The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin
Philip Landon

Anthony Cronin. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. HarperCollins, 1997. 645 pp. $30.00.

This level-headed biography is informed by a healthy impatience with the sycophantic testimonies that have turned Beckett into the official saint of the postwar era. It sheds much light on the personal origins, Irish topography, and fraught publication history of Beckett’s fictions and plays. Cronin stresses Beckett’s aloofness from politics and literary movements, including “the Dublin literary swim,” the theater of the absurd, and Parisian existentialism. With reference to Beckett’s fiction, Cronin helpfully delineates the development from the show-off sophistication of Murphy through the escalating uncertainty of Watt to the self-imposed “awful prose” (Beckett’s phrase) of the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable. “In general too much has been made of Beckett’s interest in philosophy and too little of his impatience with it,” Cronin declares. Instead, Beckett’s work, especially the fiercely self-reflexive fiction, entails for Cronin a “profound exploration of the self.” By sealing off his subject from the literary, philosophical and historical currents of the day, Cronin is able to concentrate on Beckett the person, exploring his major friendships and his often tortuous relationship with women. However, in narrowing the focus to the personal, Cronin also diminishes Beckett’s stature as an author who has proved astoundingly pertinent to modern audiences. The condition of uncertainty that preoccupies Beckett is philosophical: born of philosophical reflection, universal in intent. Missing from Cronin’s account is any attempt to analyze the reasons why Beckett’s supposedly idiosyncratic vision won global esteem in the postwar era, and why this warm reception was largely limited to the plays. That said, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist provides essential insights into the complex personality of a writer whose achievement has yet to come into perspective. [Philip Landon]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin Philip Landon Anthony Cronin. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. HarperCollins, 1997. 645 pp. $30.00. This level-headed biography is informed by a healthy impatience with the sycophantic testimonies that have turned Beckett into the official saint of the postwar era. It sheds much light on the personal origins, Irish topography, and fraught publication history of Beckett’s fictions and plays. Cronin stresses Beckett’s aloofness from politics and literary movements, including “the Dublin literary swim,” the theater of the absurd, and Parisian existentialism. With reference to Beckett’s fiction, Cronin helpfully delineates the development from the show-off sophistication of Murphy through the escalating uncertainty of Watt to the self-imposed “awful prose” (Beckett’s phrase) of the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable. “In general too much has been made of Beckett’s interest in philosophy and too little of his impatience with it,” Cronin declares. Instead, Beckett’s work, especially the fiercely self-reflexive fiction, entails for Cronin a “profound exploration of the self.” By sealing off his subject from the literary, philosophical and historical currents of the day, Cronin is able to concentrate on Beckett the person, exploring his major friendships and his often tortuous relationship with women. However, in narrowing the focus to the personal, Cronin also diminishes Beckett’s stature as an author who has proved astoundingly pertinent to modern audiences. The condition of uncertainty that preoccupies Beckett is philosophical: born of philosophical reflection, universal in intent. Missing from Cronin’s account is any attempt to analyze the reasons why Beckett’s supposedly idiosyncratic vision won global esteem in the postwar era, and why this warm reception was largely limited to the plays. That said, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist provides essential insights into the complex personality of a writer whose achievement has yet to come into perspective. [Philip Landon]

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