What comes after Beckett?

[Anonymous No.18961148]

So, what comes after him?
Having read his Trilogy and his plays, it feels as though there is nothing left to do.
Who are the writers who have taken Beckett seriously and tried to advance the novel in newer directions?
I am familiar with the nouveaux romanciers, with Peter Handke's, Pinter's, and Fosse's theater, as well as Bernhard's monologues and Krasznahorkai's long descriptions, and I haven't yet explored the Oulipo group, but it looks promising. Still, who are the others?
Who are the Anglo authors influenced by Beckett? I read the Americans, like Pynchon, McCarthy, and Roth, and it's clear they are writing as if Beckett hadn't really existed, ignoring the challenges that the Beckettian view puts against the traditional conceptions of the novel (fixed characters, stories etc., the stuff that Robbe-Grillet challenged in Pour un nouveau roman). France's most famous writer, Houellebecq, clearly doesn't care about it either, and writes sociological soap operas instead.
I like them, it's fun, sure, but who are the writers that are producing new works following the harder, but much more interesting, Beckettian route? Do you know any names? Are there any more recent ones? Or is the challenge against the traditional novel dead, and the old forms triumphed due to their public appeal among the ordinary masses? Because all the stuff I see among the contemporary 'best-sellers' is either realism, magic realism, distopian realism, hysteric realism, or some kind of faulknerian polyphony that ends up being very old-fashioned too.

Please, feel free to recommend authors who you think might fit into that description, as well as to provide your own thoughts upon Beckett and the contemporary novel.

[Anonymous No.18961156]

>>18961148
>More interesting Beckettian route
The lack of rigour among acclaimed writers clearly suggests that it is more an undergrad's fantasy than any objective truth.

[Anonymous No.18961166]

Shut the fuck up. Lit crit and "academic writers" are all retarded. The novel is a medium for storytelling. You deliberately ruined so many great stories for yourself by reading lit crit and figuring out the basic "tropes". Now of course you notice it everywhere and you want "new shit". Too bad for you OP, I think you should just kill yourself now.

[Anonymous No.18961199]

>>18961156
>than any objective truth

It does not claim to be an objective truth. Art is not about truth, but about different avenues of aesthetic exploration. There is no ''true route'' in art, only the ones which are more akin to your own interests.

>>18961166
>The novel is a medium for storytelling

Then go read the collected works of Simenon. There's nobody preventing you.

>You deliberately ruined so many great stories for yourself by reading lit crit and figuring out the basic "tropes

If you aren't lazy you'll be able to figure them out for yourself, eventually. I have read, I don't know, hundreds of traditional novels, and can't stand them anymore. It bores me to death.

[Anonymous No.18961210]

>>18961199
midwit plotfag

[Anonymous No.18961219]

>>18961210
>reading comprehension

[Anonymous No.18961222]

>>18961210
>plotfag

Are you replying to the correct person?
Beckett is about the complete dissolution of plot, among other things. The French new novelists often invented new kinds of plots, with structures which were very different from the 'rational' aspects of the 19th century novel. Think of a Godard film, things like that.

[Anonymous No.18961223]

>>18961199
>Art is not about truth, but about different avenues of aesthetic exploration.
>it's fun, sure, but who are the writers that are producing new works following the harder, but much more interesting, Beckettian route
You can read it yourself.
And I don't see how it is harder. I have only read the trilogy but Beckett leans extensively on delirious/handicapped characters and constant flashbacks to nebulous events, to keep his books afloat. How is it any harder than other SoC writers?
Writing an engaging narrative that also has great literary merit seems harder to me.

[Anonymous No.18961256]

>>18961223
>works following the harder, but much more interesting

"Harder" and "more interesting" does not mean "objective truth".

>And I don't see how it is harder

It is, because you have to innovate. I can create a new story at this very moment, then write a traditional, Balzac-style novel based on it, in a couple of weeks.
In order to write a post-Beckettian novel, well, I don't know how to begin. I have made one attempt in the past, but I am not sure I have achieved my goals, as there is still too much of Beckett's shadow over it.

>than other SoC writers

What do you mean by SoC?

>Writing an engaging narrative that also has great literary merit seems harder to me.

Just copy the millions of available models.

[Anonymous No.18961260]

deconstructing plot is a precisely the sort of thing a plotfag would think of doing.

[Anonymous No.18961270]

>>18961256
>I can create a new story at this very moment, then write a traditional, Balzac-style novel based on it, in a couple of weeks.
go for it, not in a million years will you write something approaching Balzac in quality, you only see structure bcos ur a plotfag.

[Anonymous No.18961275]

>>18961148
You can read Watt. Beckett's style does not leave
much room for others, if you incorporate it in anything but marginal ways you quickly become a Beckett impersonator. Oulipo is a good place to go, as well as absurdist.

