Beckett published his novel "Murphy", back in 1938 and forty odd years later in 1980, going by London cab to a Riverside Studio rehearsal of Beckett's play, "Endgame", Sam pointed to rooms overlooking the "End of the World Pub" and related to Alan Mandell, Gregory Mosher and this writer: "My father was sending me just enough money to live on, but not enough to die on. I wrote Murphy in that upper room." Many times I expressed my love for his dark comedy, which I had read at San Quentin. He just looked at me and smiled, "All the lies..." When I asked him "what lies he meant?" "The book is full of lies," he replied. And again he shed that sad tipster prophet's half-smile. I decided to have another look at Murphy and to my surprise near the top of page two, I found the first mystery. A clue to a "Third Hand" at work between the covers of this very wry and still contemporary 60 odd year old tale.

  On the many occasions when I would ask Sam a question or boldly spoke to him of a new Murphy moment I'd discovered, Sam instantly tuned in, "Fictional points of view," he would say, "occur throughout the book." I pestered Beckett for the next several years, begging him to someday consider Murphy a film. He always looked at me kindly when I asked him something about the novel and he well knew how much I loved discussing Murphy with anyone. Our final conversation was during SQDW's Paris video productions of "Waiting for Godot" and "Krapp's Last Tape" in 1998. Sam was ill and confined to Tiers Temps, a nursing home near digs I had rented off the Blvd Raspail from actors Robert Symonds and Priscilla Pointer. After each day's film work I'd stop by to have a wee drop and give Sam the news of how things were going. When again I placed Murphy on the agenda, Sam just looked at me, downed his Irish whiskey and said with a smile "After I'm gone, it's up to my nephew Edward." Martin Esslin and James Knowlson had many times spoken of Beckett's early Irish influences. In some emotional ways, Sam never left Ireland. The fact that Murphy leaves Dublin to reside in London mirrors Beckett's own journey. In the end a writer writes what he or she knows about; and Beckett knew Ireland well enough to write of her charms while living in Paris most of his life. Murphy came out of Sam's late 1920's and 1930's Paris - London experience, yet he draws upon Dublin to flesh out his various characters. When one studies Beckett's very Irish genius, one discovers more than a few rogues and peasant slaves along with one or two saints.

  In this funny romantic parable, Murphy stares out with a Celtic grin at the whole human comedy. Not exactly a sneak preview into the Murphy's Law syndrome, although some might yet argue this point. Murphy rather is full of colorful humor, even ribald jest. "A kid and a drunk," says paramour Celia, of her workday catch as a street walking prostitute. Celia, like most of Beckett's cast of characters, was born in Dublin but practices the trade in London while in pursuit of her Murphy. Beckett even has them take turns in the story's rocking chair. A tongue in cheek fictional romp and to quote the master, it is "Full of lies." But try and find them dear reader/listener.

  Murphy emerges as literary poetry, espescially when performed by a wonderful cadre of actors. Their voices bring the story to life. Beckett's fiction is a careful instrument of form and while Murphy, apppears inspired by the philosophical (Descartes-Geulinex) mind-body milieu, Beckett engineers the moral, social, and medical prevarications; so that much of what appears normal within context, is a fiction. Murphy's natal vista is Dublin, and the fact that Sam Beckett sets his mythic tale, (a third hand!) in both London and Dublin gives us a compellingly beautiful listening adventure. Beckett is of that group of 1930's Irish writers, who had to face their living peers. Sam's face was in James Joyce's mirror. I was his "associate" he said to me, one rainy Berlin night over a glass of Jameson's Irish whiskey. The fact that Sam had published two other works prior to Murphy seems significant in that Joyce, because of his deteriorating eyesight, probably could not or had not read Murphy. Again by 1939 Sam's published work stood at three: Proust, 1931, and More Pricks than Kicks, 1934. Literary lights of the day took turns reading to the nearly blind master. I felt in awe of Beckett, as many have, what must Sam have felt for James Joyce? The reason Beckett was in Paris during the late 1920's, was his studies. Sam was a two year guest lecturer in French at the Ecole Normale Superieure. He arrived in Paris toward the end of 1928 and took up residence. Beckett loved Paris and it's big intense artistic and literary scene. He told me once that the sense of freedom of expression, so repressed at home and in England, was alive and well like Jacque Brel in Paris. Picasso hung out here in many of the same watering holes Beckett frequented with Joyce. Cafe Deux Magot, Cafe Cluny, a host of others.

  Sam living and teaching here persued his own form of writing, the mode of the new and a different standard of literary expression emerged as most styyles changed in music, poetry and painting. Hitler's Storm Troopers changed all that in 1939 when they stomped into Paris.

  Beckett joined the resistance to fight the German occupation of his beloved city. As an Irish citizen, Beckett was looked upon as a neutral. Like the Swiss, the Irish had formed a non-aggression pact with Hitler. Beckett, became the survivor, the older patriot of the "Gloria" resistance cell. The Nazi killing machine was everywhere. Sam's name was near the top of the police list because of an informer and he narrowly escaped capture when the Nazis came to his apartment. Suzanne, his lady friend, opened the door. "Wo is Herr Beckett?" Thinking quickly Suzanne pointed down the stairs. And as the Nazi raiding party marched back down, Sam and Suzanne fled out the rear stairs with only their coats in hand. Sam knew tha Nazi secret police had done in his underground boss who'd confessed, revealing the names of his cell's agents. Beckett was lucky to be alive. "We slept in a few abandoned prisons making our get-away," Beckett said to me over a Paris beer, thirty years later. "I wrote Watt on the run and later finished the MS living in the unoccupied zone." He and Suzanne spent two years in Roussillon, a simple village in the South of France. It was in this wartime redoubt, that Sam worked in the fields and picked grapes as one means of survival. Beckett's suffering greatly reflected this period of his life. His writing now grew darker. A few years later his plays especially echoed this personal geography of human suffering. A condition Beckett understood having lived through one of the most brutal wars in man's history. Beckett knew the pain of humanity in ways only the secular saints could, by living each day of it rather than existing in denial of that world. Therefore his writing, the plays, and the prose, demonstrate empathy, compassion, and a deeper philosophy, a natural poetry of mankind's suffering.

  Beckett's writing is based on the human condition and speaks to all humanity. Therefore I believe these recordings reflect a different side of Beckett. The true poet's tongue in cheek giggle at the fate of human clowns who managed somehow to escape the gallows of their creator's humor. Or maybe he planned it that way?

Rick Cluchey