From Library Journal
The first volume in this two-volume set contains the text of Comment C'est and its English version, How It Is, on its verso and recto pages, respectively. Also in the first volume is the brief L'Image, for which there is no English version. Volume 2 consists of Beckett's three appendixes to the three parts of the French and English versions of Comment C'est and How It Is. Most readers are familiar with Beckett's Waiting for Godot but are not familiar with his other works, probably because Beckett's obscure imagery, experimentation with rhythm, and focus on linguistics and psychoanalysis make his work difficult to read. O'Reilly's intention, he claims, is to create an edition of these lesser-known texts for the "greater community of researchers who have neither the taste for manuscript study nor the time to devote to it." O'Reilly accomplishes his goal with several editorial devices, but this book will still appeal only to Beckett scholars; appropriate for academic libraries. Bob Ivey, Univ. of Memphis
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Kurzbeschreibung
Coming after Charles Krance's edition of Company and of Ill Seen Ill Said (Beckett 1996), this is the third volume of Samuel Beckett's Complete Bilingual Works . Like those volumes, this one presents twin English and French texts and a complete record of the genesis of each one. Along with Comment c'est and How it is , O'Reilly has included L'Image and an excerpt from Comment c'est which was published later in a separate volume. The volume also includes an introduction that presents the pre-original documents to the cited works and the protocol with which the editor used to transcribe them. This volume will serve primarily as a research tool in two areas: comparative study of Beckett's English and French texts, along with the study of the genesis of those texts.
