Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians

This enlightening study begins with an explanation of the effect of the printing press on books. The “book as book” has been removed from the oral tradition by such features as prefaces, footnotes, and indexes. Books have become voiceless in some sense – they are to be read silently, not recited aloud. How this mechanical change affected the possibilities of fiction is Kenner’s subject.