This book discusses Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, the novels that make up Samuel Beckett's well-known trilogy, to analyze the techniques employed and trace the traditions from which they have emanated.^R ^R The book is made up of an Introduction and six chapters. The first chapter discusses Molloy, viewing its protagonist as a writer who is alienated but as such serves as a modern-day Everyman. The second chapter discusses Malone Dies with particular emphasis on its mode of narration and considers phenomenology to be the key to the "narrative consciousness" of the novel. The third chapter discusses The Unnamable with the aim of examining its constituent elements, and the particular amalgam of fact and fiction. The fourth chapter discusses the Continental confessional aspect of the trilogy, examining such earlier Continental examples as Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. The fifth chapter discusses the Continental philosophical novel aspect of the trilogy, and situates the three novels within the framework of the post-World War II French philosophical novel tradition.
Biography
Author and scholar Gönül Ayda Pultar was born in Istanbul but spent part of her childhood and adolescence in such countries as France, The Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia where she followed her career diplomat mother, Adile Ayda. She holds a B.A. from Robert College (now Boğaziçi [Bosphorus] University) in Istanbul and a Ph.D. from Middle East Technical University in Ankara. After an early career in journalism, she opted for academia and taught at these two universities as well as at Bilkent University. She was a research fellow at the Longfellow Institute of Harvard University. She started in 1999 the international inter-university "Group for Cultural Studies in Turkey," which became in 2005 the Cultural Studies Association of Turkey of which she is is currently the founding president. She has been active in various capacities in such academic associations as the MLA, ASA and MESEA. She moreover holds currently the honorary title of the President of the World League of Tatars.
She received in 1965, while at college, the Robert College Cinema Club Award for a movie script she wrote, and in 1970, the Hachette-Larousse Literature Award in France for an essay she wrote directly in French.
She was the founding editor of "Journal of American Studies of Turkey." She was also the guest editor of the September 2006 issue of "Comparative American Studies," a special issue devoted to American literature in languages other than English. She is at present a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of "Journal of Popular Culture."
She moreover authored numerous encyclopedia entries, and articles and essays in books, and journals published in the USA, The Netherlands, Germany, The Russian Federation, Japan, India, and Turkey. Her essay "Postmodern Resistance or Public Mask: The Islamic Veil in Europe" appeared in "Post-National Enquiries: Essays on Ethnic and Racial Border Crossings" (2009) edited by Jopi Nyman. Her short story "Leda and the Swan," published in "Cultural Horizons" (2001) can be found at the web site entitled "Contemporary Turkish Literature" of Boğaziçi University.
Her published works include the monograph "Technique and Tradition in Samuel Beckett's Trilogy of Novels" (1996); and the collection of essays "On the Road to Baghdad or Traveling Biculturalism: Theorizing a Bicultural Approach to Contemporary World Fiction" (2005). She has published in Turkish two novels: "Dünya Bir Atlıkarınca" (The World is a Merry-go-round, 1979) and "Ellerimden Su İçsinler" (Let Them Drink Water from My Hands, 1999); and a number of edited books: "Kardeşim Yaralısın: Fakir Baykurt'u Anmak" (Brother, You're Wounded: In Memoriam Fakir Baykurt, 2002) co-edited with Selim Sünter; "Kardeşliğe Bin Selam: İlhan Başgöz ile Söyleşi - Gönül Pultar, Serpil Aygün Cengiz" (A Thousand Greetings to Brothers All: Ilhan Başgöz Interviewed by Gönül Pultar and Serpil Aygün Cengiz, 2003); "Kültür ve Modernite" (Culture and Modernity,2003) co-edited with Emine O. İncirlioğlu and Bahattin Akşit; "Türk(iye) Kültürleri" (Cultures of Turks/Turkey, 2005) co-edited with Tahire Erman; "İslam ve Modernite" (Islam and Modernity, 2007); "Yirmi Birinci Yüzyılda İdil-Ural" ([Imagining] Idil-Ural in the Twenty-first Century, 2008); "Kimlikler Lütfen: Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nde Kültürel Kimlik Arayışı ve Temsili" (I.D.s Please: Quest for and Representation of Cultural Identity in the Republic of Turkey, 2009); and the bilingual "Yapılar Fora: Mustafa Pultar'a Armağan Kitabı / Buildings Ahoy: A Festschrift in Honor of Mustafa Pultar" with the assistance of Yonca Hürol. She is currently working on a collection of essays titled "Imagined Identities: De/Construction of Culture, Ethnicity and Trans/Nationhood in the Age of Globalization" based on the symposium organized in Istanbul by MESEA and the Cultural Studies Association of Turkey.
The granddaughter of Sadri Maksudi (1878-1957), the leader of the short-lived "Turko-Tatar national-cultural autonomy" established right after the 1917 Revolution in the region between the Volga River and the Ural mountains in inner Russia (region called "Idil-Ural" in the local language, Tatar), Pultar has found herself immersed in the life and culture of the autonomous republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan (within the Russian Federation) after the fall of the Soviet Union. For her efforts at promoting the culture in the diaspora, she received in 2005 by decree of President Putin a medal, and in 2007 a "Rehmet Hattı" (Testimony of Gratitude) from the then President Shaimiev of Tatarstan.
Pultar is married to Professor Mustafa Pultar of Bilkent University and has three children.
