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Proust and Three Dialogues

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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

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.

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.