Beckett Matters : essays on Beckett's late modernism

297 Pages·2018·1.581 MB·English

by  Stanley E. Gontarski

Beckett Matters

Beckett Matters
Essays on Beckett’s Late Modernism
S. E. Gontarski
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university
presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals
in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social
sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high
editorial and production values to produce academic works
of lasting importance. For more information visit our website:
edinburghuniversitypress.com
© S. E. Gontarski, 2017
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12(2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 11/13 Adobe Sabon by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire,
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 1440 1 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 1441 8 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 1442 5 (epub)
The right of S. E. Gontarski to be identified as the author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related
Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations xi
The Remains of the Modern and the Exhaustion of
Thematics: An Introduction 1
Theory Matters
1 Beckett’s Voice(s) 19
2 From Unabandoned Works: Beckett’s Short Prose 40
3 The Conjuring of Something Out of Nothing:
Beckett’s ‘Closed Space’ Novels 62
4 Beckett’s ‘Imbedded’ Poetry and the Critique of
Genre 75
5 Art and Commodity: Beckett’s Commerce with
Grove Press 82
Texts Matter
6 Editing Beckett 103
7 A Century of Missed Opportunities: Editing an
Accurate Edition of Beckett’s ‘Shorts’ and Other
Textual Misadventures 120
8 Still at Issue After All These Years: The Beckettian
Text, Printed and Performed 140
Performance Matters
9 ‘That’s the Show’: Beckett and Performance 155
10 Reinventing Beckett 175
vi Beckett Matters
11 Staging Beckett: Voice and/in Performance
(Company, What Where and Endgame) 203
12 Beckett and the ‘Idea’ of Theatre: Performance
Through Artaud and Deleuze 223
13 Greying the Canon: Beckett in Performance, Beckett
as Performance 240
14 ‘I think this does call for a firm stand’: Beckett at the
Royal Court 255
Index 273
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the organizers of three events, literary con-
ferences and performance festivals, for inviting me to deliver
Keynote or Plenary Addresses and so to present portions of
this volume’s Introduction to gatherings of literary scholars,
performers and philosophers. In particular I should like to
thank department chair, Professor Petr Kotatki, and colloquium
coordinator, Tomas Koblizek, of the Department of Analytic
Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences,
Charles University, and the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of
Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic, for inviting me to
address the ‘Chaos and Form: Echoes of Beckett in Literature,
Theatre and The Arts’ gathering on 11 April 2016 and for their
gracious hospitality. ‘Chaos and Form’ was the 11th Prague
Interpretation Colloquium.
I am equally grateful to the organizers of the ‘Beckett and World
Literature’ conference at the University of Kent in Canterbury,
UK, for inviting me to address the gathering on 4 May 2016.
The conference organizer, Thirthankar Chakraborty, assistant
lecturer in comparative literature, and fellow organizers, Selvin
Yaltir and Rosanne Bezerra de Araujo, have earned my gratitude
for their timely invitation and their hospitality. The Kent confer-
ence was offered in conjunction with and made possible by the
support of the Centre for Modern European Literature, the School
of European Languages and Culture, and the Humanities Faculty
Research Fund of the University of Kent.
Finally, my thanks to the organizers and conveners of the
University of Gdańsk Samuel Beckett Seminar, Dr Tomasz
Wiśniewski, Dr Monika Szuba and Professor David Malcolm, for
inviting me to deliver a Plenary Lecture on the topic ‘Experimental
Beckett’: ‘Samuel Beckett’s Elsewhere: The Remains of the Modern
vii
viii Beckett Matters
