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Beckett, Technology and the Body

Jessica Prinz

Modern Drama, Volume 53, Number 3, Fall 2010, pp. 415-417 (Review)

Published by University of Toronto Press

For additional information about this article


http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mdr/summary/v053/53.3.prinz.html

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REVIEWS

ULRIKA MAUDE. Beckett, Technology and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge


University Press, 2009. Pp. 209, illustrated. $81.00 (Hb).

Reviewed by Jessica Prinz, The Ohio State University


The books that came out in honour of Samuel Beckett’s centenary fall into
two broad categories. There are new considerations of already well-covered
topics, such as Beckett and Joyce (P.J. Murphy’s Beckett’s Dedalus), Beckett
and Proust (Mary Bryden and Margaret Topping’s Beckett’s Proust/Deleuze’s
Proust), Beckett and Death (Steven Barfield, Matthew Feldman, and Philip
Tew), and Beckett and Decay (Kathyrn White). There are new works
linking Beckett’s oeuvre to current theoretical approaches, such as post-
colonialism (Patrick Bixby’s Samuel Beckett and the Postcolonial Novel),
masculinity studies (Jennifer Jeffers’s Beckett’s Masculinity), and ethics
(Russell Smith’s Beckett and Ethics). Such theoretical applications and
interventions sometimes offer either skewed interpretations of the literary
texts, on the one hand, or distortions of the theory, on the other. Ulrika
Maude’s book on Beckett and the body, however, suffers from neither of
these failures, successfully combining literary analysis with theoretical
insights.
Maude’s book responds to the entire history of Beckett criticism that
focuses on the influence of Descartes and the cogito on Beckett’s writing.
As Maude points out, Beckett studies foreground processes of thought, cog-
nition, and logic (as well as their breakdown) in characters’ speech, motion,
and disintegration. That the body experiences these transformations along
with the mind is obvious once pointed out, and Maude’s study ably applies
current theories of the body to works undeniably concerned with the body
and its meanings. Her précis of theory are clear and concise, while her close
readings are both creative and convincing. The book’s greatest strength is in
its organization: it addresses, in the ordering of its own chapters, the
processes of the human body and its senses.
The first chapter explores the intersection of the body and memory (in
the thought of Merleau-Ponty, in particular) via an analysis of the
“phantom limb” in Krapp’s Last Tape. The second chapter plumbs the con-
nections between Merleau-Ponty’s views of vision and Cezanne’s non-
representational landscapes. Maude first links these to Beckett’s novella
“The Calmative,” which thematizes aspects of vision such as blurring;
then, she illuminates Beckett’s interweaving of vision, sight, spectatorship,
perception, and self-perception through her detailed consideration of Film.
She concludes that the Beckettian eye is embodied, fallible, and subject to
damage and decay (46).
The third, equally coherent and compelling chapter concerns hearing,
most notably in Beckett’s first two radio plays, All That Fall and Embers.

