Samuel Beckett's Legacies in American Fiction

Samuel 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, 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 book 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.

Everyone knows Beckett's influence is global, but this is the first study to examine his influence on fiction in America with the thoroughness the topic deserves. It is a fresh, lucid, and necessary book, which sheds fascinating new light not just on Beckett but on postmodernism and its legacy.

Bran Nicol, Professor of English Literature, University of Surrey

James Baxter has achieved brilliant new insights about Beckett's legacy by carefully tracing some of the contexts and engagements created by his presence in American writing. This book has important implications, not just within the fields of Beckett Studies and modern American fiction, but also more broadly with regard to thinking about literary influence.

Professor Steven Matthews (University of Reading)

Auteur

Dr James Baxter was awarded his PhD at the University of Reading in 2018, where he specialized in Beckett's legacy on Postmodern American Literature. James has published articles in high-profile journals such as Textual Practice, and continues to contribute essays and reviews on popular film and music for a variety of outlets. Forthcoming projects include a study concerning the prevalence of populist poetics in American periodical culture in the 60s and 70s.

Résumé

Samuel 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.

Contenu

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 DeLillo's Reinvention of 'Beckett World'.- Chapter 5: Paul Auster, Lydia Davis and Beckett's Post-millennial Legacies.- Conclusion: a 'postmodern icon'?