Fail Better, Fail Worse

ABSTRACT This review essay of Costica Bradatan’s In Praise of Failure and Steven Matthews’s Beckett and Cioran puts these two volumes in dialogue, since their common character, E. M. Cioran, features in both books. Samuel Beckett is also the character in absentia in Bradatan’s study, which is a self-proclaimed Beckettian work. This essay first presents the four circles of failure in Bradatan’s book. Then it analyzes Matthews’s interpretations of the affinities between Beckett and Cioran. The part on Matthews’s volume returns to some of Bradatan’s findings on Cioran and compares them to Matthews’s.