Everybody loves Beckett

Neil Jordan interviewed by IMMA’s Christina Kennedy [PDF], on the occasion of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival.

I never met Beckett. He’s almost become a secular saint now hasn’t he? It’s impossible to be an artist now without having some awareness of Beckett. He’s written some incredibly beautiful things. I always feel quite uneasy about Beckett in a way. I think the reverence in which he is held is at times almost insufferable. But yes, there is an extraordinary purity to his work. When I was doing the piece with Julianne, it was a strange thing that happened to me. At times it seemed that everything became unbearably long to endure because the reduction of the piece would actually be silence, yet it’s only 12 minutes long. So there’s a curious thing that goes on with Beckett but he creates these extraordinary images on stage. The piece itself is quite impenetrable you know? If you try to put together a narrative from it, it is almost impossible. But it does seem to be the experience of being thrown into life somehow and being maddened by sound and then vanishing. It’s as obscure and impenetrable as that. But it was fascinating working on it.