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Beckett's Books: A Cultural History of the Interwar Notes
Samuel Beckett is a challenging giant of 20th century literature, and Beckett studies increasingly focus on the interwar period for evidence of Beckett's subsequent embrace of an 'art of failure'.
This monograph is based on close analysis of the newly-released notebooks and transcriptions compiled by Beckett from 1929-1940, which shed important and unique insight into Beckett's working methods, original sources and literary development. In particular they reveal the central paradox that Beckett's professions of 'ignorance and impotence' were founded upon extensive erudition and academic practices reflecting his interests in philosophy and psychology.
This is the first book to offer an extended study of how recent archival discoveries can contribute to the fundamental transformation of Beckett's truly revolutionary literature.
This monograph is based on close analysis of the newly-released notebooks and transcriptions compiled by Beckett from 1929-1940, which shed important and unique insight into Beckett's working methods, original sources and literary development. In particular they reveal the central paradox that Beckett's professions of 'ignorance and impotence' were founded upon extensive erudition and academic practices reflecting his interests in philosophy and psychology.
This is the first book to offer an extended study of how recent archival discoveries can contribute to the fundamental transformation of Beckett's truly revolutionary literature.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published June 8, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 24, 2022
Upon publication I am sure this was quite interesting. But given the present accessibility of the Philosophy Notes and how unproductive the essays contained here are, this book is really not worth the time.
July 10, 2014
Just finished re-reading Feldman's book. I am sorry I did not do it much justice in my first review, giving it 3 stars. This reading has opened up new ways of writing on Beckett for me. I gave myself a week to complete my research proposal and I am already on my way! This is genuine research which deals with recently catalogued 'interwar notes' that Beckett wrote and typed in his 'wilderness years' when banished from the Joyce household after breaking the great writer's daughter's heart, he was trying to find his own voice, struggling to come out of the shadow of the great Irish master and his erstwile friend.
Along with these notes, the German Diaries and the 2 volumes of Letters, so much has come into light about Samuel Beckett and the development of his art in recent years that this should change the way we read this writer. I have always maintained that Beckett's writing "is not about something but it IS something"(Our Exagmination...), it is the thing itself, like an abstract painting by Bram Van Velde. There are words, there is some narrative but looking for meanings is unfruitful. Finding anologies is futile. Just read and enjoy the language that means nothing (like ALL language). Beckett shows language for what it is, unreliable, inaccurate and full of 'play' (as opposed to 'fit'). This is what I found in the plays when I read them back in the early 1990s and this is what I wrote in my thesis for my MA back in 2001 (this time I worked on the novels) and this is what I still hold true. The idea is still so fresh that I am sure that it will carry me through a PhD as well. But this is the future of Beckett Studies: Beckett texts as language games which are played without any rules. Lyotard said, "no rules no game", guess what, Beckett will play and play his own game and will go on playing without rules. A reader has to cast off all the rules of traditional 'literary criticism' to understand this game, only without rules can this game be played and enjoyed. Trust me, I've been playing it for over two decades!
Thanks Mathew Feldman for reviving my trust in my own understanding of Beckett. The chapter on Gulincx and Fritz Mauthner is of special importance.5 stars for scholarship and the depth of Feldman's research, for his courage in destroying the traditional reading of Descartes in Beckett's work and taking on such giants of 'literary criticism' as Hugh Kenner while doing this. For taking on Linda Ben-Zvi (an established Beckett critic) for changing the date of Beckett's reading of Mauthner and above all showing that even before he had read Mauthner, Beckett was already steeped in ideas that Mauthner only made clear to him later in his life. Mauthner's ideas are close to mine own as well and hence my already established belief in the technique that Beckett employs in his writing. Oh the joy of finding out something that you already knew but never knew that you knew (Frost). Literature never stops amazing me.
Along with these notes, the German Diaries and the 2 volumes of Letters, so much has come into light about Samuel Beckett and the development of his art in recent years that this should change the way we read this writer. I have always maintained that Beckett's writing "is not about something but it IS something"(Our Exagmination...), it is the thing itself, like an abstract painting by Bram Van Velde. There are words, there is some narrative but looking for meanings is unfruitful. Finding anologies is futile. Just read and enjoy the language that means nothing (like ALL language). Beckett shows language for what it is, unreliable, inaccurate and full of 'play' (as opposed to 'fit'). This is what I found in the plays when I read them back in the early 1990s and this is what I wrote in my thesis for my MA back in 2001 (this time I worked on the novels) and this is what I still hold true. The idea is still so fresh that I am sure that it will carry me through a PhD as well. But this is the future of Beckett Studies: Beckett texts as language games which are played without any rules. Lyotard said, "no rules no game", guess what, Beckett will play and play his own game and will go on playing without rules. A reader has to cast off all the rules of traditional 'literary criticism' to understand this game, only without rules can this game be played and enjoyed. Trust me, I've been playing it for over two decades!
Thanks Mathew Feldman for reviving my trust in my own understanding of Beckett. The chapter on Gulincx and Fritz Mauthner is of special importance.5 stars for scholarship and the depth of Feldman's research, for his courage in destroying the traditional reading of Descartes in Beckett's work and taking on such giants of 'literary criticism' as Hugh Kenner while doing this. For taking on Linda Ben-Zvi (an established Beckett critic) for changing the date of Beckett's reading of Mauthner and above all showing that even before he had read Mauthner, Beckett was already steeped in ideas that Mauthner only made clear to him later in his life. Mauthner's ideas are close to mine own as well and hence my already established belief in the technique that Beckett employs in his writing. Oh the joy of finding out something that you already knew but never knew that you knew (Frost). Literature never stops amazing me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews