“Old Frantic Fingers”

Abstract

Abstract Beckett criticism has long privileged vision and audition when discussing memory. The present study proposes to examine, rather, tactility in Beckett’s work. Touching and feeling are not only prominent features of what is remembered (or imagined, or remembered as never having occurred); they also trigger remembrance and body parts themselves hold memories. I argue that touching and holding are indispensable features of memories and of representations of remembering in Beckett’s postwar prose texts. The body remains a central preoccupation of his work up until the end of his life, and the body’s persistence in his work can help us revise our understanding of cognition generally, and memory specifically, in Beckett’s fictions.