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Book Reviews 449 ENOCH BRATER. Why Beckett. London: Thames and Hudson 1989. pp. 144, illUSlraled. $19·95· Enoch Srater, the author ofBeyondMinimaJism:Beckett'sLateStyle in the Theater, and the editor of Beckett at BO/Beckett in Context has now given us a concise biography based on his thorough acquaintance with the author and his circle as well as on his readings.The biographical first chapteris followed by an appraisal ofthe Beckettoeuvre, emphasizing the playwrighting. Printed on elegant, glossy paper, this study is illustrated by 122 photographs, personal and public, which make the text breathe with life. It is delightful to be reminded that Beckett served as "batsman and bowler" on the Trinity College cricket team (p. 14), and to see a "seated" young Beckett with the Portora Cricket Team in 1923 (p. 12). When] asked Beckett in Paris whether he had studied philosophy and the classics at the university, he answered that he had spent the greater part of his time in athletic activities, and that his studies were directed towards science rather than the humanities. However, he was always interested in French. Brater reminds us that the future writer's " Baudelaire teacher ... was Thomas RudmoseBrown " (p. 14) with whom he was to write his monograph on Proust as an M.A. dissertation. It is easier to imagine the tall, slender student when looking at photos of Trinity' 'as seen from outside the gate," and, on the facing page, the imposing College Library with its two facing rows of white marble classical busts. Chapter One quickly moves from Ireland to Beckett's 1926 bicycle trip through the Loire valley, an activity which ought to remind us that so many of the writer's "Cartesian Centaurs" - as Hugh Kenner calls them - make use of this fonn of transportation so long as their legs remain operative. After all, as the inventor of the word surrealism explained in the Preface to his Mamelles de Tiresias, one of the ftrst surrealist creations was the wheel, "an imitation of the act of walking, yet so unlike the leg." Brater reminds us that in the 1920S Paris, the birthplace of Surrealism, was attracting numerous self-exiled artists. A year after his bicycle tour, Beckett received "the coveted appointment as Trinity's prestigious lecteur d' anglais at the Ecole Nonnale Superieure .... [Since] the position did not begin until the following October, he spent the nine-month interval teaching French at the Campbell College, Belfast" (p. 14). The experience at Nonnale Sup did not dispel his growing disenchantment with teaching. There was nothing left for him to do, as he once told me in Paris, than to become a writer.Thomas McGreevy" introduced Beckett to Joyce" (p. 18),fostering an important friendship between two hish expatriates. A photograph of a pouting, brooding Lucia Joyce, the novelist's daughter, "who liked to believe that Beckett came to the apartment to see her, not her father" (p. 21) serves as a reminder of one of Beckett's keen if unspoken sources of remorse. Might he have felt that unrequited love precipitated the young woman's mental illness? Although Lucia did not commit suicide like the rejected lover in Eh Joe, she suffered a total breakdown which confined her to various mental institutions for fifty years. It is interesting to read in Brater's chapter that Beckett, " always a loyal friend" (p. 21), did all he could during the war to get her out to England. She died at S1. Andrew's Hospital in Northampton in 1982. 450 Book Reviews A number of ladies were fascinated with the elusive, handsome intellectual. One of those who pursued him relentlessly was the heiress Peggy Guggenheim. For all this trouble she suffered a sea change, becoming old " Mother Pegg," Hamm's invisible although not inaudible neighbor in Endgame (p. 2 1). Another heiress. Nancy Cunard, published Beckett's frrst poem, " Whoroscope," as part of her new enterprise, Hours Press. She suggested that a 98-line text, based on the life of Descartes. ought to be accompanied by footnotes. Bratercomments "What he [Beckett] presented to the Hours Press ... was an elaborate sendup of the kind of documentation a modem reader associates with T.S. Eliot...

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