Exemplary Reading?

This is a great observation, and one that raises interesting questions about the ways in which modernist artworks rely on the cooperation of recipients. As Powell himself admits in his conclusion, his book has produced ‘a Beckett that is heavily concerned with the responses of his audience’ (p. 180). Beckett’s interest, however, did not extend to any kind of evaluation of how audiences responded to his works, and Powell’s book likewise does not include much description of how actual audiences reacted to specific performances. Incorporating analyses of concrete reactions of Beckett audiences in different historical settings would have added an interesting dimension to the book. This would arguably have necessitated a different theoretical framework at odds with the book’s main project though (aside from the question of the availability of sources). All in all, however, Samuel Beckett and Experimental Psychology succeeds in offering a more precise and nuanced understanding of the term ‘experimental’ with regard to literature, as well as compelling new contexts for thinking about Beckett’s work.