Samuel Beckett The Grove Centenary Edition Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism

"Starting out as an uneasy Joycean and an even more uneasy Proustian, Beckett eventually settled on philosophical comedy as the medium for his uniquely anguished, arrogant, self-doubting, scrupulous temperament. In the popular mind his name is associated with the mysterious Godot who may or may not come but for whom we wait anyhow, passing the time as best we can. In this he seemed to define the mood of an age. But his range is wider than that, and his achievement far greater. Beckett was an artist possessed by a vision of life without consolation or dignity or promise of grace, in the face of which our only duty--inexplicable and futile, but a dury nonetheless--is not to lie to ourselves. It was a vision to which he gave expression in language of a virile strength and intellectual subtlety that marks him as one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century."Beckett, Samuel is the author of 'Samuel Beckett The Grove Centenary Edition Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism', published 2006 under ISBN 9780802118202 and ISBN 0802118208.