Shades of the Beckettian

Beckett studies currently sits at the center of an industrious publishing niche, the diversity of which owes much to ongoing scholarly attempts to break the glass wall separating Beckett's oeuvre from rich developmental seams in twentieth-century literature and philosophy. These distinctive developments are closely related to external circumstances, the import of which should not be underestimated: in particular, the conferences and events organised on the occasion of Beckett's centenary in 2006 have had a tangible impact upon the gathering pace of Beckett-centric publishing. Indeed, the centenary also served to chart Beckett's position on an intellectual map which has itself begun to provide ample ground for marketing high modernism and experimental writing in ways likely to carry diverse appeal. This powerful aura relates also to the transformation of Beckett's authorial image from the sui generis existentialist upheld by first-wave criticism into a figure of global intellectual significance situated at the heart of a long-established critical economy, one able to rally multiple disciplinary interests and critical orientations. Current academic publications on Beckett bear the imprint of editorial strategies attuned to these particulars. The endeavor of Continuum Books is particularly enriching, their Beckett catalog having developed as a forum in which the scope and legacy of Beckett's work can be reconceived so as to interrogate enshrined conceptual boundaries. The multiple shades of the Beckettian born out of this critical turn make for a body of work that is more approachable, more influential, and more readily permeated by philosophical, historical, and political preoccupations than the long-established existentialist-humanist readings have previously allowed.

Ulrika Maude and Matthew Feldman's edited collection Beckett and Phenomenology and Peter Boxall's Since Beckett: Contemporary Writing in the Wake of Modernism stand as important points of reference in these developments. Both books trace routes in modernism and twentieth-century philosophical thought that bring Beckett's work into contact with new intellectual and artistic moments and, in so doing, encourage us to consider how prescient the oeuvre might be in relation to wider attempts to rethink the remit of modernism's legacies. Questions of methodology are salient: indeed, their authors define a new threshold for working between debates surrounding continental philosophy and literature, for which Beckett's work provides important fodder, and empiricist approaches, which place the writerly subject at the centre of their enquiry. These books in turn embrace or fuse the best features of both traditions, suggesting that much creativity and insight can be found in the interstices between established forms of critical interpretation. The status of the image from/of/in Beckett is subject to particular scrutiny, and in this respect these books provide a welcome expansion of the comparative ground explored in Anthony Uhlmann's study, Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image. Uhlmann's monograph provided a comprehensive overview of Beckett's complex utilizations of the image, reconfiguring this facet of scholarly enquiry in relation to philosophers who wrote about Beckett's work (Blanchot, Badiou, and, more importantly, Deleuze) and philosophers whom Beckett read (Bergson, Geulincx). In so doing, Uhlmann honed a method for thinking about Beckett and philosophy that drew upon textual exegesis, manuscript study, and philosophical contextualisation. Such a method accounted with nuance and sensitivity for questions of influence and legacy, and brought to light the ability of Beckett's work to reverberate, exist alongside, or announce important developments in aesthetic and philosophical thought.

These ghostly textures are the stuff of the Beckett to whom writers as varied as John Banville, W. G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard, and Don DeLillo have ceaselessly returned, as Boxall's illuminating book demonstrates. Attempting to categorize Beckett's legacies comes with its own challenges, not least because they appear to be a largely male preserve. But Boxall's concern...