Pritchett on Beckett
Photo from Images of Beckett
This from ‘An Irish Oblomov’ in the great V.S. Pritchett’s book of New Statesman essays entitled The Living Novel & Later Appreciations:
"Beckett’s anti-novels, like all anti-novels, have to deal with small areas of experience because their pretension is to evoke the whole of life, i.e., life unfixed by art; the result is that these verbose books are like long ironical, stinging footnotes in small print to some there not formulated. But there is a flash of deep insight in the madenss he evokes: it is strange that in a gerneation which has put all its stress on youth and achievement, he alone should have written about old age, lonelines and decrepitude, a subject which arouses perhaps our deepest repressed guilt and fears.He is the product of a civilization which has become suddenly old. He is a consdierable, muttering, comic writer, and although he coveys unbearable pain, he salos conveys the emement of sardonic tenacity and danger that lies at the heart of the comic gift."
I met this afternoon with Canadian actress Tanja Jacobs who played Winnie in a recent NAC production of Beckett’s Happy Days. We talked about what it was like to inhabit this character. Stay tuned for the audio.