Alber - Moreness and Lessness

The “Moreness” or “Lessness” of “Natural” Narratology: Samuel Beckett's “Lessness”
Reconsidered
Author(s): Jan Alber
Source: Style, Vol. 36, No. 1, Time, Music, and Textuality (Spring 2002), pp. 54-75
Published by: Penn State University Press
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Jan Alber
University of Freiburg
The “Moreness” or “Lessness” of “Natural”

Narratology:
Samuel Beckett’s “Lessness” Reconsidered
1. Introduction
According to J. E. Dearlove, the fragmentary short prose works that Samuel
Beckett produced in the period following the publication of Comment C’est (1961),
i.e., “All Strange Away” (1963-64), “Imagination Dead Imagine” (1965), “Enough”
(1965), “Ping” (1966), “Lessness” (1969), and “The Lost Ones” (1966, 1970),
might strike readers as “utterly alien and incomprehensible,” and by thrusting the
burden of creating order and meaning on readers, “demand a new critical response”
(“Last Images” 104, 116). Similarly, Mary Bryden points out that some readers
have reacted adversely to Beckett’s later prose, seeing it as “perversely uncom-
municative” and “teasingly mysterious” (137). The short prose work “Lessness” is
definitely one of the most enigmatic texts of the period after How It Is. Because of
the initial shock that this strange and incomprehensible prose work might produce
in readers, it may be used as a case to test the new narratological approach Monika
Fludernik puts forward in Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (1996).
Fludernik attempts to counteract some of the shortcomings of classical
narratology and other traditional approaches to narrative theory. Her aim is the
radical “reconceptualization of narratology” and “the creation of a new narrative
paradigm”(xi), a paradigm, however, that despite its interdisciplinary make-up, will
still be identifiable as narratological. As Gibson notes, Fludernik sets out to redefine
narrativity in terms not of plot but of cognitive or what she calls “natural” parameters.
These parameters are based on our experience, on our sense of embodiedness in the
world (“Review” 234). Whereas structuralist narratology employs formal categories
defined in terms of binary oppositions, Fludernik wishes to institute organic frames
of reading. She reconstitutes narrativity on the basis of experientiality, a feature
derived from research on oral narrative established by Labov (Language). At the
same time experientiality relates to Käte Hamburger’s thesis that narrative is the
only form of discourse that can portray consciousness, particularly the conscious-
ness of someone else (83). Since, for Fludernik, the prototypical case of narrative
is given in its oral version (textual make-up is considered to be a variable), the
“natural” narratological paradigm, as Ronen suggests, identifies narrativity with
conversational parameters in a storytelling situation (647). Furthermore, Fludernik
54 Style: Volume 36, No. 1, Spring 2002

The “Moreness” or “Lessness” of “Natural” Narratology 55
wishes to institute a reconceptualization of the term “natural” within a more spe-

cifically cognitive perspective. She argues that “natural” narratives, i.e., narratives
of spontaneous storytelling, cognitively correlate with perceptual parameters of
human experience. According to her, these parameters are still in force even in
more sophisticated written narratives like those in many experimental twentieth-
century texts. Fludernik subsumes the experientiality of “natural” narrative and
the cognitive parameters that are based on “real-life” experience in the process
of “narrativization,” i.e., a reading strategy that naturalizes (Culler 134-60) texts
by recourse to narrative schemata. She argues that inconsistencies of strange and
incomprehensible texts cease to be worrisome when we can read them as a series
of events, a story, or when we can explain them as the skewed vision of a ruling
consciousness, that of a teller, or that of a reflective or “registering” mind. Such
reading processes that manufacture sense out of apparent nonsense are observed
to apply even more radically when experimentation touches the core of narrative:
the establishment of a fictional situation and/or the very language of storytelling.
Fludernik argues that “natural” narratology is sorely tested at points where the oddi-
ties of experimental texts like “Lessness” obstruct readers’ attempts to narrativize
on the basis of “natural” parameters.
Fludernik’s reconceptualization of narrativity allows us to define a great number
of plotless narratives from the twentieth century as narratives fully satisfying the
requirement of experientiality, since such texts operate by means of a projection of
consciousness without necessarily needing any actantial base structure. In contrast
to this, the traditional definition of narrative in terms of (a series of) action(s) (Ge-
nette, Narrative Discourse 30; Rimmon-Kenan 15; Stanzel 150; Prince, Dictionary
58; Genette, Revisited 20; Bal 16) does not cover plotless experimental twentieth-
century texts like Beckett’s later prose. Although all of these texts have discourse
reference, what precisely (if anything) is their story (or plot) frequently cannot be
determined with any clarity. Events and stories are simply no longer central to the
focus of what these texts are about. Interestingly, Gérard Genette points out that
“for Beckett,” ‘I walk’ would already be “too much to narrate” (Revisited 19). Since
Beckett, for example in “Ping” and “Lessness,” does not rely on Genettean minimal
forms of narrative, action or event sequences, his experimental texts do not qualify
as narratives in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, Genette’s statement implies that
Beckett narrates, i.e., produces a narrative. The central question, then, is the ques-
tion of what constitutes Beckett’s narrative. An obvious theoretical solution to this
problem is to deny the label narrative to such texts, to say, that is, that the norm
for twentieth-century fiction is no longer instantiated by the narrative discourse
type, and consequently to marginalize such texts. The predominantly negative
characterization of experiemental fiction as contravening traditional story param-
eters (Hassan 9) points in this direction, as does the prevalence of the labels “anti-
narrative” (Chatman 56-59; Prince, Dictionary 6) and “anti-literature” (Dearlove,
“Last Images” 117; Buning 102; Hassan 3) among both traditional narratologists
56 Jan Alber
and Beckett critics, as well as in M.-L. Ryan’s proposal of the term “antinarrativity”
(379-80). Fludernik offers an entirely different solution to this problem. Rather than
pointing out the negative features of this kind of narrative, Fludernik’s approach
describes its structure in terms of experientiality (Lieske 374). Therefore, in the
present paper I wish to treat “Lessness” in so far as it relates to the visualizing of
a story (plot) situation and/or a storytelling situation (Fludernik, Towards 269).
More precisely, in my “natural” narratological analysis I shall concentrate on the
establishment of story-world, that is, on characters, setting and plot, as well as on
the storytelling frame and the language of storytelling. According to Fludernik, a
text like “Lessness” does not completely disrupt the process of narrativization, but
“merely dilute[s] constants of mimetic conceptualization to the point where realist
frames become tenuous and are reduced to the notions of malleable or inconstant
character, setting and event outlines” (273).
The purpose of the present paper is threefold. First, I wish to demonstrate the
superiority of Fludernik’s “natural” narratology to structuralist narratology in ac-
counting for marginally narrative texts like Beckett’s “Lessness.” Second, I shall
illustrate the utility of Fludernik’s new paradigm for the literary interpretation
of such an incomprehensible avant-garde text. Third, I will discuss some of the
shortcomings or what I call the “lessness” of “natural” narratology.
2. The “Natural” Narratological Paradigm

