Even though I cannot believe it myself, this book has been on the anvil for almost two decades-of course, with long and frequent breaks when I would get involved in other projects.
I made my acquaintance with Samuel Beckett sometime in the mid.-sixties when it was fashionable in India to talk about the Theatre of the Absurd without having seen any Absurdist play, of course. Frankly, did not understand Waiting for Godot when I read it for the first time not even with the help of whatever little criticism I could lay my hands upon. The award of the Nobel Prize to Beckett in 1969 not only increased my curiosity but also my bafflement because the spate of interpretations was too varied to reconcile. The turning point came in the early seventies when I chanced to discover a whole set of Beckett's major plays in the personal library of a friend. It took me quite a few readings to disorient my tradition-bound imagination. And, then, one fine morning I got seized by a hunch that has been my obsession these twenty years.
As this study was started soon after my doctoral program, it had originally the format of a dissertation. During the long spell that the project remained shelved, that kind of scholarship lost its glamour for me; what is more, I have learned the hard way the virtue of readability. Consequently, I had to take extra pains to minimize quotations and the concomitant documentation. Since the idea is not to deny credit where it is due, I wish to express my indebtedness to all critics mentioned in the 'Bibliography' for their contribution to the making of this book. In this connection, it is necessary to mention the fact that one's benefit from critics' opinions is not always direct. Invariably, these stimulate one's thinking and thus help form such arguments as are quite unrelated to the originating ideas. Such a 'creative' use of secondary sources, I believe, is more valuable than a mechanical incorporation of others' views, howsoever well-documented. Notwithstanding all this, I should wish to offer my apologies as well as thanks for any such 'borrowings', direct or indirect, conscious or unconscious, as a traditional critic would normally document.
While acknowledging my indebtedness, I must place on record my gratitude to the Panjab University, Chandigarh, not only for the study eave that enabled me to complete this project but also for the travel grant which facilitated my visit to Britain in the summer of 1990. In that connection, thanks are due also to the British Council for subsidizing my visit through a grant from Charles Wallace India Trust. During the visit, I tapped the resources of a number of libraries at Oxford., Cambridge and London, but I feel most obliged to the Beckett Archives at the University of Reading for the rare material that I could not have possibly consulted anywhere else. With gratitude, I recall my visits to the BBC and the London University Audio-Visual Centre where I could hear or see dozens of Beckett's plays on audio and video cassettes in the exclusive sessions arranged for me. The visit to the UK afforded me also the chance to discuss my approach with a number of Beckett scholars. Indeed, I shall never be able to forget the spontaneous help and advice rendered by Prof. James Knowlson, Prof. Ruby Cohn, Prof. Katherine Worth, Dr. John Pilling, and Mary Bryden. was, indeed, overwhelmed when John Calder did me the honor of going through my typescript and offering his opinion. My thanks to all of them! In India, too, I had the privilege of benefiting from the resources of dozens of libraries in Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Hyderabad, and Chandigarh, but I owe a special word of thanks to L S Ramaiah, Librarian, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. Thanks to his invaluable system of updating the collections his library, I never had any problem regarding the availability of the latest published Beckett material.
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