Samuel Beckett : A Study of the Short Fiction

Best known for his novel trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable and the plays Endgame and Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett (1906-89) was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. A towering figure in world literature, his accomplishments in these genres have inspired scores of books and hundreds of articles devoted to interpreting, appreciating, and explicating his novels, poems, and plays.
Less well known to readers, however, is the considerable body of short stories Beckett published throughout his writing career, especially during his later years. With this first book-length treatment of Beckett's short fiction, Robert Cochran provides a much-needed addition to the literature on Beckett. Presented here are spirited, chronologically arranged discussions of the stories; excerpts of the remarks of Beckett and others on the writer's craft; and selections from previously published critical commentary on the short stories. In his comprehensive analysis of the stories, Cochran shows the intimate and interdependent relationships between Beckett's short fiction and his writing in other genres. Beckett is presented throughout not as a "difficult" writer with a grim vision of humankind but as an accessible writer who addressed his efforts to the common reader and whose works were compassionate rather than nihilistic, opposed to sentimentality rather than sentimental.