Baxter, JamesUnknown
Springer International Publishing (Cham, Switzerland , 2021) (eng) English9783030815721New interpretations of Beckett in the twenty-first century1st ed.INFLUENCE (LITERARY, ARTISTIC, ETC.); UnknownSamuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction provides an overdue investigation into Beckett’s rich influences over American writing. Through in-depth readings of postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, this book situates Beckett’s post-war writing of exhaustion and generation in relation to the emergence of an explosive American avant-garde. In turn, this study provides a valuable insight into the practical realities of Beckett’s dissemination in America, following the author’s long-standing relationship with the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review and its dramatic role in redrawing the possibilities of American culture in the 1960s. While Beckett would be largely removed from his American context, this book follows his vigorous, albeit sometimes awkward, reception alongside the authors and institutions central to shaping his legacies in 20th and 21st century America.
Physical dimension
1 online resource (ix, 262 p.)UnknownUnknown
Summary / review / table of contents
Introduction: Beckett in America: somehow not the right country
Chapter 1: The Evergreen Review: Beckett and the American underground
Chapter 2: Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme and Metafictional Style After Beckett: Problems and Pratfalls
Chapter 3: Opposing Tendencies in the Exhaustive Fiction of Samuel Beckett and Thomas Pynchon: Between zero and one
Chapter 4: Don DeLillos Reinvention of Beckett World
Chapter 5: Paul Auster, Lydia Davis and Becketts Post-millennial Legacies
Conclusion: a postmodern icon?