Samuel Beckett wrote of Watt:
“It is an unsatisfactory book, written
in dribs and drabs, but it has its
place in the series, as will perhaps
appear in time.”
It was begun in Paris on 11 February 1941 and
not completed until 1945. In the University
of Texas at Austin there are six notebooks
which are full of material that did not end up
in the published book. These notebooks are
extraordinary manuscripts, full of doodles,
drawings and designs—mathematical and
otherwise—which tell the tale of the book, so
long in gestation. The novel (if that is the word)
was written in English, Beckett’s last work in that
language before turning to French. Beckett did,
of course, write in both English and French later.
Watt is the great transition work in Beckett’s
writing, the bridge between the Joyce-
influenced early work and the great middle
period of the late 1940s and 50s.
Most of the writing of Watt took place in the
village of Roussillon in the Vaucluse area of
south-eastern France between 1943 and 1944
when Beckett was on the run from the Gestapo,
having worked with the French Resistance
during World War II. Beckett described writing it
as “only a game, a means of staying sane”.
The house of Mr Knott where Watt goes to work
is based on two houses: mainly Cooldrinagh
in Foxrock, County Dublin, the Beckett family
home, and, to a lesser extent, the nearby
Glencairn, the former home of Richard ‘Boss’
Croker, a retired Irish-American politician,
and, more recently, the residence of the British
Ambassador to Ireland. Watt’s journey on the
train is from Harcourt Street Station in Dublin
City to Foxrock on the old Harcourt Street
railway line, most of which is now a tramline.
The racecourse is Leopardstown.
After the war Beckett tried to have Watt
published but it was rejected by all to whom it
was sent. One publisher wrote “what is it that
this Dublin air does to these writers?” It was
eventually published in August 1953 in Paris by
Olympia Press in collaboration with a group of
young American expatriates—led by Richard
Seaver—called Collection Merlin (or the Merlin
juveniles, as Beckett called them). Later it was
published by Grove Press in the USA and by
John Calder in Britain. Watt was banned in
Ireland in 1954. But, curiously, Ireland was the
first country to publish extracts from Watt in
the literary magazines Envoy and Irish Writing
between 1950 and 1953. It was while touring
Ireland as an actor in Anew McMaster’s
company in the early 1950s that Harold Pinter
read an extract from Watt in one of those
magazines and became one of Beckett’s
greatest champions.
Watt is for many a difficult book to read, not
least because of its seemingly endless lists
and combinations and permutations. But
perseverance with it pays huge dividends and
those who give it a chance will find great riches
of language and philosophy and humour. It
is one of the few books that have made me
laugh out loud on public transport.
Watt the show is not Watt the book. It is a
distillation of the essence of the book. Much
has had to be left out for a 60-minute show. My
earnest hope is that those who enjoy the show,
and particularly those who don’t, will read the
book. It is unlike anything else you will have
read.
This stage version of Watt is dedicated to the
memory of my good friend, the great New York
publisher and book lover, Dick Seaver, who
died in 2009 and who, more than anyone else,
was responsible for publishing Watt.
— BARRY MCGOVERN