Modern Drama, 53:3 (Fall 2010) 415


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Maude argues that the tympanum of the ear itself proves symbolic of
hearing, for it sustains a dialectic between inside and outside. Hearing, in
her view, is transgressive, blurring past and present, spatial and temporal,
interior and exterior. Maude also considers technologies of hearing, includ-
ing telephones, radios, televisions, audiotapes, and phonographs, each of
which mimics and enhances the human body’s process of, and potential
for, hearing. The sense finally helps to constitute and also undermine
notions of identity and subjectivity for Beckett’s unusual characters.
As Maude puts it, hearing reminds the subject of its “perpetual non-
coincidence with itself” (69).
A fourth chapter, entitled “Skin Deep,” discusses aspects of touch and
tactility in Beckett’s fiction, especially The Lost Ones. Oscillating between
one pole and another – inside/outside, for instance – the skin in Beckett
works similarly to linguistic categories (which break down) and the
dynamics of identity (which dissolves and “flickers” into what Maude
calls “an intricate web” [82]). The fifth chapter, “Come and Go,” concerns
all forms of movement (and compulsive motility) in the Beckett canon:
cycling, walking, swinging, trembling, rocking. The disintegration of the
body, along with its persistent journeying, is discussed in relation to the
ideas of, among others, Freud, Heidegger, Hubert Dreyfus, Gilles
Deleuze, and Georges Bataille. Movements such as falling, rolling,
shaking, or crawling suggest a failing and abject body (Julia Kristeva), a
sense of violence and horror (Michel Foucault), or a “shuddering” or trem-
bling body that ultimately undermines coherent identity (Theodor Adorno).
The “technology” of Maude’s title serves as a leitmotif that culminates in
the last chapter, which concerns technologies of the body unique to the
twentieth century: stereoscopes, telephones, chronophotography, x-rays,
and microscopes, for instance. Looking closely at Beckett’s television
plays, Maude creates a renewed sense of the novelty and originality of
these technologies, and especially of the alarming internal views of the
human body provided by x-rays. The book ends with two diametrically
opposed views of the body in Beckett. According to Maude, Nacht und
Träume presents a “comforting” fantasy of disembodiment, while What
Where (Beckett’s last play) offers a glimpse of the “horrors” of disembodi-
ment in Beckett’s work.
Maude is careful to limit her subject and concerns. At the same time,
some of her exclusions are acutely felt. Key texts are left out of the study,
such as Not I, Happy Days, Rockaby, Footfalls, and even Endgame. Maude
also notes, in her introduction, that the gendered body must remain
outside her area of interest. Perhaps she will write a sequel that concerns
the gendered body in some of Beckett’s most important and significant
works. There is certainly much to say on this subject, and Maude’s excel-
lent book suggests that she is the scholar to do so. In the meantime,

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both Beckett scholars and general readers have much to ponder in Beckett,
Technology and the Body, which is well worth close reading and further dis-
cussion.

ANNA MCMULLAN and S.E. WILMER, eds. Reflections on Beckett: A Centenary


Celebration. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. Pp. xiv þ 241.
$65.00 (Hb).

Reviewed by Michael Y. Bennett, University of Hartford


The years since 2006, Samuel Beckett’s centenary, have seen an outpouring
of scholarship. This particular collection contains wonderful essays by
some leading Beckett scholars, taken from conferences at Trinity College
Dublin, Beckett’s alma mater, and the annual Samuel Beckett Lecture
Series. It is divided into two sections: “Interconnections” (in which
essays look comparatively at Beckett and another writer or thinker) and
“Beckett in Practice” (in which essays examine Beckett from the perspective
of theatre practice). While each section makes sense and the essays con-
tained in each section fit its theme, the two sections sit strangely together:
“Beckett in Practice” would better complement “Beckett in Theory,” for
example, just as “Interconnections” might complement essays on Beckett
as a solitary figure. However, as long as readers are aware that this collec-
tion has two purposes and understands what each section does, they will be
well rewarded.
The book begins with a forward by Dennis Kennedy. For a reader who
has not read Brigitte Le Juez’s book Beckett avant la lettre (2007) (Beckett
Before Beckett: Samuel Beckett’s Lectures on French Literature [2008]),
Kennedy provides a wonderfully succinct history of Beckett’s early years
at Trinity College Dublin and as a young academic. This forward is followed
by an introduction by the editors, whose prevailing theme is that “an
abiding characteristic of Beckett’s work is its contrariness or contradictory
features” (1). McMullan and Wilmer discuss many of the contradictions
that feature in Beckett’s work: between self and other, liveness and spectral-
ity, sound and silence, humour and tragedy, birth and death, real and ima-
gined, and so on (2– 3). The authors stress that these contradictions “create
enormous scope for scholarly and philosophical enquiry” (3).
The first section, “Interconnections,” begins with an essay by Linda Ben-
Zvi entitled “Beckett’s Bodies, or Dr. Johnson’s ‘Anatomy Lesson.’” Ben-Zvi
argues that, after 1946, Beckett began an investigation into “what it means
to have a body, how that body is constructed, how it struggles to emerge,
[and] how it is thwarted by its own corporeal limitations” (26). Ben-Zvi

Modern Drama, 53:3 (Fall 2010) 417

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