2.1. The Redefinition of Narrativity in Terms of Experientiality
In Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology, Fludernik rejects all traditional plot-based
concepts of narrativity, i.e., the quality of “narrativehood,” as Prince calls it (“On
Narratology” 80), and equates narrativity with experientiality. “Narrativity is a
function of narrative texts and centres on experientiality of an anthropomorphic
nature” (26). According to Fludernik, experientiality involves “the quasi-mimetic
evocation of ‘real-life experience’” (12) and is established by readers in the read-
ing process (36). Experientiality includes a sense of moving with time, of the now
of experience (Ricoeur 62-65). In contrast to Ricoeur, Fludernik supplements this
almost static level of temporal experience by more dynamic and evaluative factors.
Within her model, temporality is a constitutive aspect of embodiment and evaluation,
but it is secondary to the experience itself. For her, experience cannot be subsumed
under the umbrella of temporality. Rather, experience includes temporality as one
of its parameters. Human experience typically embraces goal-oriented behavior
and activity, with its reaction to obstacles encountered on the way. She argues that
unexpected obstacles dynamically trigger the reaction of the protagonist. Accord-
ing to Fludernik, the three-part schema of “situation-event (incidence)-reaction to
event” constitutes the core of all human action experience (29). Moreover, whereas
in oral narrative, narrated experience always tends to be related to incidence, more
extended narrative ventures frequently reproduce quite uneventful experiences and
tend to center on the narrator’s mental situations. Thus, the dynamics of experi-
entiality reposes not only on the changes brought about by external developments
or effected through the goal-oriented actions of a central intelligence. Rather, it
is related particularly to the resolution effect of the narrative endpoint and to the
tension between tellability and narrative “point” (Labov, Language 366; Fludernik,
“Historical” 374-77). In other words, for Fludernik, the emotional involvement with
an experience and its evaluation provide cognitive anchor points for the constitution
of narrativity (Towards 13). She argues that embodiment constitutes the most basic
feature of experientiality; specificity and individuality can in fact be subsumed under
it. Embodiedness evokes all the parameters of a “real-life” schema of existence in
a specific time and space frame. Experientiality combines a number of cognitively
relevant factors. The most important of these is the presence of a human protago-
nist and his experience of events as they impinge on his situation. Experientiality
always implies the protagonist’s consciousness. “Narrativity can emerge from the
experiential portrayal of dynamic event sequences which are already configured
emotively and evaluatively, but it can also consist in the experiential depiction of
human consciousness tout court” (30). Fludernik demotes the criteria of sequen-
tiality and logical connectedness from the central role they usually play in most
discussions of narrative. For her, the bounded sequentiality of “The king died and
then the queen died of grief” (Forster 87) holds little or no interest as narrative.
In Fludernik’s model there can be narratives without plot, but there cannot be any
narratives without a human experiencer at some narrative level. The fictional ex-
istence of an anthropomorphic experiencer is the sine qua non for the constitution
of narrativity. In contrast to traditional narratologists, who endow plot-oriented
narratives with proto-typical narrativity (Prince, Narratology 146), Fludernik
argues that events or actantial and motivational parameters in and of themselves
constitute only a zero degree of narrativity, a minimal frame for the production of
experientiality. I also wish to note that Fludernik refuses to locate narrativity in the
existence of a narrator (Towards 26). For her, all narrative is produced through the
mediating function of consciousness. According to Fludernik, consciousness is the
locus of experientiality and can surface on several levels and in different shapes.
2.2. The Three Ingredients of “Natural” Narratology
Since William Labov and Joshua Waletzky (1967) hypothesized that narrative
structures can be found in oral accounts of personal experience, conversational sto-
rytelling, as Minami notes, has received much attention (467). Fludernik has been
influenced by “natural” narrative and relies on the results of research in discourse
analysis established by Labov in Language in the Inner City (1972). In her approach,
“natural” narrative includes only spontaneous conversational storytelling (Towards
13-14). According to Fludernik, one has to conceptualize the move from orality to
literacy as a continuum that affords the narratologist interesting insights into the
various functions of elements within their narrative pattern (53). Fludernik views
“natural” narrative as a prototype for the constitution of narrativity and argues that
narrative is always “natural” in the sense that, as Ronen suggests, it is anchored in
58 Jan Alber
human everyday experience (647).

