On Needing to Be Looked After: Beckett’s Letters

This article seeks to show how behaviour patterns in Beckett's life, emerging from his letters, structure his innovative narratives. It focuses on the question of dependence and indepence and the way these qualities relate to freedom and courage. Beckett tends to insist on the maximum intellectual independence while being practically entirely dependent on others. This pattern, which emerges clearly in his dealings both with his family, with his partner, Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil, and with his publishers, appears in grotesque and schematic form in narratives like First Love and Molloy. Drawing on material from the second volume of Beckett's letters, the article seeks to show how this behaviour pattern evolves in the central part of his career and, again, is reflected in his work.