Beckett after Beckett (review)

Few modern writers command a literary stamp as distinct as Samuel Beckett’s, yet the starkness that characterizes the Beckettian imaginary (particularly in the theater), however familiar, leaves intentions elusive, messages opaque. Possibilities proliferate without resolution: “No symbols where none intended,” Beckett famously writes. Hence the frustration of the uninitiated student who, after half completing an essay on the most obvious topic at hand—to determine if Godot is God or not—has the midnight epiphany that nothing guarantees a Godot exists in the first place, or that this existence is, ultimately, the point.

Beckett after Beckett traces a critical profile that remains as rich in possibilities, and ultimately as inscrutable, as the author’s no-show Godot.