The ‘Problem’ of Beckett in postmodern American fiction

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite having vanished from the epicentre of Beckett Studies, the modern/postmodern debate remains unsettled ground. Drawing from Beckett’s historical unwillingness to fall neatly within these markers, this article investigates Beckett’s legacy over the fiction and essays of John Barth and Donald Barthelme. Privileging Beckett as a generative ‘problem’, Barthelme’s category will be used to illustrate Beckett’s legacy as one that is both resisted and accommodated by postmodern authors. In this regard, Barthelme conceives of his works as written ‘in opposition’ to Beckett, while appropriating his aesthetic commitment to ‘not knowing’. This is supplemented by a discussion of Barth, in whose works we find a ‘shore’ erected against the ruins of Beckettian ‘silence’. Underwriting the ‘problem’ discussed in this article, we will also examine the contradictory models of legacy embodied in Beckett’s writing; in particular, the Texts for Nothing, (1955) following the impasse of The Unnamable, (1953) find Beckett forging a nominally post-Beckett voice in the space of his own corpus. Simultaneously engaging with and disavowing Beckett’s influence, Barth and Barthelme interrogate the shape of Beckett’s postmodern legacy, finding in Beckett’s works both the threat of ending and the promise of creative renewal.