Beckett/Beckett
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In one of the most incisive works of literary criticism to emerge from the twentieth century, Vivian Mercier presents a brilliantly structured dual portrait of Samuel Beckett — the man and the artist — through a series of carefully constructed binary oppositions that illuminate every facet of the Nobel laureate's singular genius. Beckett/Beckett argues that Beckett's life and work are best understood through contrasting pairs — Irish/European, Catholic/Rational, Abstract/Concrete, Solitary/Committed — weaving biography and critical analysis into a seamless, authoritative account of one of literature's most enigmatic figures. Mercier, himself an Irish critic of considerable stature and a contemporary of Beckett, writes with rare intimacy and scholarly precision, drawing on personal knowledge and deep textual analysis to produce a study that is both rigorous and revelatory. The book stands as a landmark in Beckett scholarship, capturing the paradoxical tensions that animate works such as Waiting for Godot, Molloy, and Endgame with a clarity that few critics have matched before or since. For anyone seeking to understand why Beckett's bleak, stripped-down vision of humanity continues to haunt and compel readers worldwide, this is the essential starting point — and its final pages leave one questioning whether any artist can ever truly be separated from the contradictions that define them.
Author: Vivian Mercier
Format: Paperback
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In one of the most incisive works of literary criticism to emerge from the twentieth century, Vivian Mercier presents a brilliantly structured dual portrait of Samuel Beckett — the man and the artist — through a series of carefully constructed binary oppositions that illuminate every facet of the Nobel laureate's singular genius. Beckett/Beckett argues that Beckett's life and work are best understood through contrasting pairs — Irish/European, Catholic/Rational, Abstract/Concrete, Solitary/Committed — weaving biography and critical analysis into a seamless, authoritative account of one of literature's most enigmatic figures. Mercier, himself an Irish critic of considerable stature and a contemporary of Beckett, writes with rare intimacy and scholarly precision, drawing on personal knowledge and deep textual analysis to produce a study that is both rigorous and revelatory. The book stands as a landmark in Beckett scholarship, capturing the paradoxical tensions that animate works such as Waiting for Godot, Molloy, and Endgame with a clarity that few critics have matched before or since. For anyone seeking to understand why Beckett's bleak, stripped-down vision of humanity continues to haunt and compel readers worldwide, this is the essential starting point — and its final pages leave one questioning whether any artist can ever truly be separated from the contradictions that define them.