Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction: Problems in Postmodernism (New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century)

__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 20^th^ and 21^st^ century America. Acknowledgements 6 Contents 7 List of Figures 8 Chapter 1: Beckett in America: ‘somehow not the right country...’ 9 ‘Unlikely, if not odd’: Beckett, Rosset and American Postmodernism 17 Notes on Methodology: Postmodernism, Post-Beckett? 24 References 30 Chapter 2: Evergreen Review, 1957–1984: Beckett and the American ‘Underground’ 34 1957–1963: The Invention of ‘Vulgar Modernism’ 42 1964–1967: Postmodernism, or the Populist ‘Underground’ 75 1968–1984: After the ‘Underground’ 89 References 106 Chapter 3: Problems and Pratfalls: Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme and Metafictional Style After Beckett 109 Robert Coover’s ‘Last Quixote’: Circles, Cycles and the ‘Nothing New’ 116 ‘Something that is not Beckett’: Donald Barthelme and the ‘Problem’ of Beckett 126 References 135 Chapter 4: ‘...between zero and one’: Opposing Tendencies in the Exhaustive Fiction of Samuel Beckett and Thomas Pynchon 138 ‘I found academic people deeply alarmed...’: The ‘Centrifugal Lures’ of Evergreen Review and Anti-academic Unreadability in Watt and Gravity’s Rainbow 146 Admitting the Chaos: ‘Centripetal’ and ‘Centrifugal’ Force in the Entropic Fiction of Beckett and Pynchon 159 References 172 Chapter 5: Don DeLillo’s Reinvention of ‘Beckett World’ 175 ‘Painkillers’: The World and the Nuclear Metaphor—From Endgame to End Zone 182 The Incorporation of ‘the last writer’: Dying Writers and ‘dead’ Books 190 ‘Fiction of estrangement’: Insinuations of Beckett in the Diminished Landscapes of Late DeLillo 199 References 209 Chapter 6: Paul Auster, Lydia Davis and Beckett’s Post-Millennial Legacies 212 ‘Samuel Beckett was and is a special case’: Paul Auster and Trans-Atlantic Beckettianism 217 ‘Further confusing such already confusing words’: Lydia Davis’ Footnotes to Beckett 231 References 242 Chapter 7: A ‘Postmodern Icon’? 245 References 256 Index 258 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) 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 20 th and 21 st century America.