Samuel Beckett by Andrew K. Kennedy (review)

154 Book Reviews Adrienne Kennedy and Robert Wilson are omitted, or regret the absence of an entry for "Collective Creations" (an important aspect of the American avantgarde of the period). Presumably because of the time to go through the press, some of the entries are only comprehensive to about 1985. with just major publications added for the years between then and 1988. And, inevitably, some of the scholarly overviews and analyses strike one as, stronger than others. Nor, at $85.00 U.S., is the volume inexpensive. However, these are mere carpings. The bibliography is excellent and imaginative; its sections on "Production History" and "Future Research Opportunities" provide information that is available nowhere else; and its overviews and analytical comment 'are in themselves valuable scholarly contributions to the discussion of their subjects. I cannot imagine any library or scholar interested in American drama since 1945 being without this volume. It is now an essential tool for further study. BRIAN PARKER, TRINITY COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO ANDREW K. KENNEDY. Samuel Beckett. New York, N.Y.: University of Cambridge Press 1989.·PP. xiv, 175. $34.50; $10.95 (PB). While the ·publisher's forward promises "an original perspective of Samuel Beckett," "stimulating for both beginners and advanced students," Kennedy himself avoids such declarations, outlining his study in terms familiar to most Beckett scholars. The terrain to be charted, Kennedy tells us, will reveal' 'an overall unity: a vision of diminishing human faculties (a tragicomic failing and falling) written into texts of diminishing language, ever more daringly lessened forns of drama and fiction" (p. I). This point of view, contrary to the publisher's claim of originality, treats familiar themes in familiar tenns. As Kennedy himself concedes, the inner Jaw of "the less" in Beckett's art has generated " the much more" from his critics, "creating the risk of overinterpretation " (p. I). Kennedy dedicates this study to Ruby Cohn, and indeed a good deal of his analysis has roots in Cohn's Back to Beckett (Princeton, 1973). The book's first section on Beckett's stage plays begins with Waiting for Godot, focusing on " waiting" as a type of action. Like Cohn - and others - Kennedy suggests that this "action in nonaction " should serve as a basis for interpreting the play. This argument is developed by focusing on the play's "pattern of waiting," its "pseudo-climaxes" and "nonarrivals ." A term key to Godot (and also applied to many other works in the study) is "asymptotic," which Kennedy likens to a curve, "all the time approximating but never reaching the graph's bottom line" (p. 23). This is a helpful image, especially in terms of Godot and Endgame, but like much in the book, it can be found in other studies. (In this case, Cohn's.) Though much is familiar, Kennedy do~s rail against those who discuss Godar in terms of absolutes. Such "reductionism," (citing C. Chadwick. Ronald Gray and G.E. Wellwarth), is at the expense of the "principle of Book Reviews 155 uncertainty." built into the fabric of the play at every level" (p. 32). This discussion persuasively advocates the central importance of ambiguity in Beckett's work. As Kennedy observes: "The vision of the play is ... ambivalent, mixing parody and humour in modem tragicomedy ... . The fluctuations of darkness and light are deliberately unresolved" (p. 34). Turning to Endgame Kennedy emphasises "the pattern of ending.• , Again using the image of the asymptotic curve, he takes us through the play in convincing detail, stressing repeatedly the grim implications of Beckett's "zero vision. " Kennedy compares the relative "expanse" of Goda! to the " enclosed" and "diminished" Endgame. noting the latter's advanced condition of degeneration. In discussing the planes of decay - the end of people, the end of nature, the end of time - Kennedy sees Endgame as a "parable of creation in reverse, non-generation" (p. 53). Though he twice misquotes the play's cenrralliterary reference from The Tempest, "Our revels now are ended" (he has "Our revels here are ended"), Kennedy does identify Beckett's allusions to high tragedy in the play's memes and structure. The play's preoccupation with lost power, the pain of dispossession and the ceremony of selfdivestment...