I’m not ashamed to admit that some of the time I had little idea of what was really going on in Samuel Beckett’s Dream of Fair to Middling Women – nor that I failed to understand far too many of the words used in it… It’s an odd blend of Dubliners (1914), Ulysses (1922), Finnegan’s Wake (1924), and Beckett himself.
Written in 1932, the book failed to find a publisher (too ‘literary’? too ‘racy’?) until 1992 when it was published posthumously. His first ‘literary landmark’, it was the 26-year-old Beckett exploring both himself as a young man as well as flexing his literary muscles in the laying of foundations for what would come later.
Maybe it’s something of a Curate’s Egg now, but if you’re interested in Beckett it could be worth truffling out…
Ian Gouge - Writer 