JOURNEY TO CHAOS: SAMUEL BECKETT'S EARLY FICTION

Published by University of California Press, 1965

Hardcover, 243 pages, First Edition, Ex-Library Book, Used Copy May Not Have Dust Jacket, All Pages Guaranteed Intact

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"As early as 1932, in an unpublished version of More Pricks Than Kicks, Beckett committed himself to a paradoxical creative system in which he negates common realities in a persistent effort to achieve originality.

The purpose of this book is to show how the gradual, puzzling disintegration of form and content in Beckett's work is eventually perfected into an aesthetic system in the novels Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, and the recent How It Is.

A chronological study of his novels reveals that Beckett's fictional 'journey to chaos' followed definite stages: his English fiction, his early French experiments, and his later French works. This volume examines the first two stages and deals primarily with the works Beckett wrote before Molloy.

To appreciate Beckett's later, more complex and abstract works, it is necessary to look for their genesis in the earlier fiction, and Mr. Federman has done this for his readers more thoroughly than has ever been attempted before. This study of the early fiction is intended therefore as an introduction to the whole body of Beckett's fiction. References to the later works are used to show the interplay between the novels, the process of self-generation of the characters, and the thematic development.

The part of the book entitled 'Social Reality: Lethargy, Doubt, and Insanity' deals with the English fiction and follows the gradual alienation of the characters from social reality, or 'conventional realism,' as shown in the short stories More Pricks Than Kicks and the novels Murphy and Watt. The total effect of these works shows a forsaking of life not only as it is known in modern society, but as it is depicted in traditional fiction.

The part entitled 'Fictional Absurdity: Exile and Alienation' deals with the early French fiction--the unpublished French novel Mercier et Camier, the short story Premier amour, and the three Nouvelles--'L'Expulsé,' 'Le Calmant,' and 'La Fin'--and shows Beckett's heroes as they are exiled into 'fictional absurdity' and undergo dehumanization. In his French fiction, Beckett succeeds in creating situations that go beyond the norms of rationality, with little reliance on the conventional elements of characterization, plot, or action.

The book contains a detailed summary of the rare More Pricks Than Kicks and its unpublished forerunner, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, in an appendix. A complete chronology of Beckett's works is included in the bibliography."--University of California Press

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