Chronicles of Disorder: Samuel Beckett and the Cultural Politics of the Modern Novel (review)

Abstract

For decades now, Samuel Beckett's work has invited extensive commentary and explication, above all perhaps to confront a basic question: Whatever might have possessed the man to write this way? Today, however, one senses that the peculiarly intense quality of this appreciative attention, which takes its departure from the singularity of Beckett's writing, may also have been a source of blindness among professional Beckett readers. Recent critics have exerted themselves to reconsider Beckett within the occasion of his writing, and the results have provoked controversy. For what may seem to some as gymnastically dialectical readings of Beckett's historical "typicality," to others appear perverse gyrations in the face of the evidence of his uniqueness. David Weisberg's Chronicles of Disorder is an excellent instance of the new contextualizing trend of Beckett criticism, and it is sure to provoke the kind of polarized reactions that I have described. Weisberg, indeed, explicitly acknowledges that "for those who feel that uncovering Beckett's typicality diminishes his achievement, this book will seem of little value" (9).