: Samuel Beckett
: How It Is
: Faber& Faber
: 9780571266869
: 1
: CHF 9.80
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 138
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Published in French in 1961, and in English in 1964, How It Is is a novel in three parts, written in short paragraphs, which tell (abruptly, cajolingly, bleakly) of a narrator lying in the dark, in the mud, repeating his life as he hears it uttered - or remembered - by another voice. Told from within, from the dark, the story is tirelessly and intimately explicit about the feelings that pervade his world, but fragmentary and vague about all else therein or beyond. Together with Molloy, How It Is counts for many readers as Beckett's greatest accomplishment in the novel form. It is also his most challenging narrative, both stylistically and for the pessimism of its vision, which continues the themes of reduced circumstance, of another life before the present, and the self-appraising search for an essential self, which were inaugurated in the great prose narratives of his earlier trilogy. she sits aloof ten yards fifteen yards she looks up looks at me says at last to herself all is well he is working my head where is my head it rests on the table my hand trembles on the table she sees I am not sleeping the wind blows tempestuous the little clouds drive before it the table glides from light to darkness darkness to light Edited by Edouard Magessa O'Reilly

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906 and graduated from Trinity College. He settled in Paris in 1937, after travels in Germany and periods of residence in London and Dublin. He remained in France during the Second World War and was active in the French Resistance. From the spring of 1946 his plays, novels, short fiction, poetry and criticism were largely written in French. With the production of En attendant Godot in Paris in 1953, Beckett's work began to achieve widespread recognition. During his subsequent career as a playwright and novelist in both French and English he redefined the possibilities of prose fiction and writing for the theatre. Samuel Beckett won the Prix Formentor in 1961 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. He died in Paris in December 1989.

Where unspecified, translations from French to English or vice versa are by Beckett.

1906
13 AprilSamuel Beckett [Samuel Barclay Beckett] born in ‘Cooldrinagh’, a house in Foxrock, a village south of Dublin, on Good Friday, the second child of William Beckett and May Beckett, née Roe; he is preceded by a brother, Frank Edward, born 26 July 1902.
1911
Enters kindergarten at Ida and Pauline
Elsner’s private academy in Leopardstown.
1915
Attends larger Earlsfort House School in Dublin.
1920
Follows Frank to Portora Royal, a distinguished Protestant boarding school in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh (soon to become part of Northern Ireland).
1923
OctoberEnrols at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) to study for an Arts degree.
1926
AugustFirst visit to France, a month-long cycling tour of the Loire Valley.
1927
April–AugustTravels through Florence and Venice, visiting museums, galleries, and churches.
DecemberReceives B.A. in Modern Languages (French and Italian) and graduates first in the First Class.
1928
Jan.–JuneTeaches French and English at Campbell College, Belfast.
SeptemberFirst trip to Germany to visit seventeen-year-old Peggy Sinclair, a cousin on his father’s side, and her family in Kassel.
1 NovemberArrives in Paris as an exchangelecteur at the École Normale Supérieure. Quickly becomes friends with his predecessor, Thomas McGreevy [after 1943, MacGreevy], who introduces Beckett to James Joyce and other influential anglophone writers and publishers.
DecemberSpends Christmas in Kassel (as also in 1929, 1930 and 1931).
1929
JunePublishes first critical essay (‘Dante … Bruno. Vico . . Joyce’) and first story (‘Assumption’) intransition magazine.
1930
JulyWhoroscope (Paris: Hours Press).
OctoberReturns to TCD to begin a two-year appointment as lecturer in French.
NovemberIntroduced by MacGreevy to the painter and writer Jack B. Yeats in Dublin.
1931
MarchProust (London: Chatto and Windus).
September