Description
Samuel Beckett's work has entranced generations of readers with its portrayal of the end times. Beckett's characters are preoccupied with death, and the specters of cataclysm and extinction overshadow their barren, bleak worlds. Yet somehow, they endure, experiencing surreal and often comic repetitions that seem at once to confront finitude and the infinite, up to the limits of existence.
Gabriele Schwab draws on decades of close engagement with Beckett to explore how his work speaks to our current existential anxieties and fears. Interweaving critical analysis with personal reflections, she shows how Beckett's writing provides unexpected resources for making sense of personal and planetary catastrophes. Moments for Nothing examines the ways Beckett's works have taken on new meaning in an era of crises-climate change, environmental devastation, and the COVID-19 pandemic-that are defined by both paralyzing stasis and pervasive uncertainty. They also offer a bracing depiction of aging and the end of life, exploring loneliness, vulnerability, and decay. Beckett's particular vision of the apocalypse and his sense of persistence, Schwab argues, help us understand our times and even, perhaps, provide sanctuary and solace.
Moments for Nothing features insightful close readings of iconic works such as Endgame, Happy Days, and the trilogy, as well as lesser-known writings including the thirty-five-second play Breath, which Schwab reconsiders in light of the pandemic.
About the Author
Gabriele Schwab is distinguished professor at the University of California, Irvine, where she holds appointments in comparative literature, anthropology, English, and European languages and studies. She is the author of several books, most recently Radioactive Ghosts (2020). Her previous Columbia University Press books are Imaginary Ethnographies: Literature, Culture, and Subjectivity (2012) and Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (2010).
Reviews
As a guide to Beckett's work, Moments for Nothing is indispensable, but it is also much more than this. Mixing literary criticism with memoir and a compelling account of personal loss and mourning, this is a book unlike any other. What holds together its various elements is a moving and generous tribute to the transformative experience of reading-in which an impassioned love of Beckett's writing gives shape and meaning to a scholarly life. -- Peter Boxall, author of The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life
With passion and deep erudition, Gabriele Schwab situates Samuel Beckett in our "end times" of pandemic and climate catastrophe. Here we encounter afresh the writer's desolate landscapes, dark wit, and ghostly whispers. Here we gratefully consume, alongside his lonely characters, a typically Beckettian meal of despair and hope. -- Elin Diamond, author of Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre
Moments for Nothing provides perfect readings of Beckett's prose and plays. Schwab blends elegantly personal reminiscences, psychoanalytical analyses, and philosophical approaches that she distills to demonstrate the relevance of Beckett for our times of angst, pandemics, catastrophe, and looming extinction. Like Beckett's texts, her book nevertheless uplifts. -- Jean-Michel Rabate , author of Think, Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human
[A] penetrating study. * The Arts Fuse *
Book Information
ISBN 9780231211611
Author Gabriele Schwab
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Gabriele Schwab draws on decades of close engagement with Beckett to explore how his work speaks to our current existential anxieties and fears. Interweaving critical analysis with personal reflections, she shows how Beckett's writing provides unexpected resources for making sense of personal and planetary catastrophes. Moments for Nothing examines the ways Beckett's works have taken on new meaning in an era of crises-climate change, environmental devastation, and the COVID-19 pandemic-that are defined by both paralyzing stasis and pervasive uncertainty. They also offer a bracing depiction of aging and the end of life, exploring loneliness, vulnerability, and decay. Beckett's particular vision of the apocalypse and his sense of persistence, Schwab argues, help us understand our times and even, perhaps, provide sanctuary and solace.
Moments for Nothing features insightful close readings of iconic works such as Endgame, Happy Days, and the trilogy, as well as lesser-known writings including the thirty-five-second play Breath, which Schwab reconsiders in light of the pandemic.
About the Author
Gabriele Schwab is distinguished professor at the University of California, Irvine, where she holds appointments in comparative literature, anthropology, English, and European languages and studies. She is the author of several books, most recently Radioactive Ghosts (2020). Her previous Columbia University Press books are Imaginary Ethnographies: Literature, Culture, and Subjectivity (2012) and Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (2010).
Reviews
As a guide to Beckett's work, Moments for Nothing is indispensable, but it is also much more than this. Mixing literary criticism with memoir and a compelling account of personal loss and mourning, this is a book unlike any other. What holds together its various elements is a moving and generous tribute to the transformative experience of reading-in which an impassioned love of Beckett's writing gives shape and meaning to a scholarly life. -- Peter Boxall, author of The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life
With passion and deep erudition, Gabriele Schwab situates Samuel Beckett in our "end times" of pandemic and climate catastrophe. Here we encounter afresh the writer's desolate landscapes, dark wit, and ghostly whispers. Here we gratefully consume, alongside his lonely characters, a typically Beckettian meal of despair and hope. -- Elin Diamond, author of Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre
Moments for Nothing provides perfect readings of Beckett's prose and plays. Schwab blends elegantly personal reminiscences, psychoanalytical analyses, and philosophical approaches that she distills to demonstrate the relevance of Beckett for our times of angst, pandemics, catastrophe, and looming extinction. Like Beckett's texts, her book nevertheless uplifts. -- Jean-Michel Rabate , author of Think, Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human
[A] penetrating study. * The Arts Fuse *
Book Information
ISBN 9780231211611
Author Gabriele Schwab
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
