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Title: Dialogue in the Void: Beckett and Giacometti by Matti Megged ISBN: 0-930829-01-8 Publisher: Lumen Press, Inc. Pub. Date: September, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.00

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Average Customer Rating: 1.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: This book (published in 1985) elaborates on what the author perceives to be important common aspects to the work of the sculptor/painter Alberto Giacometti and the writer Samuel Beckett. It proceeds by identifying common themes (failure, exile, memory, staging, dialogue, the color gray, etc.) and expounding on similarities and differences. (Inexplicably, Megged ignores Beckett's "second trilogy," all of which was available by 1985.)

The kindest thing one can say about this very dated book is that Megged was way out of his depth in writing about two men with the stature of Beckett and Giacometti. But, of course, could anyone write such a book successfully? Even Yves Bonnefoy, in his huge study of Giacometti, mentions Beckett only three times and doesn't try to press any elaborate comparison.

Less forgiveable than his outsized ambition, is that Megged seems to have had no inkling of just how radical the work of two men was. Sadly, given how interesting the subject is, most of what Megged has to say, while not stupid, is just superficial, obvious, and glib. I found his awkward side-by-side comparison organized along "common" themes quite embarrassing; it reads at times like an undergraduate term paper. And when you combine Megged's pretentiousness ("Art itself is an impossible desideratum, never to be attained.") with such a flabby organizing principle, well, that doesn't add much to the book's appeal, either.

Rating: 1
Summary: avoid this book.
Comment: An amateurish and embarrassing piece of academic schlock. Nothing but a brazen rip-off of the Hohl monograph, which makes the classic (although now dated) comparison of Giacometti and Beckett. This "study" is derivative and an insult to the two artists (and to the reader.) For all its faults, even the Lord biography is more informative than this genuinely stupid book. How Robert Motherwell was ever conned into writing the cover blurb is a mystery.