The second basic ingredient of Fludernik’s model is “natural” linguistics. For
instance, she mentions Wolfgang Dressler and his Natürlichkeitstheorie (“theory of
naturalness”). Dressler judges “natural” those elements of language that appear to
be regulated by cognitive parameters based on man’s experience in the “real world”
(5). “Natural” linguistics attempts to locate linguistic processes within more general
processes of cognitive comprehension: the general parameters of language relate to
human embodiedness in “natural” environments; metaphors of embodiment serve
as the basis for describing them. The central insights that Fludernik adopts from
these approaches for her narratological paradigm are that cognitive categories are
embodied and that higher-level symbolic categories rely on embodied schemata.
The question of how human embodiment in the environment is reflected in readers’
cognitive categories and schemata interests her most (Towards 19).
The third basic ingredient of Fludernik’s model is the concept Jonathan Culler
calls “naturalization.” Culler came up with this concept in order to account for
readers’ interpretative strategies when encountering initially odd or inconsistent
texts. According to Culler, readers attempt to recuperate inexplicable elements of
a text by taking recourse to available interpretative patterns. In naturalizing a text
we give it a place in our cultural world (137). Culler’s naturalization in particular
comprises the familiarization of the strange. Fludernik redeploys and redefines
Culler’s concept as “narrativization,” that is to say, as a reading strategy that natural-
izes texts by recourse to narrative schemata (Towards 34). She argues that whenever
readers are confronted with potentially unreadable narratives, they look for ways
of recuperating them as narratives. In the process of narrativization, something is
made a narrative by the sheer act of imposing narrativity on it. Readers attempt
to re(-)cognize texts in terms of the “natural” telling, or experiencing, or viewing
parameters; or they try to recuperate inconsistencies in terms of actions and event
structures at the most minimal level. In the process of narrativization, readers engage
in reading texts as manifesting experientiality, and therefore construct these texts in
terms of their alignment with experiential cognitive parameters (313). According to
Pier, the dynamics of narrative are set into motion in this process. These dynamics
are largely absent in the static models proposed by classical narratology (557).
2.3. Mimesis and Realism
Fludernik conceives of mimesis in radically constructivist terms. According
to her, we must not identify mimesis as the imitation of reality. Rather, we should
understand mimesis as the artificial and illusionary projection of a semiotic structure.
Readers recuperate this structure in terms of a fictional reality. Since this process of
recuperation takes place within the cognitive parameters of the readers’ “real-world”
experience, every reading experience in terms of making sense of a text inevitably
results in an “implicit though incomplete homologization of the fictional and the
real world” (Towards 35). With regard to experimental narrative, Fludernik suggests
to read it as a kind of “intertextual play with language and with generic modes”
(35). In this analytical context, as Lieske notes, experimental texts are not mimetic
in terms of reproducing a prototypical version of narrative experience but in their
structured anticipation of the readers’ attempts to reinterpret them mimetically, if
only at the level of an explicitly “anti-mimetic” language game (374).
Similarly, Fludernik develops a constructivist concept of realism. She does
not relate realism to the nineteenth—century movement of realism. Rather, she
links it with the specific mimetic evocation of “reality” and specific forms of the
mimetic representation of individual experience. Fludernik sees realism as an inter-
pretational strategy. In the process of narrativization, readers make texts conform
to “real-life” parameters. Realism in Fludernik’s sense closely corresponds to “a
mimetic representation of individual experience that cognitively and epistemically
relies on real-world knowledge” (38). The process of reading narratives as narra-
tives inevitably involves an activity of narrativization on the readers’ part. Readers
project a realistic frame on the text and its enunciational properties. Fludernik
demonstrates that the wide range of anti-illusionistic techniques radically disrupts
conventional realistic story parameters and does not allow readers a realist mode
of understanding. At the same time, as Lieske points out, she stresses that such
disruptions do not inevitably destroy narrativity per se but deconstruct the overall
narrative coherence of the text and affect the most fundamental properties of nar-
rative discourse (374).
2.4. The Four-Level Model
Fludernik summarizes the cognitive categories and criteria of “natural” nar-
ratology in a four-level model. This model runs somewhat parallel to the three
Mimeses developed in Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative. Mimesis I relates to pre-
figuration (54-64), Mimesis II to configuration in the shape of emplotment (64-
70), and Mimesis III to reconfiguration (70-87). Fludernik’s level I is identical to
Ricoeur’s Mimesis I. It includes the pretextual “real-life” schemata of action and
experience such as the schema of agency as goal-oriented process or reaction to
the unexpected, the configuration of experienced and evaluated occurrence, and
the “natural” comprehension of observed event processes as well as their supposed
cause-and-effect explanations. Furthermore, on this level, teleology, i.e., temporal
directedness and inevitable plotting, combines with the narrator’s after-the-fact
evaluation of narrative experience, as is typical of “natural” narrative, and with
the goal-orientedness of acting subjects. Fludernik’s level II introduces the “natu-
ral,” macro-textual schemata or frames of narrative mediation. On this level she
distinguishes between the “real-world” scripts of TELLING and REFLECTING,1
the “real-world” schema of VIEWING, and the access to one’s own narrativizable
experience (EXPERIENCING). Further, Fludernik situates the schema of ACTION
or ACTING on level II (Towards 43-44). Fludernik’s level III constitutes a fine-
tuning of level II through well-known “naturally” occurring storytelling situations,
60 Jan Alber
generic criteria and narratological concepts. At this point I wish to emphasize that
Fludernik’s levels II and III do not reproduce Ricoeur’s Mimesis II. Rather, they
characterize features that are partially relevant for Ricoeur’s reconfiguration on
the level of Mimesis III. In contrast to the cognitive parameters on levels I and II,
which are basic-level experiential frames, the categories on level III are culturally
determined. One might argue that they are metaphorical extensions of concepts
from levels I and II. Nevertheless, they are “natural” because they operate in a non-
reflective manner and relate to one’s experience of hearing and reading stories. I
also wish to note that readers’ interpretations do not (yet) constitute the cognitive
parameters on level III. Rather, they provide cognitive tools for the interpretation
of narrative texts (45). Finally, Fludernik’s level IV is that of narrativization, the
level on which the “natural” parameters from levels I to III are utilized in order to
grasp, and usually transform textual inconsistencies and oddities. Narrativization is
the process of naturalization that enables readers to re(-)cognize as narrative texts
that appear to be non-narrative according to the cognitive parameters on levels I and
II or III (46). The “natural” frames on levels I to III do not effect narrativization.
Rather, narrativization utilizes “natural” parameters as part of the larger process of
naturalization applied by readers. Although narrativized non-“natural” text types
do not become “natural,” a new cognitive parameter may become available (330).
For instance, second-person fiction (Fludernik “Introduction,” “Second,” “Second-
Person Narrative”) does not become “natural” in the process of narrativization.
Rather, a semantic and interpretative perspective renders this type of narrative
recuperable, because readers have recourse to “natural” categories. It may institute
a new genre or a new narrative mode and will then have to be included as a refer-
ence model on level III.
I shall now turn to my own “natural” narratological analysis of Samuel Beck-
ett’s “Lessness.” I am of course aware that other readers might narrativize the text
differently.
3. “Natural” Narratology and Beckett’s “Lessness”

