Steven Hendricks, writer, educator (Evergreen professor) on his second novel, Now Beacon, Now Sea
“Now Beacon, Now Sea grew from my interest in writing about Samuel Beckett. The title comes from his novel Molloy: “Unfathomable mind, now beacon, now sea.” I began with a conventional concept for a biographical novel, but I knew that form wouldn’t hold my interest in the long run, and more importantly, I knew that Beckett himself was squeamish about his life and work being overly connected. Ironically, he very much enjoyed knowing about the lives of the authors he admired, and he often made allusion to the idea that the keys to understanding his work lay in the works of others. Among those others, one of the foremost is Dante. So that’s where I began.”
