Samuel Beckett and the Primacy of Love

This study is about the central place of the emotional world in Beckett’s writing. Stating that Beckett is “primarily about love”, John Keller makes a radical re-assessment of his influence and immense popularity. The book examines numerous Beckettian texts, arguing that they embody a struggle to remain in contact with a primal sense of internal goodness, one founded on early experience with the mother. Writing itself becomes an internal dialogue, in which the reader is engaged, between a “narrative-self” and a mother.