3.1. The “Setting”
“Lessness” is set in a container. At some point, this enclosure must have re-
sembled the box-like chamber in Beckett’s “Ping” and the first two stages of the
shape-shifting container in Beckett’s “All Strange Away.” At the time of narration
in “Lessness,” the four walls of the container of this piece have fallen open into
“scattered ruins” (197); “Blacked out fallen open four walls over backwards true
refuge issueless.” The whiteness of “Ping,” i.e., the image of “four square all light
sheer white blank planes,” is “gone from mind” (“Lessness” 197). Moreover, the
narrative voice of “Lessness” abandons the fluctuations of light and darkness in “All
Strange Away” and “Imagination Dead Imagine,” and reduces them to a pervasive
and passive grey (Dearlove, “Last Images” 121). The container is “ash grey” like
“the sand” (197). Earth and sky have the same color as the enclosure: “ash grey sky
mirrored earth mirrored sky” (197). From our “real-world” knowledge we can infer
that since the world of “Lessness” is not black but grey, a dim light has to emanate
from somewhere. But the text does not contain any information about the source of
the light. Moreover, as in “Enough,” there is “no stir,” that is no wind, in the world
of “Lessness,” and, as in “Ping,” the silence of this world is unbroken: “no sound”
(197). “Day and night” (198) appear to be abandoned in “Lessness.” The piece is
“timeless” (199), and the narrative voice characterizes the world of “Lessness” in
terms of “changelessness” (197). Philip H. Solomon argues that the hour in ques-
tion must be 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. “Each is a moment of transition with respect to light
and dark—the grey of dawn or the grey of dusk” (66). In “Lessness,” time seems
to have come to rest in a transitional period.
The “setting” of “Lessness” resembles places in the “real world.” The scat-
tered ruins of this piece may consist of stone. Indeed, the narrative voice mentions
sand, earth, and sky. Since there is no wind and no sound, however, the world of
“Lessness” also differs from “real-world” settings. Moreover, “Lessness” makes it
impossible to differentiate between earth, sky, and the scattered ruins, because they
are all ash grey. In contrast to the other “Residua,” which are set in a measurable
container, the narrative voice of this piece does not give us any information as to
the size of the enclosure in “Lessness.” The only hint we get is the phrase “the ruins
flatness endless” (199). Spatial structure appears to be lacking altogether. Further-
more, the fact that there is no movement with time seriously impairs a “realistic”
reconstitution of story-world.
3.2. The Future
The enclosure of “Lessness” contains an immobile “little body ash grey locked
rigid” (197). The body’s contours have been eroded: “Legs a single block arms
fast to sides little body face to endlessness” (198). The figure’s sex is undecid-
able. The “genitals” of this “little block” are “overrun” (198) and its features are
barely defined: “grey face features crack and little holes two pale blue” (197);
“grey smooth no relief a few holes” (198). The body is incapable of action: “Face
to white calm touch close eye calm long last all gone from mind” (198). In a very
ambiguous manner, the text indicates that the figure is alive: “Grey face two pale
blue little body heart beating only upright” (197). This might imply that the body
is the only constituent of story-world in an upright position, and consequently that
the figure is alive, or that the body’s heart beats only in an upright position. The
figure is grey like the rest of this world. Furthermore, the narrative voice refers to
the figure’s past and to a possible future. I wish to note that in such instances, the
voice refers to the figure in terms of the personal pronoun “he.” Additionally, the
text presents the future as a return to past possibilities: “He will curse God again
as in the blessed days face to the open sky the passing deluge” (197); “On him
will rain again as in the blessed days of blue the passing cloud” (197). Later on,
the references to past and future turn out to be dreams and figments: “Never was
but grey air timeless no sound figment the passing light” (197); “Never but this
62 Jan Alber
changelessness dream the passing hour” (197). Susan Brienza and Enoch Brater
point out that in the two sentences containing the personal pronoun “he,” which I
have quoted above, the past is superimposed on the indefinite future by using the
phrase “as in the blessed days” (250-51). They argue that a cycle of endlessness
in time results, because both the “deluge” and the “cloud” will not pass nor have
they passed. The present participle “passing” creates an action suspended in time,
which is endless, like the “waiting” in Waiting for Godot (1985).
The figure in “Lessness” is most radically dehumanized. The narrative voice
describes the little body exclusively in terms of bodily fragments. Additionally,
its bodily parts are not recognizable. Readers will hardly confuse the block-like
figure with inhabitants of the “real world.” This figure is indistinguishable from the
box-like chamber. In fact, it seems to have become a brick of the scattered ruins.2
In other words, one cannot possibly differentiate between the figure and the “set-
ting.” The only “features” that distinguish the body from the rest of story-world
are pale blue eyes, and its possibly upright position. Moreover, the figure does not
express any signs of intentionality or goal-orientedness in terms of Fludernik’s
cognitive level I. Its “life signs” are reduced to its upright position or the beating
of its heart. I do not think that the figure’s “eyes” can be seen as a life sign, since a
dead body may (at least for some time) have pale blue eyes as well. Furthermore,
the figure’s past and future turn out to be mere illusions. The body is trapped in
the timeless zone of fiction.
At this point, I wish to note that both the “setting” and the figure in “Lessness”
differ from familiar narratological concepts on Fludernik’s cognitive level III. But
in contrast to Buning, who merely points out the “absence” of traditional story
parameters and characterizes “Lessness” in terms of an “anti-literary tendency”
(102), “natural” narratology takes a closer look at such allegedly absent constitu-
ents. On the basis of experientiality, “natural” narratology attempts to explain why
these constituents are so different from traditional concepts. I would argue that
the description of the “setting” and the figure in “Lessness” are reminiscent of the
perception of an insane person or a person on drugs. We should keep this in mind
while looking at other aspects of “Lessness.”
3.3. The “Plot”
The body in “Lessness” is incapable of action, and the “setting” undergoes no
noticeable transformation. The narrative voice presents us with repeated descrip-
tions of the rudimentary features of the strange world of this piece. Indeed, the
voice postulates an imaginative realm of dreams and future possibilities. “Lessness”
consists of 120 sentences, and is divided into twenty-four paragraphs. Upon closer
inspection, we realize that the text consists of sixty sentences, each of which occurs
exactly twice. There are sixty sentences in the first twelve paragraphs. Later on,
they are repeated in a different order. Ruby Cohn divides the sentences thematically
into the following six groups or families (265): (1) the ruins as “true refuge”; (2)
the endless grey of earth and sky; (3) the little body; (4) the space “all gone from
mind”; (5) past tenses combined with “never”; (6) future tenses of active verbs
and the “figment” sentence “Figment dawn dispeller of figments and the other
called dusk” (199; 201). Martin Esslin uses the following categories for the same
groups: (1) the ruins; (2) the vastness of earth and sky; (3) the little body; (4) the
fact that the enclosed space is now forgotten; (5) a denial of past and future; (6) an
affirmation of past and future.3 J.E. Dearlove points out that the titles of the first
four families are fairly consistent, whereas the last two groups are more enigmatic
because they deal with daydreams and figments in reference to past and future. For
Cohn, the distinction is one of tense, whereas for Esslin, the difference is one of
assertion (“Last Images” 120). Beckett’s method of composition in Sans (1969),
the original French version of “Lessness,” is extremely creative. Cohn reports that
Beckett wrote each of the sixty sentences on a separate piece of paper, mixed
them all in a container, and then drew them out in random order twice. This became
the order of the hundred twenty sentences in Sans. Beckett then wrote the number
3 on four separate pieces of paper, the number 4 on six pieces of paper, the number
5 on four pieces, the number 6 on six pieces, and the number 7 on four pieces of
paper. Again drawing randomly, he ordered the sentences into paragraphs according
to the number drawn, finally totaling one hundred twenty (265).
According to Poutney, “Lessness” confronts us with the fact that an arbitrary
and capricious world of chance lies beyond man-made, imposed order (56). “The
confusion is not my invention,” Beckett told Tom Driver. “It is all around us and
our only chance is to let it in” (Finney, “Assumption” 63). The formal patterning
in “Lessness” may give readers the impression that a random number generator
produced the text. This is, to some extent, true.4 Furthermore, there is a complete
absence of memorable events in “Lessness.” Nothing happens at all in it. Events
most certainly do not constitute the primary focus of this text. Hence, we are not in
a position to reconstruct a proper event-series in terms of the ACTION schema on
Fludernik’s cognitive level II. Since there is a complete elimination of “plot,” the
text exclusively consists in (vague and distorted) descriptions. Moreover, “Less-
ness” lacks teleology and closure. In contrast to Brienza and Brater, who argue that
“the abrupt last line does not leave us with the impression that the piece might go
on indefinitely” (254), I would argue that the cyclical way in which the narrative
voice describes the central “situation” of “Lessness,” in combination with the final
sentence (“Figment dawn dispeller of figments and the other called dusk” [201]),
which is circular in itself, suggests that this short prose work may indeed continue
forever. Whereas Mood simply argues that “Lessness” is “plotless” (78), “natural”
narratology concerns itself with whether there is not a different story buried under
the (admittedly quite) uneventful cloak.
3.4. The Language of Storytelling
The syntax of “Lessness” is most radically disrupted. The piece shares with
64 Jan Alber
“Ping” its sentence style and structure as well as the absence of any punctuation
except periods. The “scattered ruins” (197) might be a description of the words
themselves. The narrative voice uses verbs sparingly; present tense verbs are
entirely absent. The personal pronoun “he” occurs only in connection with sen-
tences dealing with the past or the future. This voice gives us the impression that
human existence is possible only in the past or in the future. Later on, however,
the voice reveals this to be a mere illusion. Occasionally, it also drops articles and
prepositions. Its radical reductionism generates a terse, staccato-like style, and is
reminiscent of a computerized programme. Moreover, the reduced syntactical form
creates pseudo-independent phrases like individual images. Thus, Murphy argues
(114) that the words may be said to face on “all sides endlessness.” For instance,
as I have shown above, we can read the phrase “heart beating only upright” in
several different ways. Likewise, in the sentence “little body little block genitals
overrun arse a single block grey crack overrun” (198), it remains unclear whether
the genitals, or the arse, or both are overrun, and the “grey crack” is ambiguous
(eye, tip of penis, vagina, or anus?). Additionally, in all but two of the twenty-
four paragraphs, we come across words containing the suffix “-less” or the suffix
“-lessness” (“endless,” “timless,” “issueless,” “endlessness,” “changelessness”).
These words, like the neologism “Lessness,” stand out and set up a network of
tenuous meanings. Furthermore, we are faced with a mass of repeated elements in
which no clear subordination of one to another is established (Knowlson and Pill-
ing 176), so that we may concentrate on different elements each time we read the
text. There are thirty-eight phrases containing “all,” as in “all sides” (198) or “all
light” (197), that seem to be cancelled out by the thirty-four occurrences of “no,”
as in “no sound” (197) or “no hold” (198) (Brienza and Brater 252), and a number
of contradictory constructions like “all gone” and “never but” are used. This may
give readers the impression that the narrative voice constructs a rudimentary world,
and, at the same time, deconstructs it.
The language of “Lessness” is reminiscent of a person in a state of shock, or
a madman, i.e., the babbling of a deranged person. This piece most radically fore-
grounds the linguistic medium. The construction of “sentences” is so awkward that
it seriously impairs the reconstruction process. Hence, the text draws our attention
to the “sentence”-structure itself. The narrative voice reduces language to repetitious
echoings in a syntaxless chain of words and phrases. The deliberate nonfluency,
in combination with the repetitive structure of this piece and the proliferation of
conspicious “less(ness)” words, generates a style in which the words draw attention
to themselves more as signifiers than as signifieds. The language is free-floating in
proper Derridean fashion. Indeed, the strategy of constructing and simultaneously
deconstructing is reminiscent of Robbe-Grillet’s “mouvement paradoxal” (130).
3.5. The Storytelling Frame
While Ruby Cohn argues that in “Lessness” we are confronted with an observant
third-person narrator (262), Mary F. Catanzaro thinks that the narrative voice should
be attributed to the “little body,” the faceless storyteller of this piece (“Musical”
47). Although I find both accounts of the text convincing, one might argue that
since the personal pronoun “he” occurs several times, Cohn’s interpretation makes
much more sense. The dispassionate depiction of the rudimentary world of this
piece is reminiscent of third-person neutral narrative. We get, Fludernik suggests,
the typical “camera-eye” effect of the mechanical shutter that registers incoming
stimuli but does not interpret them (Towards 175). Since the depicted images are
distorted ones, however, we get the impression that there has to be something wrong
with the “camera.” Further, I wish to note that the non-figural “camera-eye” cannot
convincingly be ascribed to any position of fixity. Throughout, the text gives a sense
of two distinct points of view operating, namely the point of view of the body, on
the one hand, and the point of view of the “narrator,” on the other (Murphy 113).
In this piece, the subject-object division is made obsolete. The disembodied voice
may simultaneously be related to both points of view, that is to “narrator” and nar-
rated alike. Hence, we may be confronted with first-person or third-person neutral
narrative. The deliberately defocalized presentation of “Lessness” constitutes a
serious problem for “natural” narratology not only because it rules out possible
anchor points for experientiality but also because the narrative voice remains covert
and impersonal (Chatman 197) throughout the piece. Is it then possible to establish
experientiality anywhere in the text?
I think that we can read “Lessness” as the projection of the consciousness or
imagination of the “character,” the “narrator,” or both, the “narrator”-narrated. To
begin with, the human faculty of imagination plays a crucial role in the depiction
of story-world. One can only distinguish between the sand, the sky, the ruins, and
the figure with the “eye of imagination,” not with the “eye of flesh.” Furthermore,
the piece evokes desire for a state where time has come to rest or where the mind
enjoys “the blue celeste of poesy” (199). I would argue that the projected mind in
“Lessness” carries out a mental experiment, namely the experiment of imagining
the end of time. Like the attempt to imagine the death of imagination in Beckett’s
“Imagination Dead Imagine,” this mental experiment is based on a paradox, since
time is ultimately necessary to imagine a state in which time has come to rest.
As the work unfolds, the projected consciousness realizes that the experiment of
imagining the end of time is doomed to failure. The form of “Lessness,” that is the
repetition of the sixty sentences, which constitutes the most outstanding feature
of the text, contradicts the subject matter of this piece. “The passing hour” (197)
is not a “dream” but the ultimate reality of human existence. “Dusk” and “dawn”
are not “figments” but “dispeller[s] of figments” (201). This short prose work is
not “timeless” and cannot be characterized in terms of “changelessness” because
the mind it projects moves within time, and, in doing so, changes the order of the
sixty sentences. The “true refuge,” in which one can have the illusion of an eternal
present, is ultimately “issueless” (197) since time will always go on.
66 Jan Alber
In terms of “natural” narratology, this problem is handled by the REFLECT-

