Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives by Morris Beja, S.E. Gontarski and Pierre Astier (review)

Book Reviews 137 leftist in orientation. their raison d'etre became less compelling. Also, many of the social~action plays dealt with local problems. Once these had been addressed, the plays were no longer relevant. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the whole process of collective creations had enonnous built~in problems. Not the least of these was the lead time required to agree upon a script. What, then, are the positive outcomes of these experiments? Like all iconoclasts, men like Gatti, Michel, and Benedetto not only shocked people, but also forced directors, actors, spectators, and critics to reexamine some of their most cherished beliefs regarding the function of theatre in society. There is no doubt that, in addition to technical and staging innovations, raising people's consciousness about the creative process and the aesthetic experience was the most important contribution ofthese radical theatre groups. Their aim was to bridge the gap between art and life, and to raise the spectators' awareness in the process. The traditional play is written either for entertainment or for contemplation, and sometimes for both, but not as a call for action. All of these conventions become subject to change during a time of social and political upheaval, when plays (and other art fonns) become engage. Though much more radical, these playwrights foHowed in the footsteps of their illustrious predecessors Sartre and Anouilh. Sartre's Les Mains Sales and Anouilh's Amigone, for example, are both plays which take a stand and exhort men to political action. In the space allotted for this review, it is impossible to do justice to Lenora Champagne's short, but compact, scholarly study. All one can hope is that this review will stimulate interest sufficiently to give the book the readcrshjp it deserves. The book includes an appendix offifty-five illustrations from representative plays. Also provided are an impressive number of chapter notes, an index, and over 300 bibliographical entries. ROBERT E. HIEDEMANN, JOHN TYLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE MORRIS BEJA, S.E. GONTARSKI AND PIERRE ASTlER , EDS. Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press 1983. Pp. 217. $20.00. This is not the usual oversized tome of proceedings bundled together to prove that a scholarly gathering has taken place. The editors call it a conference adjunct, not a strict record of proceedings. It is an attractive collection of sixteen considered approaches to Samuel Beckett, out of the 140 papers and discussions at the 1981 Ohio symposium in honor of their prime mover. Roughly one third ofthe essays - certain contributions defy generic pigeonholing - deal with Beckett the dramatist. His Ohio Impromptu, written for the occasion and, in performance, its obvious highlight, provides the book with its proud finale: facsimiles of the holograph and typescripts are in an appendix. The old hands carry the day. Ruby Cohn, James Knowlson, Edith Kern and Richard N. Coe head the table of contents, and rightly so. Cohn examines what she calls a few harmonics of Beckett's theater resonance. She knows his gamut by heart. In sounding Book Reviews the resonance Beckett elicits from numbers, she makes just about any figure seem the richest reverberant. Whether it be a triangular threesome, or a dyadic doublet, or the oneness ofthe monad, ora heroic, zeroic nought, it's it. And, for the record: Cohn's skill in hearing what is resonant in Beckett springs from her knowledge of things not in Beckett. Knowlson's contribution, on Beckett's "bits of pipe," is good for cognate reasons. It is a sensitive profile of Beckett as a practicing intertextualist; it is also a reminder to scholars not to succumb to what might be termed the referential fallacy. "A critical approach that may seem to be justified by the apparent opaqueness of Beckett's technique of verbal and visual allusiveness has tended to become quite the opposite: unduly explicit, over-referential, imaginatively restrictive,_ and inappropriate to Beckett's handling of the theatrical medium." The soundness of this remark is demonstrated by Knowlson and, conversely, by several essays in the book. Perhaps the time is ripe for a glance at some threats facing Beckett studies in their current industrial phase. The present volume, a tip-of-the-iceberg...