Beyond Minimalism: Beckett’s Late Style in the Theatre

New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 First edition, advance proof. Publisher’s pale blue wrappers, with front wrapper printed in black. Near fine, with some toning to spine and wrapper margins. With laid-in TLS from Oxford University Press marketing manager Daniel T. Lundy to Mel Gussow, an important American theater critic and close friend of Beckett’s. Overall, a pleasing copy. From Mel Gussow’s personal library. According to the publisher, Beyond Minimalism “explores Beckett’s drama of the seventies and eighties, examining the ways in which play text and performance merge through the playwright’s poetic idiom … In the course of his analysis Brater demonstrates how Beckett’s late style in the theatre both continues and clarifies the dramatic lyricism that is the hallmark of earlier works such as Endgame and Waiting for Godot.” Mel Gussow (1933 - 2005) was an American theater and movie critic who contributed more than 4,000 articles and reviews to the New York Times over a span of 35 years. Gussow first met Beckett in 1978, and the two continued to meet and converse informally on life and art about once a year for the next 10 years until Beckett’s death in 1989 (their final meeting was at Beckett’s French nursing home where he later passed away). Gussow drew from these meetings to write his book, Conversations with and about Beckett (1996) - one in a series of four “Conversation” books, the others featuring conversations with playwrights Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard. Gussow’s Beckett book is particularly illuminating given that the enigmatic playwright famously declined to do interviews for most of his lifetime. Gussow also wrote Beckett’s NYT obituary in 1989, titled "Samuel Beckett is Dead at 83; His ‘Godot’ Changed Theater.". First Edition. Original Wrappers. Near Fine. Galley/Proof.