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HOW IT WAS: A MEMOIR OF SAMUEL BECKETT
by Anne Atik
Faber, 30, pp. 129, ISBN 05 71209106 eminiscences of Beckett, like photographs of him, are many and telling. Anne Atik's memoir is a happy addition to the genre. It stands the tact test: how to express a justified) sense of immense privilege while sounding or even being modest withal. Her being the wife of the artist Avigdor Arikha, many of whose portraits of Beckett illuminate the book, is a help with the modesty matter, since what she reports is not so much her friendship with Beckett as theirs. He was very good to them, with them.
True, by now such an evocation of him lacks surprise. `No one mentioned in these pages, nor anyone who had anything to do with Sam, even for five minutes, could fail to be struck by his sheer goodness.' The time, though, has long passed for anyone's being struck by this. `Anecdotes about his goodness border on hagiography': agreed. Not that it should be further agreed that `his being a Protestant saved him from being a saint', since there are plenty of Protestant saints.
Charles Juliet, in his Meeting Beckett, has an exchange: We discuss religion, and I ask whether he has been able to free himself from its influence. SB: Perhaps in my external behaviour, but as...