Stories for Nothing

Stories for Nothing: Samuel Beckett's Narrative Poetics is the first book to examine Samuel Beckett's trilogy and post-trilogy works, specifically in terms of their divergent approaches to narrative subjectivity. By comparing the narrational processes of Molloy, Malone meurt , and L'Innommable , Paul B. Kelley demonstrates that the negativity informing the trilogy has its underpinnings in Beckett's Proust . Culminating in the narrative aporetics of L'Innommable , this negativity is subsequently overcome in experimental fashion in post-trilogy works such as Textes pour rien, Comment c'est , and Compagnie . The result is a poetics of exhaustion whose pivotal significance for the Beckettian subject is explored.