ING frame on Fludernik’s cognitive level II. This script tends to project a reflecting
consciousness (Towards 44). The ruminations of the projected mind in “Lessness”
might be directed at imagining the end of time, and are ultimately dependent on
the “real-world” parameter of time. To sum up, in this piece, we may establish
experientiality in terms of the necessity of the human faculty of imagination for
depicting a story-world, in terms of the human wish to stop the stream of infinite
time, and in terms of the “real-world” knowledge that stopping time is ultimately
impossible. Thematically, human time seems to have been central to the composi-
tion of “Lessness.” Without coming to this conclusion, Ruby Cohn points out that
although “Lessness” is almost bare of figures, it compels calculation. She notes
that the resultant numbers serve to call attention to human time: “The number of
sentences per paragraph stops at seven, the number of days in a week. The number
of paragraphs reaches twenty-four, the number of hours in a day. The number of
different sentences is sixty, the number of seconds in a minute, of minutes in an
hour” (263).
Moreover, we can read “Lessness” as the projection of the readers’ conscious-
ness. Readers are brought into this text, as they must join the narrative voice in
imagining whatever may be going on in its mind. When we read Beckett’s “Less-
ness,” we get the impression that we (as readers) have the same “dream” as the
narrative voice of this text. Therefore, one may argue that there is a large degree
of involvement in “Lessness” (Opas and Kujamäki 287). This effect is extremely
disconcerting since the narrative voice cannot be pictured as directing or directly
addressing readers. Because there is no corresponding use of the first person, no
deictic locus of utterance, “Lessness” lacks a first-person narrator, a speaker with
whom we might identify.
4. Consequences and Conclusions

