The last chapter made me love the man as I found myself reflected in a writer who has his seal forever on the face of posterity. Stand-out chapters include chapter 3 on "Man's Inhumanity and Search for Love," chapter 4 on "The Conquest of Time," chapter 5 on "The Failure of Art," chapter 6 on "Philosophy and Language," chapter 7 on "Looking at God," and chapter 8 on Beckett's Ethics. We get a view of Beckett the man and artist that runs the gamut of his work's and life's preoccupations. He is in fact much harder to read than James Joyce (for me, that is - my mind works similarly to Joyce's writing methods). The book is well-organized, reading much like a coffee discussion of Beckett, which is what anyone new (or old) to this very, very, very, very, very, very, very difficult author needs to read. This is the best critical commentary/insight/summary of Samuel Beckett's work I have yet to read - Calder outstrips the (so-called) "banner-work" of the Cambridge Companion people by focusing on the central issues to the work and life of Beckett.
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