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Book Reviews Book Reviews Cousineau,Thomas J. Afterthe Final No:Samuel Beckett’ s Trilogy . Newark DEandLondon: University ofDelawarePress andAssociated University Presses, 1999.Pp. 164. $36.00 cloth. artof the challenge andfrustration of reading Beckett’ s proseis P the sense that his work always forces the readerto question his orher own rst interpretivepremises. Indeed,it may betrue to say that the initialstep intoBeckett’ s particularand peculiar literary world is precisely this comingto an awareness that what youcan say about the text has alreadybeen said (and more effectively) bythe work itself. “Howproceed?” the unnamableasks. “By aporiapure and simple?” Thomas Cousineau’s new bookis an importantcontribution to the ongoinginterpretive conversation aboutBeckett’ s work,a conversation in its strongest critical manifestationsthat is highly self-conscious about what itcan andcannot dowith texts that offernot certainty but,to borrowa term fromCousineau, “ discomrmation;” texts that compel the readerinto various interpretive contortions; texts that threaten, perhaps, tonullify the possibilityof reading (and interpretation) even as they demandto be read. Afterthe Final No offersitself asareadingprimarily of Beckett’s so-called rst trilogyof novels. After an introductionand preliminary chapter on Beckett’s English ction (upto and including Watt [written 1942-44]), Cousineauturns tohis majorfocus, the trilogyof novels, Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951) and TheUnnamable (1953).The bookends with a briefdiscussion of1961’ s How It Is andBeckett’ s second trilogy, Company (1980), Ill SeenIll Said (1981), and Worstward Ho (1983).Cousineau suggests that the rst twonovels ofthe formertrilogy stage an elaborate andaporetic response toloss: the loss ofthe “principalidols to which human beingshave : : : lookedfor protection and guidance.” Part One of Molloy parodiesthe loss ofthe Motherthrough Molloy’ s impossiblereturn toher; PartTwo parodiesthe ideaof the Father. Malone Dies explores the ideathat the self, uidand unstable, is an inadequatefoundation forsure knowledge,an ideataken toits extreme in TheUnnamable where subjectivityitself isdeconstructed.Yet asthese texts dismantle comforting denitional thresholds (Mother,Father, Self),they positwhat Cousineau refers toas a“paralleltrinity.” Each work offersits maincharacter a potentialcompensatory supplement to the loss ofguidance: Moran nds RELIGION and the ARTS 6:3(2002): 387-416. c KoninklijkeBrill NV,Leiden ° RELIGION and the ARTS possibleguidance in what he refers toas a voice;Malonediscovers that play providessome directionto his effortsto speak/ write;the unnamable discovers his goalto be the (impossible)achievement of silence,the silence that will come atthe endof speech. While Cousineauis notprecisely breakingnew groundhere (voice, play,and silence arestandard critical themes) his bookis importantas itbrings an enviableclarity tothe discussion.Indeed, part of the value ofhis bookis the precisionof its structure: he focuses resolutely on the particulartheme athand and unfolds it gracefully overthe course ofeach chapter. His discussion ofthe Oedipalcon guration (and its sublimation)in Molloy isgroundedcarefully in asense ofthe possibilities andlimitations of psychoanalytical readingsthat can toooften fall intoa kindof limiting allegory. As variouscommentators have noted, Molloy seems almost overtly conscious ofitself as aparodyof the Oedipal structure. The strength ofCousineau’ s analysis thus results fromhis interrogationof the value ofpsychoanalytical readingsin relationto a ction that is alreadyreading itself afterFreud. And so,this chapter ultimatelyengages in acomplex metacritical analysis ofpsychoanalysis viaBeckett’ s extraordinary,self-conscious novel. Cousineau’s analysis ofthe functionof playin Malone Dies is an impor- tant contributionto our understanding of the relationbetween writing andsubjectivity. While its discussion couldhave beenstrengthened by addressingmore speci c theorizationsof play in the work ofHuizinga, Gadamer,and Iser, the chapter successfully keys intothe peculiarenergy of Malone Dies.Forthis novel explores the limits ofnarrative possibility written as itisin the voice ofaman,dying. While waitingfor his death, Malonedecides to“ play”with narrativeto entertain himself untilhe dies;the stories he tells, as Cousineaurightly pointsout, begin to re ect his own psychic state,to the pointwhere the distinctionbetween narra- torand narrative blur and merge. It is the impossibilityof the story (a narratornarrating his own death)that charges this text with its pecu- liarenergy. Cousineau’s analysis, inits examinationof how narrative(as play) supportsand dissolves the self, draws attentionto this crucial theme inBeckett’s work. The author’s chapter on TheUnnamable is the most successful in a very successful book.This notoriouslydif cult text is clearly analyzed in specic relationto the possibilitiesand limitations of language itself. Cousineaumanages tooffer a coherent readingof a work that,by denition, resists coherence, byfocusing on how languageis used bothby Beckett andthe narrativevoice(s) in the text. While this 388.
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