“Natural” narratology provides only a partially satisfying analysis of Beck-
ett’s “Lessness.” Problems center on the redefinition of narrativity in terms of an
experientiality that turns out to be a vague criterion. One may refer to the points
mentioned below as the “moreness” or “lessness” of “natural” narratology. I shall
begin with what I call the “moreness” of the new paradigm.
One might argue that Fludernik’s redefinition of narrativity is useful, because
it allows us to define a great number of experimental and plotless texts as narratives
fully satisfying the requirement of experientiality, since they operate by means of
a projection of consciousness—the character’s, that of the narrative voice, or the
readers’. Traditional narratologists like Gérard Genette, Gerald Prince, and Franz
Karl Stanzel can only read such texts as contravening traditional parameters. They
would ultimately have to deny the label narrative to such texts, and consequently
marginalize them. For instance, Stanzel explicitly states that there is “no place” for
Beckett’s “Ping” in his typological circle (236), and this claim is obviously also
true for “Lessness.” Additionally, Genette discusses very little experimental writing
in any of the three books I have cited and mentions postmodernist texts merely in
passing. As Lieske points out, Fludernik’s approach is particularly important in the
context of poststructuralist debates about the end of narrative or the death of the
author because it reclaims postmodernist fiction for narratological analysis despite
this fiction’s lack of conventional plot or logical coherence (374).
Moreover, Fludernik’s narrative paradigm has helped this essay to an entirely
new interpretation of “Lessness.” One might argue that “natural” narratology paves
the way for a new reading of this initially alien and uncommunicative text. I have
utilized the following schemas, frames, or scripts as parts of a larger attempt to
narrativize Beckett’s “Lessness.” First, I have employed the schema of temporal
directedness and that of agency as a goal-oriented process on Fludernik’s cogni-
tive level I for the context of a thought experiment. Second, I have referred to the
REFLECTING frame on level II, which turns the act of telling into a process of
self-reflexive rumination, for the mental activity in the course of a thought experi-
ment. Third, I have utilized narratological concepts and familiar knowledge about
first- and third-person neutral narrative on level III in order to establish a storytelling
situation. As I have shown, narrativization by means of the consciousness factor
acquires a central status in experimental writing like “Lessness” where the read-
ers’ establishment of experientiality serves to identify some sort of teller-figure,
a registering mind. Even though the readers’ attempts to establish experientiality
are seriously impaired, we may read “Lessness” as the projection of the readers’
consciousness or of the consciousness of the block-like figure, the “narrator,” or
both, the “narrator”-narrated. One might argue that the projected mind carries out
a mental experiment that is similar to the attempt to imagine the death of imagina-
tion, namely the experiment of imagining the end of time. Further, I would argue
that the projected consciousness in this piece struggles with its imaginings in the
course of the mental experiment and realizes that the task of imagining the end
of time is ultimately impossible. Hence, we can read “Lessness” as the agonized
ruminations of a mind that struggles with some kind of traumatic experience. I
think that the projected consciousness realizes not only that its own existence but
also that its “heroic” attempt to break out of the stream of infinite time are noth-
ing but insignificant ripples on the surface of infinite time. Time imprisons us all.
The mind begins to understand that while the stream of infinite time will never
stop, both its existence and the mental experiment will sooner or later end. This
quasi-traumatic experience of feeling the ultimate meaninglessness of one’s own
existence could, in a way, account for why the images that can be reconstituted on
the basis of the information given in the text are very distorted ones. One might
argue that the projected mind finds itself in a state of shock. Consequently, the
language of this mind is syntaxless and its perception, deranged. It may experience
feelings of terror, hallucinations, or psychosomatic disturbances. I suspect that we
are all more or less familiar with such disruptions of ordinary human experience.
As far as “Lessness” is concerned, Fludernik suggests, embodiment is reduced
68 Jan Alber
to consciousness with the setting dwindling to rudimentary implied contiguities

