Michael Krimper and Gabriel Quigley (eds.), Beckett Ongoing: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, 193 p.

Abstract

The series of books entitled New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century ensures the success of the colossal endeavor of providing new approaches and insights into the works of one of the most prominent literary figures of the post-World War II era. The present book, which is the latest contribution to the series, was published in 2024; it is a collection of studies edited by Michael Krimper and Gabriel Quigley. As the title suggests, the concept centers around the idea of “ongoing”, meaning that the shift from previous academic engagements is made through the lens of a more active, ethical, political, and aesthetic concept of perseverance. The genesis of this book is the monosyllable “on”, occurring persistently throughout Beckett’s body of work, offering a fascinating starting point for several new observations. According to this collection, it serves as an imperative, as the “baremost minimum” of an ethical injunction to continue (5). The collection aims to explore how this act of “going on” reframes previous understandings of Beckett’s modernist aesthetics, ethics and politics, which the book acknowledges have not yet been fully appreciated.

Overall, the book concerns Beckett’s treatment of failure, arguing that it is the main apparatus that perpetuates movement; rather than an endpoint, it serves as a continuation. Previous scholars have attributed this failure to breakdown, exhaustion, and incompletion, but the collection regards endurance as something happening despite all of these literary experiences. The lack of a clear goal does not mean complete abandonment; instead, it renders the aesthetics of failure as fundamentally ethical. Michael Krimper highlights some subsequent political implications, arguing that a new “poetics of failure” can allow the characters the possibility to escape confinement, without the promise of absolute freedom.