Samuel Beckett: 100 Years: Centenary Essays

With a tree, a country road, and two tramps waiting haplessly for a Godot who never comes, Samuel Beckett epitomized for theatergoers around the world the at once comical and terrifying condition of being human in an uncertain universe. He would follow the groundbreaking Waiting for Godot with startlingly innovative plays like the drama Endgame as well as Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days. Plays like these, together with poetry, short fiction, and novels, notably the mind-bending trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable-contemplated here by the eminent novelist, poet, essayist, and biographer Anthony Cronin-would secure for the Irish-born Beckett the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. The masterly work of Samuel Beckett radically changed the way we as readers and theatergoers perceive our experience in a world that more often than not painfully eludes our comprehension and articulation. His vision unsparing, shaped by bare-bones language that artistically transcends its own limitations, Beckett distinctively altered the literary landscape of the twentieth century. That magical terrain, as rich in enigma as it is in humor, is explored anew in this celebratory volume by editor Christopher Murray and twelve other outstanding Beckett authorities, among them John Banville, winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize; the distinguished literary critic Richard Kearney; Oxford lecturer in drama Rosemary Pountney; and actor Barry McGovern, who has toured worldwide both in Godot and in the one-man Beckett show I'll Go On.Christopher Murray is a professor of drama and theatre history at UniversityCollege Dublin.