4 research outputs found
Semper floreat
Title varies: Gamut; Time off: Semper; The press. Numbering system very erratic
UA11/2 Public Affairs Press Releases
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The problem of Beckett in postmodern American literature
In this thesis, I return to the unsettled ground of Beckett’s influence over the emergence of postmodern
fiction. Taking on board Peter Boxall’s piercing assertion that ‘one of the most significant of Beckett’s
legacies […] is a conception of legacy itself,’ (2009) I provide a narrative of inheritance in which the
exhaustion of literary experiment glimpsed in Beckett provides a bequest that is simultaneously
energising and enervating. In particular, I connect this to the strained relationship of Beckett regarding
the U.S., enshrined in his statement that this is ‘somehow not the right country for me.’ (Knowlson,
1996) The first chapter details the practicalities of Beckett’s U.S. migration via the Grove Press periodical
Evergreen Review. Beckett’s 16 (1957-1973) appearances in the American periodical serve as a core
vehicle of the author’s deracination, contextualising his publisher Barney Rosset’s description of
Beckett’s ‘nontogetherness.’ The second chapter focuses on the work of Thomas Pynchon, in which
Beckett’s poetics of exhaustion is integrated alongside the vitalism of the popular Beat avant-garde
staged in Evergreen. In particular, I argue that Beckett’s influence intersects with the postmodern
problem of hermeneutics, dramatized through shared images of ending, ‘Zero,’ and entropy. The final
chapter reframes the Beckettian disjuncture against the work of Don DeLillo and the author’s
interrogation of ‘this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture.’ (Jameson, 1991) Framed by
DeLillo as the ‘last writer to shape the way we think and see,’ (Mao II, 157) Beckett’s presence is one of
termination; at the same time, it discloses a means whereby fiction might ‘extend into the world.’
(Adelman, 2004) Alongside developments in DeLillo’s spatial-poetics to a fiction set ‘nowhere in
particular,’ I finally provide a view of Beckett’s problematic bequest as one that is integrated into the
fabric of the text over time