[Anonymous No.18961282]

>>18961256
>because you have to innovate
Remove you mean, in Beckett's case.
>Just copy the millions of available models
It wouldn't have great literary merit. Copying a model isn't going to give you an engaging narrative, if it has literary merit it is also fair to assume it is original. If your problem is that it leans on symbolism too much, then Beckett isn't the writer to do away with it. It is harder because it is juggling more variables and has less freedom.
>What do you mean by SoC?
Stream of Consciousness. What traditional novel is Woolf's The Waves aping? Beckett's anti-natalist larp separates them, but the idea behind Molloy and Malone dies isn't radically different from what others were doing before.

[Anonymous No.18961299]

>>18961210
Plotfag... eminent Neo-Platonist.

[Anonymous No.18961312]

>>18961148
>advance the novel in newer directions?
Here is a reading list of suitable works. Most if not all probably appreciated Beckett.
Perec - Life a Users Manual
Calvino - If on a Winters Night A Traveler
O'Brien - The Third Policemen
Adler - Speedboat
Baker - The Mezzanine
Gide - Marshlands

[Anonymous No.18961313]

>>18961148
Read Texts for Nothing. Has his best prose passages

[Anonymous No.18961320]

>>18961270
>you only see structure bcos ur a plotfag

I see style and structure. Beckett is not merely about structure, but about style too. The structure gives rise to a new kind of style, which includes features such as a certain degree of rejection of the image, as well as the employment of repetition, which one could call minimalism, I suppose.
I am far from being a "plotfag", in fact, I think nobody is less of a "plotfag" than me. Also, plot is not the same as structure. Sonnets have structure, but what is their plot?

George Steiner once wrote that, compared to Beckett, the prose of other writers sounds like flatulence. I agree, and this is the problem I am trying to solve. Everything feels like exaggeration, now. Even very good writers like Pynchon and McCarthy. I dont know. Maybe it is just me.

>>18961282
>Copying a model isn't going to give you an engaging narrative, if it has literary merit it is also fair to assume it is original

Yes, it is. Stories keep repeating themselves, and not just in Hollywood. Anyway, I do not care about stories, any longer. They are not interesting to me. People can keep writing them, and it does not bother me at all. I have nothing against it, and used to enjoy them when I was younger, so I see no problem.
I am not trying to push for a totalitarian view of art, simply asking for authors - as well as opinions, of course - who try to walk through other, different paths.

>What traditional novel is Woolf's The Waves aping?

No idea, as I have not read it. I have only read Orlando by her.

[Anonymous No.18961321]

>>18961148
Maybe try Blanchot, Edmond Jabés, Sebald, Borges, and Witold Gombrowicz (very beckettian)

[Anonymous No.18961326]

>>18961148
I haven't read him, but the highest profile Anglo experimental modernist is probably Josipovici. Eimear McBride also successfully synthesized high modernism with the confessional bestseller, but is not pushing any envelopes.

In the last thirty years the big "progressive" trend has been autofiction: Knausgaard, Cusk, Ferrante, Sebald. Which is really a game with the form of autobiography. It looks a lot like realism, mind you.

The most out there shit I've read is The Age of Wire and String, whose author I otherwise despise, but who hit some magic jackpot with that book. Perhaps more a Joycean than a Beckettoid though.

As an overall recommendation, perhaps Remainder by Tom McCarthy? It's not pointedly hard, but I think it will scratch your itch

[Anonymous No.18961334]

>>18961320
>I am not trying to push for a totalitarian view of art, simply asking for authors - as well as opinions, of course - who try to walk through other, different paths.
I understand. Are you an anti-natalist? Thomas "there is nothing to do, nowhere to go and no one to know" Ligotti might entertain you. His negative philosophy is inspired by Beckett's heroes.
You are not putting the "no plot" question properly I guess. Joyce, Proust, Woolf etc. don't really write plots but they would classify as Anti-Beckettian writers. I guess you want writers that write about nothing but with Gallows humor, written in a minimalist style.

[Anonymous No.18961336]

>>18961321
>Borges
Couldn't be further from him. Schopenhauer is the only real point of contact, but Borges doesn't insist upon him in his fiction.

[Anonymous No.18961366]

>>18961148
>producing new works following the harder, but much more interesting, Beckettian route
Me desu

[Anonymous No.18961385]

>>18961334
>You are not putting the "no plot" question properly I guess

I was not really talking about plot, until someone called me a plotfag.
Here is the thing, Beckett posits a challenge: he writes books with no discernible stories (nothing happens, other than very small events, and even then they have no point; of course, he inherits this from Kafka and others, but takes it to new levels, I think, because we are not even certain of what's happening, or to whom it's happening); completely surreal characters whose identity is not well-determined and we don't even know their physical shape, assuming they have any; and a prose style which barely sustains itself other than on its own inner poetry (specially by the end of the Unnamable).
Well, then. How do we, as writers, react to that?
What I am looking for is writers who have attempted to answer that particular question, and have created works which try to give those answers an enduring aesthetic quality.
Something even more uncertain, even more minimalistic than Beckett, perhaps; or something tries to employ those same intuitions which guide Beckett but upon some other aspect of literature.
Maybe it doesn't even exist yet, and I'll have to write it myself. Well, then.

