Beckett's Eire

The ultimate literary scrapbook

BOOKS

In this, Samuel Beckett's eightieth year, our last heroic modernist has been garlanded with honors, new productions of his plays, renewed attention of all kinds (so reminiscent of that paid to Balanchine at the end of his life). Alongside have come a host of celebratory volumes. The best by far is The Beckett Country: Samuel Beckett's Ireland (Black Cat Press/Faber and Faber), a collaboration between Eoin O'Brien and the photographer David H. Davison.

The common view of Beckett's work is that it is as little related to place and to its author's biography as it is possible for art to be. But as this beautifully produced volume shows with great delicacy, Beckett's work is in fact far more Irish (and far more realistic) than is usually supposed. A quotation is counterposed to a photograph or a snippet of autobiography, and the result is that one feels Beckett is describing, say, not just a desolate terrain, but the desolate terrain around Dublin, not just a childhood, but his own AngloIrish boyhood. The result is heartbreaking and oddly beautiful. This is the avant-garde coffee-table book of the season, a rare blend of the gorgeous and the instructive. DAVID RIEFF

Legend has it that James Brown can sweat through his shoes.

—JAMES WOLCOTT