(Towards 311). Furthermore, I would like to argue that after paragraph twelve,
the projected mind ends the mental experiment because it is overwhelmed by the
stream of infinite time, and decides to do nothing but move passively within time.
It decides to invent nothing new but to merely reshuffle old material. This decision
could account for the repetitive structure of this short prose work, i.e., the repetition
of the first sixty “sentences” in the second half of the piece. Since I feel that there
are also problems with this new interpretation of “Lessness,” I shall now turn to
what I call the “lessness” of Fludernik’s new paradigm.
Despite my (more or less) desperate attempts to make Beckett’s “Lessness”
more readable, I wish to note that this text constitutes a borderline case. “Less-
ness” challenges narrativization and the whole “natural” narratological project. My
analysis of this piece is obviously a strategy radically appropriated to the mimetic
project, a move to make sense contrary to all linguistic evidence. When reading
this text, we are confronted with a slippery boundary on which we may hesitate to
tread for fear of losing our mental balance.
We have to situate “Lessness” at the boundary between the genres of narrative
and lyric. In the realm of extremely experimental writing, the traditional distinctions
between genres become erased. Fludernik argues, indeed, that where narrativity
can no longer be recuperated by any means at all, the narrative genre merges with
poetry (Towards 310). This obviously raises the question of what it takes for a
text to project experientiality but still remain narrative and not lyrical. Fludernik
speaks of “poetry’s typical lack of experientiality (and hence narrativity)” (355).
I do not see why, according to Fludernik, poetry’s typical “preoccupation with
sensibilia” (356) should have nothing to do with experientiality. Furthermore, she
argues that the boundary between poetry and narrative is permeable (356). That is
to say that, for her, there are degrees of narrativity. In contrast to her, I think that
it is impossible to distinguish between narrative and lyrical texts, or to determine
the different grades of narrativity, on the basis of experientiality, i.e., “the quasi-
mimetic evocation of ‘real-life experience’” (12). For such a distinction, categories
like plot, action, character, “real-world” setting, all of which Fludernik attempts to
play down in her paradigm, turn out to be crucial after all. Interestingly, she claims
that in her redefinition of narrativity in terms of experientiality she insists on such
essentialities as plot, character, and voice in the constructivist interpretation of their
cognitive foundation (305). For Fludernik, such categories can be subsumed under
experientiality and embodiment. In contrast to her, I think that the categories of plot
and “real-world” setting should play a crucial role in the definition of narrative as
a distinguishing feature, because according to the approach taking “experientiality
first, plot later,” almost every poem qualifies as a narrative. Furthermore, not only
would almost every poem be a narrative but even almost every text. For instance,
according to the experientiality criterion, inarticulate screams of horror would
qualify as narratives. Fludernik’s definition of narrative is thus too broad. Because
she attempts to include almost every text in her definition (347ff.), the term “nar-
rative” becomes meaningless. The more a term includes, the less it means. And
this is the “lessness” of “natural” narratology.
Another problem is, of course, that the new paradigm is supposed to deal with
an incredibly large number of “narrative” texts. I doubt that Fludernik’s quasi-
universal naturalizing mode of reading can do justice to all these texts. As I have
shown, if one is willing to, it is even possible to narrativize a machine-generated
text like “Lessness,” actually structured by a throw of the dice, as the expression
of a subject’s thought. A “natural” narratological analysis ultimately has to ignore
certain aspects, like the mechanical structure of “Lessness,” in order to make a text
fit into its new consciousness-oriented paradigm. Such a piece calls for another
mode of reading than the naturalizing mode prescribed by “natural” narratology.
By narrativizing “Lessness,” we miss the central point of a postmodernist text that
foregrounds ontological chaos, i.e., ontological questions concerning the self, or
the mode of existence of the self (McHale 9-11); we impose a normalizing strategy
on the text rather than deal with its fundamental otherness. Throughout the writing
of this paper, I had the odd sensation that the easier it is to narrativize Beckett’s
“Lessness,” the more modernist the text becomes or seems.5 To put this slightly dif-
ferently, I thought that my consciousness-oriented, “natural” narratological analysis
ultimately involves some kind of modernist reading strategy. It is obviously much
easier to establish a consciousness factor in a kind of writing that deals excessively
with the depiction of consciousness (e.g., in texts by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf,
Ernest Hemingway, or William Faulkner) than it is to do so in a kind of writing
that calls the very existence of consciousness into question. There is a fundamental
contradiction between the aims of postmodernist literature, i.e., pieces like “Less-
ness” and texts written by experimentalists like B.S. Johnson, Christine Brook-
Rose, Alasdair Gray, or Brigid Brophy, on the one hand, and Fludernik’s attempt
to narrativize them on the other. In Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology, Fludernik
postulates something like a biological core, a minimal cognitive basis.6 In contrast
to this, both postmodernist literature and poststructuralist thought (in Jacques Der-
rida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, et al) call the very existence of a biological
core and a minimal cognitive basis into question, and look at human beings as free-
floating signifiers. One can of course argue that such self-reflexive word-gaming
constitutes a last-ditch scenario for narrativization in terms of “natural” cognitive
parameters, and that it ultimately has its roots in the “real world.” Nevertheless,
I think that where experientiality resolves into words, “natural” narratology finds
its ultimate horizon. Where language has become pure language, structured by a
machine, or free-floating in Derrida’s sense, disembodied from speaker, context,
and reference, both human experience and Fludernik’s concept of narrativization
by means of human experience become redundant.
Since narrativity (in both the traditional and Fludernik’s sense) is not a neces-
sary condition of inclusion in the literary canon (one need only consider the mass
70 Jan Alber
of “non-narratological” Beckett scholarship), narratologists do not have to deal

