Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
by James R. Knowlson
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Book Summary Information
Author: James R. KnowlsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-04-30
ISBN: 0802141250
Number of pages: 832
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
Book Review: Life of Beckett: The Heavyweight Version
Summary: 5 Stars
At the time I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Beckett's novels, back in the early '70s, there was no such thing as a biography of the man, only journalistic gossip and sidelong comments from scholars, such as Ruby Cohn, who had developed personal friendships with him in the course of their critical work. When Deirdre Bair's biography appeared in 1978, I read it with much interest, but soon with much disappointment. In addition to evident errors of fact (even in light of what little we otherwise knew at that point), the general level of analysis left much to be desired and rarely seemed to pull the writer and the work within hailing distance. After reading the first volume of Beckett's letters, which appeared recently, I was inspired (wrong word, Beckett would undoubtedly say) to pick up a copy of James Knowlson's "Damed to Fame" (1996). This is an absolutely excellent exercise, carefully supported by the evidence at every point, including material from extensive interviews conducted with Beckett during the last years of his life. One will even find notes correcting Bair's errors. If you want to know Beckett, with all the nuances, this is the biography to get--the writing is carefully crafted and, for the most part, highly readable (assuming one knows a bit about Beckett, or is interested enough to learn), only marred occasionally by unnecessarily melodramatic passages.
Summary of Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett
Damned to Fame is the brilliant and insightful portrait of Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett, mysterious and reclusive master of twentieth-century literature. Professor James Knowlson, Beckett's chosen biographer and a leading authority on Beckett, vividly re-creates Beckett's life from his birth in a rural suburb of Dublin in 1906 to his death in Paris in 1989, revealing the real man behind the literary giant. Scrupulously researched and filled with previously unknown information garnered from interviews with the author and his friends, family, and contemporaries, Knowlson's unparalleled work is the definitive Beckett biography of our time.
Samuel Beckett, a talent so exceptional that he created masterpieces in both French and English, shied away from the limelight for much of his life. However James Knowlson, in this amazing biography, shows Beckett wasn't entirely hesitant to talk about himself; the book relies heavily on interviews with Beckett to reconstruct the writer's dizzying career. Knowlson fills the pages with exhaustive detail--some major, some minor. In addition, he analyzes the influences on and evolution of Beckett's work. Through it all a larger picture emerges, one of the artist at work and in life. Damned to Fame is a necessary addition to any study of Beckett.
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