by Samuel Beckett
Edited by Stanley Gontarski
“Beckett’s prose, most especially his stories, historically have taken a back seat to his theatrical works and poetry. The works in this collection, eloquent distillations of the writer’s ideas, clearly demonstrate how unfortunate this oversight has been.” –Library Journal
Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett is one of the most profoundly original writers of our century. He gives expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature. A tremendously influential poet and dramatist, Beckett spoke of his prose fiction as the “important writing,” the medium in which he distilled his ideas most powerfully. Here, for the first time, his short prose is gathered in a definitive, complete volume by leading Beckett scholar S. E. Gontarski.
“Taken together, Beckett’s short prose pieces not only outline his development as an artist, but suggest as well Beckett’s own view of his art, that it is all part of a continuous process, a series.” –from the Introduction
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Publication DateApril 18, 1997