with avant-garde texts like Beckett’s “Lessness” and may leave such texts to other
approaches, perhaps of a more poststructuralist or even musicological orientation.
A reading of “Lessness” should be liberated from the confines of experiential-
ity, i.e., the feasible, the logically consistent, and humanly plausible, and instead
concentrate on the text’s otherness, on its monstrosity, on the role of chance and
chaos. Reading “Lessness” draws the recipient “forwards towards the new, into
strange, unfamiliar and monstrous compounds” (Gibson, Towards 272). “Lessness”
deconstructs the categories of the anthropological and the textual, the human and
the material. The disembodied voice of this text constitutes itself in and through the
text and arrives at a new identity that has to be located in a counterworld, a limbo
between signifiant and signifié. We should allow this limbo-world to seep into our
“real world” and not attempt to explain this different counterworld by means of
our “real-world” knowledge. Gibson argues that one should register elements of
monstrous deformation and explore their implications (259). I wish to note that the
word-stock in “Lessness” is finite and structured by chance. For me, “Lessness”
implies that we attempt to define and redefine ourselves with regard to the limits of
our discourses and that chance is actually the sole criterion that imposes a structure
on our limited possibilities. Given the choice between taking Fludernik’s approach
to fiction, which is based on order and meaning, and Gibson’s approach, which is
based on chaos and confusion, with regard to “Lessness,” I prefer Gibson’s, because,
as Beckett puts it: “The confusion [. . .] is all around us and our only chance is to
let it in” (Finney 63).
Finally, there are also problems with the rather ahistorical conception of Flud-
ernik’s cognitive four-level model. If one accepts the redefinition of narrativity in
terms of experientiality, I feel that it is necessary to investigate whether there are
not different types of embodiment (and hence narrativity) in different centuries, i.e.,
the question whether one can distinguish between something like realist, modernist,
and postmodernist experientiality. Additionally, we should address the difference
between male and female experientiality. I agree with Gibson, who points out
that Fludernik takes the concept of “embodiedness” to be an unproblematic given
(“Review” 237). For instance, dehumanization, fragmentation, perspectivism,
decentering, and self-reflexivity, e.g. in MTV video clips, which are arguably part
of our everyday experience, play a much more crucial role in forms of postmod-
ernist than of modernist experientiality, whereas an interest in consciousness and
subjectivity and the assumption that there is something like a minimal cognitive
basis is a more integral part of modernist than of postmodernist experientiality.
Consequently, readers nowadays may consider postmodernist texts to be much
closer to their everyday experience, and they may feel that they have to narrativize
(in a postmodernist sense) earlier texts to make them “natural.” Irrespective of texts
like “Lessness,” which are to be located beyond the scope of both experiential-
ity (“natural” narratology) and plot-orientation (classical narratology), what is at
stake, with regard to diachronic narratological projects, is the creation of a new

narrative paradigm, one that subsumes “natural” narratology as the special case of
an extended application of realist parameters or that is able to account for realism
differently within its own framework. Experientiality thus remains a problematic
criterion. On the one hand, it does not allow us to distinguish between narrative and
lyrical texts; on the other, it does not address whether embodiment, i.e., humanity’s
being in the world, has not changed fundamentally over the centuries. I consider
this paper to be a first step toward a larger investigation of the “moreness” and/or
“lessness” of “natural” narratology.
Notes
1
“Reflecting” refers to the mental activities outside utterance that turn the
act of telling into a process of recollection and self-reflective introspection or
rumination (44).
2
The body in “Lessness” is reminiscent of the figures in Play, where we are
confronted with “three identical grey urns.” We learn that “from each a head pro-
trudes, the neck held fast in the urn’s mouth” (147).
3
Esslin’s list is from his introduction to the BBC Radio 3 production of “Less-
ness” (25 February 1971) and is quoted by Brian Finney (Since 39-40).
4
J. M. Coetzee uses the computer program Univac 1106 to deal with the
combination of sentences in “Lessness.” His results verify mathematically that no
significant ordering principle governs the arrangement of phrases, sentences, or
paragraphs (195-98).
5
As far as modernism is concerned, I refer to Brian McHale’s distinction
between modernist and postmodernist fiction. According to McHale, modernist
fiction, particularly the stream-of-consciousness novel, foregrounds epistemological
questions, i.e., questions of knowledge and consciousness, whereas postmodernist
fiction foregrounds ontological questions, i.e., questions of modes of existence (9-11).
6
Experientiality is an essentialist notion; Fludernik assumes that experience
is the same for everyone.
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The “Moreness” or “Lessness” of “Natural” Narratology: Samuel Beckett's “Lessness”

The “Moreness” or “Lessness” of “Natural”

54 Style: Volume 36, No. 1, Spring 2002

wishes to institute a reconceptualization of the term “natural” within a more spe-

2. The “Natural” Narratological Paradigm

human everyday experience (647).

3. “Natural” Narratology and Beckett’s “Lessness”

In terms of “natural” narratology, this problem is handled by the REFLECT-

4. Consequences and Conclusions

to consciousness with the setting dwindling to rudimentary implied contiguities

of “non-narratological” Beckett scholarship), narratologists do not have to deal

stake, with regard to diachronic narratological projects, is the creation of a new

NC: Duke UP, 1982.

Preface by Paul Hernadi. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.

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