No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider ed. by Maurice Harmon (review)

Reviews MAURICE HARMON, ed. No Allthor Better Served: The Correspondence ofSamlIel Beckett and Alan Schneider. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1998. Pp. 486. $35· In 1961, after Happy Days opened in the United States, Samuel Beckett wrote in a letter to its director, Alan Schneider, "I've the feeling no author was ever better served" (113). Served, indeed. For nearly thirty years, Alan Schneider remained one of Beckett's most faithful directorial servants. They first met in Paris in 1955 to discuss Waiting for Godot in preparation for Schneider's direction of the Miami premiere. The production flopped, but the working relationship between Beckett and Schneider flourished. They exchanged letters from 1955 to 1984, when Schneider, ever serving the author, was hit and killed by a motorcycle after mailing a letter to Beckett. Maurice Harmon from University College, Dublin, edits the correspondence with tact and respect for Beckett's privacy. The letters omit references to Beckett's private life, yet we are not spared the mundane private details of Schneider's life. This creates an imbalance for the reader; we find Schneider chatty and effusive, while Beckett seems reserved and formal. Perhaps Maurice Harmon could have edited Schneider's lellers more closely so that we would read only about the plays and their productions. After all, between Deidre Bair's and James Knowlson's biographies, surely scholars have sufficient personal infonnation and misinformation on Beckett. Nonetheless, Harmon's editing offers extensive footnotes for scholars and directors. In fact, the book seems most useful for directors, since the correspondence on Waiting for Godot,.Happy Days, Film, Endgame, Play, and Rockaby provides Beckett's very specific instructions and exacting elaborations upon the published stage directions. Evidence emerges of Schneider's increasing devotion and meticulous Modern Drama, 43:2 (Summer 2000) 31 I 312 REVIEWS adherence to Beckeu's production requirements. The more Beckeu trusted Schneider - Schneider directed the United States premieres of five of Beckett 's plays - the more slavish Schneider became; and the more artistic freedom Beckett granted Schneider over the years, the more scrupulous and less inventive Schneider became. The temptation to judge the relationship and psychologize feels strong, but Beckeu would disapprove. In a famous 1957 leuer Beckett wrote, "I feel the only line is to refuse to be involved in exegesis of any kind ... If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin ... That's all I can manage, more than I could" (24). These words apply both to Endgame and to the correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider. EILEEN FISCHER, NEW YORK CITY TECHNICAL COLLEGE, C ITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK MICHAEL ROBINSON. Studies in Strindberg. Norwich, UK: Norvik Press 1998. Pp. 244· £24·95· One ofMichael Robinson's stated aims with his new book is to facilitate the reevaluation of Strindberg in England, a country to which Strindberg was never properly introduced. Widely considered the misogynistic antithesis to Ibsen, Strindberg, unlike Ibsen, lacked support from influential authors, critics, and actors such as George Bernard Shaw, William Archer, and Elizabeth Robins. To reverse this lack of interest for Strindberg in England, Robinson presents eleven essays that shed light on different aspects of Strindberg's vast production. The studies cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from Strindberg 's autobiographical writings to his correspondence, analysis of some of his plays, his role as a painter, and his influence on musica1 expressionism in Vienna. Some of the chapters are particularly valuable for students or critics of drama; others will be of interest to Strindberg scholars in general. Robinson hopes to show, he writes, that Strindberg was more than a playwright . Nevertheless, it is his chapters on Strindberg's plays that are the most interesting. These three essays - "Naturalism and the Plot in Creditors," "Prisoners at Play: Form and Meaning in Strindberg's The Dance of Death and Beckett'S Endgame," and "Towards a New Language: Strindberg's Break with Naturalism" - illustrate Strindberg's seminal role in the literary transition from naturalism to modernism. They show that plays such as The Father, Miss Julie, and The Creditors carry in them the modernist seeds that will burst the confinement of naturalism. Robinson shows...