"The World of Samuel Beckett" brings together a distinguished group of authorities, among them Beckett's longtime associates and colleagues Herbert Blau and Martin Esslin. In a chapter on Beckett's "Enough", Blau concedes that parts of the playwright's work can be lyrical and beguiling, but "it's still an appalling vision". Esslin (who coined the term "theater of the absurd") challenges the notion that Beckett is difficult or depressing, arguing instead that he is basically a comic writer, gallows humor thought it be. Angela Moorjani sees Beckett's writing as the product of a cryptic text inscribed within. Bennett Simon, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on Beckett, examines the self in current art and psychoanalysis. Joseph H. Smith emphasizes that Beckett, like Freud and Lacan, challenges any notions of "cure" as the easy achievement of happiness.

About the Author

Joseph H. Smith, M.D., is supervising and training analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute and president of the Washington Psychoanalytic Society. He is editor of Psychoanalysis and Religion.

Reviews
The psychoanalytic vision that informs the majority of the articles (those of the academic scholars as well as those of the practitioners of psychiatry) sheds important new light on Beckett's work. Theatre Survey



Book Information
ISBN 9780801841354
Author Joseph H. Smith
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 340g