Alan Astro

5 x 7, 222 pages
cloth, ISBN 0-87249-686-4, $34.95s

ABOUT THE BOOK

Understanding Samuel Beckett presents an overview of the work of the recently deceased Irish author, who wrote in both English and French. His most famous novels and plays—Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Waiting for Godot, and Endgame—are discussed in depth, as well as some less known earlier texts and later, shorter pieces. Particular concerns include Beckett's relationship with other authors (Dante, Joyce, Proust), his debt to philosophers (Sartre, Descartes, Pascal), his bilingualism, the psychoanalytic texture of his writing, and his manipulation of the first-person pronoun. Readers will see how Beckett's characters who wish to narrate their own deaths incorporate silence into their speech. The final pages of the book consider Stirrings Still, Beckett's last text, in which he evokes his own impending demise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Astro, a native of Brooklyn, received his Ph.D. in French Literature from Yale University in 1985. He teaches French language and literature at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. The author of several articles on translation and literary theory, his research interests include the French writers of the Oulipo group (especially Georges Perec), Yiddish studies, and the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan.