Beckett Samuel - Samuel Beckett and the Politics of Aftermath

Many people encouraged me in writing this book during its long genesis and completion. Im most grateful to Adam Parkes, who has offered warm friendship and astute, light-handed professional advice at decisive moments of application: to graduate school, to assistant professor jobs, for tenure, and in applying myself to this book and this book to a publisher. Sen Kennedy has generously encouraged my work over the last decade and published it in collections he deftly edited. Both he and Adam have joined other friends and colleagues who have read individual chapters: Neil Doshi, Alex Cook, Duncan Yoon, and David Deutsch. I appreciate Bill Ulmers steady encouragement and practical guidance. Im grateful to my other English department colleagues, to my former chair Catherine Davies, and current department chair Joel Brouwer.

Thanks to Edward Beckett for attending to my work and to the Beckett Estate for permission to quote from Becketts Notes on Philosophy, German Diaries, German Vocabulary Notebooks, letters, and other unpublished drafts and versions of Becketts work. Thanks to Bloodaxe Books for permission to quote from Tomas Transtrmer, New Collected Poems, trans. Robin Fulton (Hexham: Bloodaxe Books, 2011). was previously published in Sen Kennedy and Katherine Weiss (eds.), Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

The archival research was facilitated by librarians at Trinity College Dublin, the Reading Foundation, and the Harry Ransom Center, and Im grateful to all of them, especially Elizabeth Garver in Austin. My colleague from the History department, Margaret Peacock, counseled me on histories of Ukraine. At Oxford University Press, Jacqueline Norton and Aimee Wright have been terrific to work with, and the two anonymous readers of the manuscript suggested sharp improvements and expressed appreciation that lifted me to the end. Without the support of the University of Alabamasabbatical leave, two University of Alabama Research Grants, and unfailing interlibrary loan and library services (looking at you, Brock Tyra)I would not have completed this book. The Beckett community is collegial and supportive. Thanks to David Lloyd and Andrew Gibson for encouraging me with this project; thanks to Mark Nixon for confirming my transcription of certain patches in Becketts piebald handwriting; and thanks to other Beckett scholars for illuminating the path: Patrick Bixby, Jos Francisco Fernndez, Jim Knowlson, Nadia Louar, Emilie Morin, John Pilling, Mark Quigley, and David Suchoff, among others. I have presented this work at Beckett conferences as well as conferences for the Modernist Studies Association, the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, and the American Comparative Literature Association. For all the tips, leads, and suggestions from other participants, my thanks.

Thanks to Nicholas Allen at the Wilson Center for the Humanities and Arts, and to Susan Rosenbaum, Adam Parkes, and the other engaging members of the Interdisciplinary Modernist Group at the University of Georgia for inviting me to Athens to present . I spent writing time in the Boston Public Library and, thanks to Carol Morini, at the Boston Athenaeum. My archival work on Becketts manuscripts began long ago in graduate school: thanks to the financial support from the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. Though the work here is different from my work then, the intuitions that guide this project also emerged and were cultivated at Michigan. Enoch Brater directed my dissertation, and I found myself lucky to be taught by David Porter, Martha Vicinus, Simon Gikandi, and John Whittier-Ferguson: master teachers, among many there, who modeled a life of expansive intellectual inquiry while cultivating careful reading, historical precision, and fine attention to the sentence. I owe thanks to the students who took my Beckett courses, and in particular to the first-year research assistants assigned hours with me, Wyatt McMurray and David Kumler especially. Ill miss my father lightly asking about the mystery of this books progress, now that its out. I dedicate this book to Mary and to Niamh: they nourish every day together with unstinting vitality and love.

In a letter to Barbara Bray, Beckett comments on the name Naughton: (wonderful name for a character, why did I never think of it). We can guess the appeal: the name bounds nothing and something, like the skin of a bubble. In this spirit, my final gratitude to all those friends and colleagues I have not mentioned here by name, all those who heard naught on and not on and graciously replied aught to.