THIS book is the third in a series of Conversations with modern dramatists (the others are on Pinter and Stoppard) by the former drama critic of the New York Times, Mel Gussow. The continuity of the series had to be modified for the Beckett volume because, as Gussow acknowledges with a quotation from Beckett's letter agreeing to their first meeting, Beckett refused "to give interviews in any shape or form and would have to ask you to regard our meeting as a strictly private one".
A collection of interviews on a writer who on principle refused to grant them would seem to present insurmountable problems. Gussow's solution is to make public his eight "strictly private" meetings with Beckett and then to fill out the volume with other interviews, reprints of his New York Times reviews, and his obituary of Beckett.
Inconsistencies among the pieces, however, remain unexplained and even unacknowledged despite an Introduction to the volume and introductions to the individual pieces. In a 1973 interview Jack McGowran says, for instance, "He wrote a play for me, Eh, Joe." Gussow later mentions that Footfalls "was created for Billie Whitelaw" in 1976. But Beckett tells Gussow in 1978 that he wrote Krapp's Last Tape for Pat Magee, and "That was the only time I wrote directly for anyone." Certainly Beckett wrote Eh, Joe for McGowran and Footfalls for Whitelaw, but how then explain Beckett's comment? Gussow doesn't, and such discrepancies are left to stand on their own.
Some of the material has, moreover, been available for some time. The McGowran interview, for example, is virtually a repeat of his 1973 interview with Richard Toscan in Theatre Quarterly (with the errors repeated), and Billie Whitelaw's comments have been available in any number of sources and most touchingly in her recent memoir, Billie Whitelaw, Who He. The more interesting material is the fresher, from those more rebellious souls like Mike Nichols, whose Americanised Waiting for Godot in New York with the uncontrollable Robin Williams and Steve Martin scandalised the faithful, and Deborah Warner, whose Faustian Footfalls in London with the irrepressible Fiona Shaw sent the Beckett Estate into a panic from which it has yet to recover fully.
What's more compelling about these all too brief interviews is the absence of any overt iconoclasm. Instead, we find a cogent defence of the directors' textual deviations and appeals for an infusion of new energy into performances of Beckett's work. On the other hand, Edward Beckett offers an equally cogent defence of the Estate's guidelines, which, in Edward's voice sound unassailably reasonable. The deadlock is not negotiated in the volume, of course, but clearly - Gussow's sympathies are with those seeking to open up the possibilities of Becketts theatre (without, of course, violating the texts).
The overall strength of the volume is not in the bits of information it contains. Even Gussow's sensitive and knowledgeable reviews are in a sense old news. Beckett criticism has moved well beyond opening night deliberations. Furthermore, the coherence of the volume would have been enhanced had the reviews matched the more controversial productions discussed in the interviews. And some of the careless factual errors should have been caught in proof. The cancelled trip to Stuttgart in May of 1984 "for a television version of Worstward Ho" must surely refer instead to the delayed taping of What Where, for example.
But more important is the mood Gussow creates about Beckett's life - and that is unerringly right. Beckett's daily routines evoked in Gussow's recollections vividly recall for me innumerable double espressos I shared with Beckett in the cafe of the Hotel PLM; and the memory of our final parting (his unshaven cheek, his dry lips, and his whispered "God bless") is invoked on almost every page. And it is with no little pleasure for this reader that, as he describes the interior of Beckett's Blvd. St Jacques flat in his Afterword and surveys the books in his study, Gussow notes that among those within easy reach of his desk were "critical studies by S.E. Gontarski and James Knowlson".
Conversations with (and about) Beckett then, is a triumph of mood, a devoted critic's farewell and public "God Bless" an author who has deeply touched his life.