Mike Feher's Reviews > Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist

Cronin is to be commended for providing an unmaudlin look at an artist's life which by all accounts is anything but. Beckett's various pains in the world - whether psychosomatic or real - are well-accounted for, and one cannot help but think that the shy and bitter recluse of Beckett was indeed reaching for a world in which he imagined some form of happiness for himself, but could not articulate it. Cronin (blessed with an excellent vocabulary which he uses to great effect to support the book but not cudgel the reader with, and whose favorite word seems to be "advert") takes the reader through the entire life and times, baffling and depressing as they may be, of Beckett, and one is challenged to keep pace and follow his various locales (Ireland, France, Germany, and the United States) and the various characters who enter into Beckett's milieux. Of particular interest to this reader is Beckett's entrée into the circle of Joyce acolytes. While at times dry and abstract in a Schillervision sort of way (leaving the reader puzzling at the meaning of it all), the book is a hearty treatise on Beckett's life and works and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the inscrutable expatriate author of books, plays, and other dramatic works often featuring abstractions such as people buried up to their necks or talking mouths.

A worthwhile read, now over, go on nohow to your next book.