© Columbia University Press
Samuel Beckett: Laughing Matters, Comic Timing
May, 2012
Cloth, 256 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-7486-4748-4
Edinburgh University Press
$105.00
Samuel Beckett is a funny writer. He is also an author whose work is taken to respond ethically to the unspeakable seriousness of the post-holocaust situation. How can these two statements sit together? Laura Salisbury demonstrates that it is through Beckett's comic timing that we can understand the double gesture of his art: the ethical obligation to represent the world how it is while, at the same time, opening up a space for how it ought to be.
• Innovative readings of Beckett’s writings including his letters from the 1920s & 1930s, More Pricks than Kicks, the Trilogy, The Three Dialogues, Endgame, Murphy and the late prose & plays, including Waiting for Godot
• Engages with recent and contemporary philosophical approaches to literature, including work by Derrida, Badiou, Levinas, and Adorno