the paradox of the self that can never know itself; in the very act of observing itself the self splits in two, an observing consciousness and an object that is being observed. The self perceives itself as a stream of words, a narration. Each time it tries to catch up with itself, it merely turns into another story, thus putting before the reader a succession of storytellers. A must-read for anyone who cares about literature and who think that it still matters.

Even though I consider myself fairly versed in theatre, I have to say that "Happy Days" fails to resonate. Granted Beckett is out there, but he accomplished far greater things with the sublimely ridiculous "Waiting For Godot."

"Happy Days" seems to wander around like a freshman who doesn't know what class he/she wants. Looking for absurdist theatre? You're much better off with Ionesco's "Bald Soprano."

So often Beckett's philosophical 'universality' seems like an excuse not to confront genuine dilemmas head on. 'Happy Days' is his most tangible work, a grim portrait of a marriage, where a wife is buried up to her waist/waste in a repetitious living death, trying to avoid confronting the reality of her situation, the brutish indifference of her husband, the incremental inevitability of life only getting worse.

Winnie is Beckett's most sympathetic character because she is the one we are the most likely to meet - she is aware of the hopelessness of her situation, but what can she do? Concentrate on something else - how many of us do better? The dissatisfaction most people have with the play presumably lies with the stage directions which interrupt the monologue every couple of words, rendering a fluid, rhythmic read impossible (like Beckett was ever easy). Instead of complaining, go and see it in a theatre, where words and gesture combine to moving effect, even when the language is at its most insistently ironic and playful (and it's very funny too, but don't they always say that about Beckett?). It certainly made me ashamed of the way I treat my wife.

Reading through the reviews here, I am absolutely bewildered as to how anybody could find this play intolerable or (even worse) dull. I am not one of these people that adore every word that Beckett ever wrote; I have severe reservations about some of the later minimalist pieces such as 'Breathe', but 'Happy Days' is one of the most concise and fully realised portraits of the human condition in modern drama. 'Waiting for Godot' is just playful and clever; this is sublime and intellectually adept, combining the structural rigidity of 'Not I' with the fluidity of existential ideas that proliferated throughout all his work. While this is not my favourite play of his, that is entirely due to a personal preference for 'Endgame' - there is nothing tangible that really lets it down.