Proust and Three Dialogues [Paperback]

Samuel Beckett (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0714500348 | ISBN-13: 978-0714500348 | Publication Date: December 1989 | Edition: 3rd

Samuel Beckett's celebrated early study of Marcel proust, whose theories of time were to play a large part in his own work, was written in 1931. It is a brilliant work of critical insight that also tells us much about its author's own thinking and preoccupations. In its own right it is a masterpiece of literary and philosophical creative writing. This edition was published in 1999 - ten years after the writer's death. The volume also contains the equally celebrated dialogues with the art critic Georges Duthuit - written to record their different points of view after the discussions took place. Beckett always let Duthuit win, but his very unusual and often opposite point of view on the nature and purpose of art is all the more forceful and memorable on that account.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This small book must contain some of the most brilliant and far-reaching criticism written this century...it is also very funny." - The Scotsman "A brilliant and at times moving account of the impact of a philosophical novelist on a philosophical poet." - The Sunday Times

About the Author

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was born in Dublin of a comfortable middle class protestant family. After school in Northern Ireland, he went to Trinity College in Dublin where he distinguished himself in French and Italian and was recognised as a brilliant scholar. Under an exchange agreement, Beckett taught at the Ecole Normale Superieure. He moved to Paris in 1928 to write, staying in France during the Second World War - he was a courier in the Resistance. He was one of the major novelists and playwrights of the last century, as well as a poet and a perceptive writer on the work of others. "Waiting For Godot" brought him world fame but his celebrated fiction includes the "Molloy" trilogy, "Murphy" and "Watt" among others. He has written many plays for stage, T.V., radio and film and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

Product Details

• Paperback: 126 pages
• Publisher: John Calder; 3rd edition (December 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714500348
• ISBN-13: 978-0714500348
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #702,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterful study of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", November 4, 2006

By 

Alexandros Gezerlis "Alex Gezerlis" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Proust and Three Dialogues (Paperback)

Samuel Beckett's text on Marcel Proust's work was published in 1931, when Beckett was 25 years old. Even though it was written before Beckett had reached his "mature" phase, this is a brilliant piece of criticism. Beckett's close reading (see, for example, his detailed list of the eleven points of departure for Proust's involuntary memory) is supplemented by deep analysis - not "cheap flashy philosophical jargon". Though focused on his discussion of Proust, Beckett also shares with us numerous aphorisms of wider import (e.g. "Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.").

Also included in this volume are the famous three dialogues between Beckett and Georges Duthuit (1949). In them, Beckett states his opinion on artistic creation: "The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express". Duthuit's conception of art seems to be much more traditional, and the dialogues sometimes (supposedly) become heated.

A word of advice: it makes much more sense instead of buying this edition to buy Volume IV (Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism) of the Grove Centenary Edition of Samuel Beckett's works, since both texts ("Marcel Proust" & "Three Dialogues") are contained therein.

Alexandros Gezerlis

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On of the best works on Proust, ever, June 27, 2000

By 

Mark Calkins (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Proust and Three Dialogues (Paperback)

One of the best studies ever written about Proust's novel is also one of the earliest. Beckett's reading underscores the novel's pessimism--the bleak futility of human relations, the stupifying effects of Habit, the "poisonous ingenuity" of Time--yet is itself a brisk, erudite, hilarious, dark, and exhilarating piece of Modernist literary criticism.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliantly constructed and movingly written book., October 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Proust and Three Dialogues (Paperback)

Beckett's 'Proust' is a powerful and revelatory work, largely because it analyses not only the writing of Marcel Proust but also perception itself: the literary high. It can only enrich the reader's life. I'd recommend it to anyone.