ABSTRACT
Many of the rebellions, the reckless, defiant, no less courageous acts of a determined aspiring writer, were fostered by the effervescence of Paris in the late 1920s. Gordon re-creates the intellectual ethos of the period, rehabilitating the importance of Eugene Jolas among others, pinpointing Carl Jung's probable influence, and observing that Samuel Beckett did not look to the past for salvation. One of the rare negative testimonials to Beckett's character comes from the French novelist Nathalie Sarraute. Time and again, Beckett experienced great physical pain, having from early on had to cope with boils; and in later years he suffered from cataracts, a painful lump in the roof of his mouth, a severe abscess on his lung, a gradual stiffening of his hand muscles that was diagnosed as Dupuytren's contracture, not to mention the near-fatal incident of Twelfth Night, 1937, when he was stabbed by a pimp in a Parisian street.
