What £30 in 1936 represents in today’s terms, or the 19.75 francs that an alarmed young man had to pay for a meal at the restaurant Ste. Cécile on October 27, 1937, is not readily computed, but such expenditures had real significance to Beckett, even an emotional significance. In a volume with such lavish editorial aids as the new edition of his letters, it would be good to have more guidance on monetary equivalents. Less discretion about how much Beckett received from his father’s estate would be welcome too.
Among the jobs that Beckett contemplated were: office work (in his father’s quantity surveying firm); language instruction (in a Berlitz school in Switzerland); school teaching (in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia); advertising copywriting (in London); piloting commercial aircraft (in the skies); interpreting (between French and English); and managing a country estate. There are signs that he would have taken the position in Cape Town had it been offered (it was not); through contacts at the then University of Buffalo he also drops hints that he might look kindly on an offer from that quarter (it did not come).
From here. A familiar dilemma.