As for other writers, they are free to keep reproducing Balzac. I have nothing against them, it just doesn't interest me anymore.

>>18961326
Thanks for all the names. I am familiar with some, but will look for the others.

>In the last thirty years the big "progressive" trend has been autofiction

Yes, I am writing one such book right now, although with many peculiarities which I won't mention.

>>18961321
>>18961312
Thanks too.

>>18961366
Same.

[Anonymous No.18961389]

>>18961148
Alleman, Babyfucker

[Anonymous No.18961409]

>>18961385
This book by Josipovici looks very interesting:

https://www.libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=FE4C67B90C28EE2BAF382858F4C44D7A

>The quality of today’s literary writing arouses the strongest opinions. For novelist and critic Gabriel Josipovici, the contemporary novel in English is profoundly disappointing—a poor relation of its groundbreaking Modernist forebears. This agile and passionate book asks why.

>Modernism, Josipovici suggests, is only superficially a reaction to industrialization or a revolution in diction and form; essentially, it is art coming to consciousness of its own limits and responsibilities. And its origins are to be sought not in 1850 or 1800, but in the early 1500s, with the crisis of society and perception that also led to the rise of Protestantism. With sophistication and persuasiveness, Josipovici charts some of Modernism’s key stages, from Dürer, Rabelais, and Cervantes to the present, bringing together a rich array of artists, musicians, and writers both familiar and unexpected—including Beckett, Borges, Friedrich, Cézanne, Stevens, Robbe-Grillet, Beethoven, and Wordsworth. He concludes with a stinging attack on the current literary scene in Britain and America, which raises questions about not only national taste, but contemporary culture itself.

>Gabriel Josipovici has spent a lifetime writing, and writing about other writers. What Ever Happened to Modernism? is a strident call to arms, and a tour de force of literary, artistic, and philosophical explication that will stimulate anyone interested in art in the twentieth century and today

[Anonymous No.18961410]

May I introduce you to the legend himself?

[Anonymous No.18961415]

>>18961336
>Schopenhauer is the only real point of contact, but Borges doesn't insist upon him in his fiction.
So you want pessimistic lit ?

[Anonymous No.18961439]

>>18961410
>Students of Lish's Columbia University workshop "Tactics of Fiction" have described it with such adjective as "grueling," "hellish" and "sadistic," punctuated by Lish's constant interruptions of "This is entirely self-serving!" and "That's not what I want to hear. That won't help me live or die. It doesn't tell me anything about human truth." They have also called him "an unbelievably crazy, manipulative, egomaniacal person." One student told Spy magazine, "It was like some ghastly form of torture. To have to sit there listening to this self-indulgent egotist interrupting and insulting everybody. Really, there was not a moment of interest or enjoyment."
>Carla Blumenkranz noted in The New Yorker, "Lish’s willingness to be bored and show it was one of his strengths as an instructor. He created a situation in which each student had to approach him, like a stranger at a party or a bar, to see if she could catch his attention. Lish shot down these nervous suitors one by one, not even bothering to hear out the pickup lines they fretted over. Then he shifted in an instant to a masculine role: talking endlessly, enacting his charisma, awing his listeners into submission."[25]
>Lish himself has criticized a number of prominent authors and literary institutions. Among his comments are that "Philip Roth is full of shit"; Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Lethem do not deserve their reputations; Lydia Davis is "ridiculously overrated"; "I can't read Paul Auster anymore"; the redesign of The New Yorker was a "dreadful error"; and literary magazine n+1 is a "crock of shit."[3]

I'll read him too.
Keep the recommendations coming. I, for one, will actually read them.
I may stop replying soon, but I'll check the thread or the archives later.

[Anonymous No.18961573]

>>18961439
he was actually insane and hospitalized. while i read more lish than beckett, he is clearly part of the beckett lineage. and there is a reason why his own works arent very well known. its very niche and every negative reaction people have to it is probably justified

[Anonymous No.18961578]

>>18961385
>>18961573
>Something even more uncertain, even more minimalistic than Beckett
yep thats him

[Anonymous No.18961617]

>>18961148
Michael S. Judge - The Scenarists of Europe

[Anonymous No.18962280]

>>18961148
Gerald Murnane and J.M. Coetzee. Coetzee wrote his PhD thesis on Beckett.

[Anonymous No.18963418]

Bump

[Anonymous No.18963456]

I'm not sure but Samuel certainly comes before it...

[Anonymous No.18963485]

William H. Gass maybe? I loved Beckett's trilogy and I love Gass's novels. Would recommend starting with Omensetter's Luck and then The Tunnel afterwards if you enjoy that