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Title: | An Umbrella, a Pair of Boots, and a Spacious Nothing : McGahern and Beckett (2014) |
Authors: | Richard ROBINSON, Author |
Material Type: | Article |
In : | Irish University Review (Vol 44 n 2 Autumn/Winter 2014) |
Article on page: | p. 323-340 |
Languages: | English |
Descriptors: | |
Abstract: | This essay argues that an assessment of the Beckettian qualities of McGahern's work should take into account the recent scholarship which has explored Beckett's absorption in philosophy. The author of the present essay follows Husserl's injunction ‘go back to the things themselves’: first, to the significance of the umbrella, an over-determined sexual signified, in ‘My Love, My Umbrella’; and second to the extended representation of the father's boots in "The Dark". These objects of ridicule and affect have their own obliquely Beckettian lineage as the ‘presence between’ ("Watt") the post-Cartesian body and the uncaring object world, though they do not attain the ideal of epidermal ‘impermeability’ mentioned in Beckett's "Proust". McGahern also shares Beckett's interest in the Democritean idea that ‘Nothing is more real than nothing’ ("Malone Dies"), though under such conditions McGahern clings more tenaciously to the materiality of the memory-image, whereas to Beckett the image may be sullied by memory (Deleuze) or simply ‘done’ in the present. However, McGahern is aware that his aesthetic cannot be fully mastered by a transcendent Mnemosyne, and that the recalcitrant present may refuse to budge. Finally, a strange contemporaneity is shown to emerge between ‘The Wine Breath’ and the "Shades" of Beckett's late televisual work, both of which are revisited by Yeatsian ghosts. |
Publishing country : | Grande-Bretagne (Royaume Uni) |
Place of publication : | Edimbourg |
Collection : | Médiathèque |