Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Nicoletta Pireddu

Critical Essay by Nicoletta Pireddu

SOURCE: Pireddu, Nicoletta. “Sublime Supplements: Beckett and the ‘Fizzling Out’ of Meaning.” Studies in Short Fiction 29, no. 3 (summer 1992): 303-14.

In the following essay, Pireddu considers the disjointed and confused nature of the short texts in Fizzles, arguing that these texts “exhibit the idea of aborted endeavor as their constitutive element.”

“Perhaps there is no whole, before you're dead” (Beckett, Molloy 35), meditates Molloy while lying in the ditch without remembering how he left town. If his name suddenly comes to his mind as in an epiphany, the purpose of his visit to his mother inevitably escapes him: “My reasons? I had forgotten them” (35). For each detail brought to light, other particulars are reabsorbed into forgetfulness. The activity of memory never provides the character with the total picture of his own self. Its discrete nature frustrates the need to continuity; its inability to fill the gaps opened...
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