Samuel Beckett Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Jan Alber

Critical Essay by Jan Alber

SOURCE: Alber, Jan. “The ‘Moreness’ or ‘Lessness’ of ‘Natural’ Narratology: Samuel Beckett's ‘Lessness’ Reconsidered.” Style 36, no. 1 (spring 2002): 54-75.

In the following essay, Albert utilizes “Lessness” to test the narratological approach of Monika Fludernik's Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology.

1. Introduction

According to J. E. Dearlove, the fragmentary short prose works that Samuel Beckett produced in the period following the publication of Comment C'est (1961), i.e., “All Strange Away” (1963-64), Imagination Dead Imagine (1965), Enough (1965), Ping (1966), Lessness (1969), and The Lost Ones (1966, 1970), might strike readers as “utterly alien and incomprehensible,” and by thrusting the burden of creating order and meaning on readers, “demand a new critical response” (“Last Images” 104, 116). Similarly, Mary Bryden points out that some readers have reacted adversely to Beckett's later prose, seeing it as “perversely uncommunicative” and “teasingly mysterious” (137). The short prose work Lessness is definitely one of the most enigmatic...
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