The absurd in literature

by Neil Cornwell

Neil Cornwell's study, while endeavouring to present an historical survey of absurdist literature and its forbears, does not aspire to being an exhaustive history of absurdism. Rather, it pauses on certain historical moments, artistic movements, literary figures and selected works, before moving on to discuss four key Daniil Kharms, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien.

The absurd in literature will be of compelling interest to a considerable range of students of comparative, European (including Russian and Central European) and English literatures (British Isles and American) – as well as those more concerned with theatre studies, the avant-garde and the history of ideas (including humour theory). It should also have a wide appeal to the enthusiastic general reader.

Genres: Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2006

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, on a basic level at least, was pretty much written just for me. I don’t think there is another quality in literature that grabs onto me as tightly, that mirrors my own outlook, as the notion of absurdity. I don’t remember where I first learned of this book (though it was probably referenced somewhere in Fredric Jameson). Whatever the case, it has been at the top of my list for some time.

I happened upon it when I was down in Portland, Oregon about a month back, and had stopped by Powell's City of Books. They just had opened their two front rooms (of eight) a couple of weeks before, after months of closure from the COVID lockdown. I was picking through the shelves of their literary criticism section, which is tucked into the farthest and most sunless corner of their blue room (of course), and it leapt off the shelf right into my hands.

I was happy to snap it up so quickly, and didn't think much more about it until a few days before I started reading it. I was doing some googling on the author, and I happened upon his obituary, written by his wife. It turns out he had just passed away, on October 9th, 2020. Well, at least that was the day his obituary was published, the actual day of his death was not so clear. But still, looking at the calendar I realized October 9th, 2020 was the day I had purchased the book at Powell's.

It left me completely beside myself as I read it, and in truth has haunted me up until this moment as I write about it. So at any rate that's how I happened upon this book.

But anyway, to mention a few of this book's finer characteristics, Cornwell has dredged up some pretty good definitions of the absurd:

Camus's fiction certainly illustrates his celebrated confrontation between an absence of meaning (in the natural world) and a desire for meaning (on the part of a human being). It thus fits, for instance, Edward Albee's definition of the absurd as 'man's attempts to make sense for himself out of his senseless position in a world which makes no sense.'

Or. shorter:

You can't be a rationalist in an irrational world. It isn't rational. (Joe Orton, What the Butler Saw, 1967)

And also quite a few amusing anecdotes from the history, such as:

The head of one clinic in which [Antonin] Artaud was confined (in 1938-39, the Saint-Anne asylum) was Jacques Lacan; the only diagnosis made there of Artaud was that he was 'chronically and incurably insane;' subsequently, Artaud was to refer to Lacan as a 'filthy vile bastard.'

Well, in the end it was every bit as good as I hoped, if not better. Now I have a few (or several) dozen new books on my list, including a handful of authors I hadn't heard of before, such as Daniil Kharms (and several of these books, since I'm now finished, have replaced Cornwell's near the top).

Well, rest in peace, Neil Cornwell, and thank you.

[Jan Moens · Rating 5 out of 5]

8,5/10