The university teacher, writer, and theater critic Alfred Simon has written a book about Beckett that is dedicated to both the life and the work of this unusual author. "It has been 30 years, 30 years that I have been dealing with Beckett. After all, Beckett points each of us back to ourselves." In his preface to the book, Simon outlines his author: "At twenty, as a student with a brilliant academic career ahead of him, Beckett had not yet discovered any calling to be a writer. At thirty, now a Parisian by choice, on familiar terms with Joyce and filled with an allergic aversion to teaching, he finally realizes that there is only one thing for him: writing, and he accepts literature as 'punishment work.' At forty, he confesses that he had previously held a completely false self-image.".