Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011) Read Online Free PDF Page A

weak?
Yours ever,
John

January 1, 2009
    Dear John,
    Siri will be writing to you separately about Bion . . . but as for Beckett’s nephew, I’m afraid I’ve had no direct contact with him. When I was preparing the Centenary Edition [of S.B.’s work] a few years ago, however, I was told by the editor at Grove Press that Edward was very pleased with the project and gave it his wholehearted endorsement. If you would like to be in touch with him yourself, I could easily arrange it for you through my British publisher, Faber & Faber. As you know, they have had the rights to Beckett’s plays for years, but recently, through the efforts of Stephen Page, the young head man there, they have bought out John Calder and now own the rights to all of Beckett’s prose as well. Edward surely must have been involved in those negotiations.
    As far as I can tell, Edward’s somewhat crotchety behavior over the years concerning permissions to perform or publish his uncle’s works is an effort to respect S.B.’s wishes, to imagine how the somewhat crotchety S.B. would have acted in each instance were he still alive. But this distinction between literary and personal correspondence makes no sense to me. Years ago, I was contacted by one of the editors of S.B.’s letters (a professor at Emory University, if I’m not mistaken) and sent her photocopies of all the notes and letters I had received from Beckett. According to her, they were aiming to publish a complete correspondence and were hunkering down for what they were certain would be many years of work. At long last, it seems, the first volume is finished.
    Who is the publisher—and who are you writing the review for?
    Concerning Beckett’s travels, I’m not sure that love was the motivating factor. Knowlson’s biography is a good source of information on these comings and goings. Many of the events are dim to me now, but I believe that Beckett first went to Paris on a teaching fellowship after graduating from Trinity. He was there for a year or two, then returned to Dublin, where he taught for a while and started cracking up. His principal reason for going to London was to receive treatment from Bion (I think). The trips to Germany were mostly about looking at art. The only woman he knew there was someone named Peggy Sinclair (the daughter of a relative by marriage, his first flame—who died young of TB).
    I’m afraid that none of this will be of much help to you, but you might dip into the Knowlson to see if the facts tally with my memories. If I’m not mistaken, he discusses Bion at some length.
Happy new year to you and Dorothy!
Paul

January 5, 2009
    Dear Paul,
    Thanks for correcting me on Beckett’s nephew. It seemed to me that the editors of the new Letters were drawing rather too sharp a line between the literary and the personal, and I surmised—erroneously—that the estate might be behind it.
    The publisher is Cambridge. My review will be in the NY Review of Books .
    On Charlton Heston: It doesn’t seem to me strange that, operating in a film environment, you should keep running into another person from that environment. What is bizarre is that it should be Charlton Heston. It begins to sound like one of the dreams from Freud’s dream book.
All good wishes,
John

Hôtel d’Aubusson
    Paris
    January 10, 2009
    Dear John,
    Your snappy, witty letter from 12/30 arrived just two hours before I left for the airport. Now I am in Europe again, a frigid Paris, twelve noon exactly, sitting in my hotel room, unable to go on with the nap I was hoping to take to ward off the effects of a sleepless night. Excuse the funny stationery, excuse the crappy ballpoint pen. For some reason, Paris hotel rooms are not equipped with typewriters.
    I’m more than happy to leave behind our ruminations on economics. It is a subject I am ill qualified to talk about. Needless to say, I am an ardent believer in universal happiness. I would like everyone in the world to have satisfying,