The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century by N. Katherine Hayles (review)

102Rocky Mountain Review Gontarski deserves admiration for his dedication to suiting his critical approach to his subject. In the brilliant introductory chapter to The Intent of Undoing, Gontarski describes his purpose as providing "a biography of texts and the process of their making" (xiii). The explanation of this approach becomes the thesis of the book: Beckett's goal as a dramatist is to eliminate autobiographical and realistic elements of his characters and plots so that he can focus on universalities and manipulate words and ideas in an ordered, symmetrical fashion that approaches the techniques used by musical composers. Gontarski makes it clear that such a goal is difficult to achieve, that Beckett cannot always expunge the autobiographical or naturalistic inspirations of his works (xvi). In fact Gontarski argues that when Beckett fails to achieve his goal, the resulting scripts, whether unfinished or complete, provide fascinating insights into the playwright's artistic approach (xvi-xvii). The book, as a result, is dedicated to examining the drafts and final versions of some of Beckett's less successful efforts as well as the drafts of the well known Endgame and Happy Days. In discussing each work, Gontarski reconstructs how Beckett pares away the autobiographical content and realistic or historical detail that was in his early drafts. For the most part, Gontarski succeeds admirably in proving his thesis. Yet at times, particularly in the later chapters of the book, he does not provide a sufficient description of the autobiographical material that Beckett expunges. In other passages Gontarski should have distanced himself more from the details of his textual research. Any scholar can identify with and admire Gontarski's careful examination of Beckett's many drafts. But few readers need to know the kind of information provided in the following excerpt from the book: "The Manuscript of 'Kilcool' was written in a yellow, soft-covered, graph-paper notebook with black binding (Trinity College, Dublin MS # 4664). On the cover is a drawing of Hercules with a drawn bow, beneath which is printed Herakles and two other trademarks" (134). My only other criticism of this book pertains to the afterword, which presents an intriguing discussion as to how Beckett's approach to playwriting fulfills Nietzsche's ideal of the balanced union of Dionysian characteristics (ritualistic, musical, and emotional) and Apollonian elements (mimetic and rational). This afterword would have been even more effective had the ideas been explored in the introductory chapters and developed in the main body of the book. Overall, however, The Intent of Undoing is a thorough, stimulating study that is based on a coherent critical approach developed out of Gontarski's wide knowledge of philosophy and literary theory. MARILYN ROBERTS College of Idaho N. KATHERINE HAYLES. The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Tiventieth Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. 204 p. Increasingly during the past decade, scientists have been doing their best to shout across the gulf between the "Two Cultures." Articles and books appear monthly instructing the general public not only in recombinant DNA and gene splitting but also in molecular biology, mathematical theories, and most recently Book Reviews103 in theoretical physics. The books generally don't make bestseller lists and aren't exactly page-turners, but they are certainly accessible to non-scientists — and even to narrow-minded "literary intellectuals," as C. S. Lewis called us. A failed science major myself, I have watched with delight as physicists appeared to be slipping into the ambiguous worlds and language of fiction, poetry, and religion. Who wouldn't be charmed, after all, with the picture of a conference of eminent physicists seriously discussing a "quark" named ' 'charm"? They even (bless their logical hearts) have discovered for themselves the state of chaos, complete with laws called "strange attractors." All this is because scientists have taken on the humanities' job of explaining the ways of the universe and man to man. Like mystics and sei fi writers, they strain to look back before the beginning, before the Big Bang, and forward beyond the edges of infinity to a last judgment in blackness or in unbearable light. They intend, moreover, to put their explanation neatly in a Grand Unified Theory, which...