radio

occupation / innovator as

journalist

university teacher

nationality

American

philosopher

literary critic

is at a dramatic medium, at its best when it takes its indeterminacy and absence into account by engaging in a dialectic of disclosure and obstacle, information and noise, in which the soundscape provides conflicting, and hence tantalizing, testimony.

As a dramatic medium, radio is at its best when it takes this indeterminacy and absence into account. After All That Fall, whose characters are still represented as 'real' people in a 'real' Irish country setting, Beckett's radio art becomes more abstract and mediumistic, engaging in a dialectic of disclosure and obstacle, information and noise, in which the soundscape -- which includes silence-- provides conflicting, and hence tantalizing, testimony.

is essentially an information medium with what appears to be a linear structure... as such the listener feels compelled to pay close attention with the expectation of 'finding out' something.

Even more important: because radio is essentially an information medium with what appears to be a linear structure, the listener feels compelled to pay close attention with the expectation of 'finding out' something. But what does Beckett's radio audience find out' Here the theme of disembodiment put forward in my second epigraph becomes important. If radio (or the phonograph) has the capacity to bring voice into someone else's public or private space, the disembodiment of that voice, Beckett was quite aware, is a signifier of absence, of not being there, indeed of 'death.' Then, too, voice alone--or at least voice between puberty and extreme old age or serious illness-- cannot define its owner's stage of life or status as can the visual image of a human body.

is much more coercively temporal than reading... the sounds succeed each other, and the listener, denied the luxury of stopping, is challenged to take them in, one by one, and construct their relationships.

When reading, one has the luxury of stopping to reconsider this or that point on a previous page, or one skims a given passage and moves ahead. Radio is much more coercively temporal... the sounds succeed each other, and the listener is challenged to take them in, one by one, and construct their relationships. Even when, as is usually the case, the radio piece is heard on tape or compact disc, so that one is free to fast forward and reverse, the listener remains deprived of the visual stimulus taken for granted by the theater goer or television viewer.

Marjorie Perloff

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Marjorie Perloff