Because much of Beckett's writing focuses on mothers it is easy to forget the affection he held for his own father, Bill. From An Abandoned Work recalls an incident from 1933 where "Beckett and his father took a long walk in the Wicklow Hills. While Bill, swearing and sweating, stopped to rest under pretence of admiring the view"Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography, p 171 his son took the opportunity to try to explain Milton's Cosmology to him.Confirmed in an interview with James Knowlson on 12 August 1989. Referenced in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, p 719 n 50 "Though not a scholarly man, Bill Beckett may have recognised his son’s intellectual worth … [and] was willing to listen to a growing boy’s opinions and problems, [which] earned his son’s lasting affection."O’Brien, E., The Beckett Country, pp 9,8 This emphasises the fact that although Beckett used his own life experiences as source material, as do most authors, it is not biography in the strictest sense.
