This book began its life as a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Jonathan Boulter. I cannot overstate how instrumental he has been to the development of this book, particularly through the example of his own scholarship on Samuel Beckett. Other colleagues and mentors have contributed to and read parts of this book along the way, and they are all deserving of my sincerest thanks, but I want to especially thank Martin Kreiswirth and Andre Furlani for the time and care they have taken to read and comment on various aspects of this book ahead of its completion. It is also my pleasure to thank Stanley Gontarski for his enthusiastic support for this book.
I want also to thank Jonathan Fardy and Cosmin Toma for their company, conversation and above all their friendship. Cosmin has also read several sections of this book, and his erudite criticisms were instrumental in helping me get through some of its more intractable conceptual problems.
My warmest and deepest thanks go out to my mother, Mary Ann Langlois-Smith, for her sacrifices, her selflessness and her encouragement.
I have dedicated this book to Valeria Puntorieri, my partner and my love. Her hard work, devotion and intelligence are a daily inspiration for me, and I am simply better for having her in my life.
The time needed to research and write this book was made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which funded me through Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships at the University of Western Ontario and McGill University, respectively. Parts of the book have appeared in modified form in the journals Twentieth-Century Literature (Duke University Press) and College Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press), as well as in the essay collection Immanent Encounters: Literature and the Encounter with Immanence (Brill), edited by Brynnar Swenson. I thank these publishers for their permission to reprint some of this material.