Beckett Matters

Collects Stan Gontarski's finest essays on the work of Samuel Beckett over a forty-year periodRepresenting a profound engagement with the work of Samuel Beckett, this volume gathers the very best of Stan Gontarski s Beckett criticism on practical, theoretical and critical levels. Such a range suggests a multiplicity of approaches to a body of work itself multiple, produced by an artist who underwent any number of transformations and reinventions over his long writing career. Many of the essays collected here explore Beckett s debt to his age, Beckett very much a product of a culture in transition, which change he would help foster. But much of Beckett s creative struggle was to find a new way, his own way. Most of the essays that comprise this volume detail that struggle, toward a way we now call Beckettian.Key FeaturesIncludes 24 original essays divided into thematic sections: modernism, theory, editing, introducing, and performing and covers Beckett s drama, staging, fiction, poetry and proseUnique collection of Beckett scholarship by a leading Beckett critic and theatre director brought together for the first timeNew introductory essay reflecting on the development of Beckett scholarship