and the Exhaustion of Thematics’. The Gdańsk Beckett Seminar
was held in conjunction with ‘BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY 2016:
An International Literary and Theatrical Festival/Conference’ in
Sopot, Gdańsk, and Gdynia, 19–21 May 2016. In addition, the
conference offered me the opportunity to discuss my previous
book, Creative Involution: Bergson, Beckett, Deleuze (EUP 2015)
in a public conversation with poet Jacek Gutorow (University
of Opole, Poland), to engage in a forum after the screening of
‘NOTFILM: a documentary on the making of Film by Samuel
Beckett’, a discussion between me and Ross Lipman (the director)
conducted by Tomasz Wiśniewski, an evening held in conjunc-
tion with the DOCS AGAINST GRAVITY film festival, Gdynia,
and the opportunity to offer a performance workshop on Ohio
Impromptu with London actor Jon McKenna, Polish actor Ryszard
Ronczewski and filmmaker Elvin Flamingo. Such lectures, public
discussions and cross-disciplinary engagements have enhanced my
scholarship, research and theater work immeasurably.
Unless otherwise noted all letters to and from Barney Rosset
and the Grove Press staff are in the Barney Rosset/Grove Press
Archives now at the George Arents Research Library at Syracuse
University, the John J. Burns Library, Boston College, the Wilson
Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the
Stanley E. Gontarski Grove Press Research Materials at Florida
State University, Special Collections. All material is used with the
permission of the principals.
Earlier versions of the essays revised and collected as Beckett
Matters appeared in the following publications. My thanks to the
editors and publishers of the books and journals for permission to
reprint.
Chapter 1: ‘Beckett and the Voice of Modernism’, in Dirk van
Hulle (ed.) Beckett the European (Tallahassee, FL: Journal of
Beckett Studies Books, 2005), pp. 150–63.
Chapter 2: ‘From Unabandoned Works: Samuel Beckett’s Short
Prose’, in Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1928–1989,
edited and with an Introduction and Notes by S. E. Gontarski
(New York: Grove Press, 1996), pp. xi–xxxii; and ‘That white
speck lost in whiteness: Imagining the Death of Imagination’,
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction to Samuel Beckett, Imagination Dead Imagine, 50th
Anniversary Edition (Dublin: The Salvage Press, 2015).
Chapter 3: ‘The Conjuring of Something Out of Nothing: Samuel
Beckett’s “Closed Space” Novels’, Introduction to Samuel Beckett,
Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho (New
York: Grove Press, 1995, paperback only), pp. vii–xxviii.
Chapter 4: ‘Samuel Beckett’s “Imbedded” Poetry and the Critique
of Genre’, Fulcrum: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics, No. 6
(2008), pp. 478–83.
Chapter 5: ‘Art and Commodity: Samuel Beckett’s Commerce
with Grove Press’, in Mark Nixon (ed.) Publishing Samuel Beckett
(London: British Library Publications, 2011), pp. 139–51.
Chapter 6: ‘Editing Beckett’, Twentieth Century Literature: A
Scholarly and Critical Journal, 41, No. 2 (1995), pp. 190–207.
Chapter 7: ‘A Centenary of Missed Opportunities: Assembling
an Accurate Volume of Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic “Shorts”’,
Modern Drama, LIV, No. 3 (2011), pp. 357–82.
Chapter 8: ‘Still at Issue After All These Years: The Beckettian
Text, Printed and Performed’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 24, No.
1 (2015), pp. 105–15.
Chapter 9: ‘Beckett and Performance’, in Lois Oppenheim (ed.),
The Palgrave Advances to Samuel Beckett Studies (New York: St
Martin’s Press; London: Macmillan Press, 2004), pp. 194–208.
Chapter 10: ‘Reinventing Beckett’, Modern Drama (Special issue:
Samuel Beckett at 100), XLIX, No. 4 (2006), pp. 427–50.
Chapter 11: ‘Company for Company: Androgyny and Theatricality
in Samuel Beckett’s Prose’, in James Acheson and Kateryna Arthur
(eds), Beckett’s Later Fiction and Drama: Texts for Company
(London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 193–202.
Chapter 12: ‘Samuel Beckett and the “Idea” of Theatre:
Performance Through Artaud and Deleuze’, in Dirk Van Hulle