The Critical Response to Samuel Beckett
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THE CRITICAL RESPONSE TO SAMUEL BECKETT Edited by CATHLEEN CULOTTA ANDONIAN Critical Responses in Arts and Letters, Number 30 Cameron Northouse, Series Adviser GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Contents Series Foreword by Cameron Northouse xvii Acknowledgments xix Introduction 1 1. Early Prose and Poetry Symbolism To-day Bonamy Dobree 13 Dubliners Arthur Calder-Marshall 14 Samuel Beckett and His Whoroscope Clas Zilliacus 15 Savage Humor Vivian Mercier 17 2. The Novel: Murphy, Watt, and The Trilogy Fiction Kate O'Brien 21 A Master Stylist B. S.Johnson 22 xii Contents Nought into Zero A. J. Leventhal 23 Under the Jar John Coleman 26 Samuel Beckett's World of Fiction Charles I. Glicksberg 27 Samuel Beckett and the Death of the God-Narrator Brian Wicker 39 Not Going Places Enoch Brater 51 L'Innommable and the Hermeneutic Paradigm Brian T. Fitch 54 Naming the M/inotaur: Beckett's Trilogy and the Failure of Narrative Roch C. Smith 62 Beckett and the Comedy of Decomposition Morton Gurewitch 70 Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust Robert Sandarg 79 3. Early Theatrical Works Theatre (Review of Waiting for Godot) Anthony Hartley 91 Theatre (Review of Waiting for Godot) Harold Clurman 93 The Uneventful Event Vivian Mercier 95 En attendant Godot: Tragedy or Comedy? Ramona Cormier and Janis L. Pallister 96 Contents xiii Samuel Beckett and the Postmodern: Language Games, Play, and Waiting for Godot Jeffrey Nealon 106 How to Read Endgame Vivian Mercier 114 Theatre (Review of Endgame) Harold Clurman 118 In the Ruins of the Past: Reading Beckett Intertextually Per Nykrog 120 Rebuke to Nihilism Tom F. Driver 143 Krapp's Last Tape: The Evolution of a Play, 1958-75 James Knowlson 146 4. Return to Prose: How It Is Beckett Country Frank Kermode 161 Farewell to Incompetence: Beckett's How It Is and Imagination Dead Imagine H. Porter Abbott 166 Beckett's Sociability Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit 176 5. Interviews and Personal Reminiscences Samuel Beckett: An Interview Patrick Starnes 191 Conversations with Samuel Beckett Jay A. Levy 195 xiv Contents 6. Radio and Film It's Tragic, Mysterious and Wildly Funny: That's What You Get When the B.B.C. Asks Samuel Beckett to Write a Play Roy Walker 207 Beckett Country Julia Strachey 209 From Characters to Discrete Events: The Evolving Concept of Dramatis Personae in Beckett's Radio Plays Germaine Baril 211 "To Be Is to Be Perceived" ... Time and Point of View in Beckett's Film William F. Van Wert 219 7. Beckett is Awarded the Nobel Prize Godot Arrives Iain Hamilton 227 Nobel Prize: Kyrie Eleison Without God 229 . 8. Late Theatrical Works Theatre (Review of Happy Days) Harold Clurman 233 The Stage: Beckett's Happy Days Richard Gilman 235 The Paradox of Silence: Samuel Beckett's Plays Ren6e Riese Hubert 237 The New Beckett Barbara Bray 245 Samuel Beckett: about him and about A. J. Leventhal 247 Contents xv On the Route of a Walking Shadow: Samuel Beckett's Come and Go Rosangela Barone 262 Bare Bones: As a lady slips her moorings, Beckett sounds a hopeful note Jay Carr 273 Review: The World Premiere of Ohio Impromptu, Directed by Alan Schneider at Columbus, Ohio S. E. Gontarski 275 Impact and Parable in Beckett: A First Encounter with Not I Alec Reid 278 Recontextualizing the Self: The Voice as Subject in Beckett's Not I Mary Catanzaro . 287 9. Poetry, Short Stories and Prose Texts A Rereading of the Traces Mary Ann Caws 303 Samuel Beckett: "Imagination Dead Imagine" Michael Parsons 309 "Silence Within": A Study of the Residua of Samuel Beckett John J. Mood 310 The Impossibility of Saying the Same Old Thing the Same Old Way—Samuel Beckett's Fiction Since Comment c'est Raymond Federman 326 Beckett's Deconstruction of the Machine in The Lost Ones David Porush 347 Conceptions of Inner Landscapes: The Beckettian Narrator of the Sixties and Seventies Cathleen Culotta-Andonian 357 xvi Contents The Weaving of Penelope's Tapestry: Genre in the Works of Samuel Beckett J. E. Dearlove 367 Samuel Beckett's For to End Yet Again: A Conflict between "Syntax of Energy" and "Syntax of Weakness" Tseng Li-Ling 373 Sublime Supplements: Beckett and the "Fizzling Out" of Meaning Nicoletta Pireddu 391 10. Final Tribute Who's Afraid of Samuel Beckett? Martin Esslin 403 An Intimate Look at Beckett the Man Mel Gussow 414 Giving Birth "Astride of a Grave," Samuel Beckett: 1906-1989 William A. Henry in 416 Selected Bibliography 419 Index 423.