The Essential Beckett: A Preface to the Second Edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
Summary
The first edition of this collection opened with an attempt to assess Samuel Beckett's legacy:
On 13 April 1986 Samuel Barclay Beckett will mark his eightieth year, an event that will be commemorated by international festivals, performances and publications unprecedented in an author's lifetime. Such attention was neither sought nor particularly welcomed by Beckett, but […] is fully the measure of his impact on the literature and culture of the latter half of the twentieth century …. Publication …, however, usually lagged behind composition, and in 1951, at age forty?five, having been publishing for over two decades, Beckett was little known outside a small circle of avant-garde artists. It is a memory he doubtless tapped for one of Krapp's birthday memoirs: “Seventeen copies sold, of which eleven at trade price to free circulating libraries beyond the seas. Getting known.”
What may have seemed at the time like overstatement appears now like understatement. Not infrequently an author's reputation wanes with his physical demise. Beckett's, on the contrary, burgeoned after 1989. Witness the opening assessment of Marjorie Perloff ‘s presidential address to the Modern Language Association in December of 2006, a year that has come to be called the Year of Beckett:
This year marks the centennial of Samuel Beckett's birth, and the celebrations around the world have been a wonder to behold.[…]
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- On BeckettEssays and Criticism, pp. xi - xviPublisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012
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