Though some people may be frustrated by "More Pricks than Kicks'" discontinuity of time and seeming discontinuity of plot, they mistake their own reaction. "MPTK" is a stark but strikingly beautiful collection of short stories unified by the main character's striking personality. That character is Belacqua Shuah, Samuel Beckett's Dubliner anti-hero; he, auto-biographically, has many elements in common with the author, which makes the book read somewhat like a honest and creative confessional.

Sometimes humorous, somtimes shockingly pessimistic, the short story format works surprisingly well, often allowing for especially clever closing images or phrases. The short story format also makes reading Beckett, rarely an easy task, a touch more accessable.

But through it all, Beckett, the master of the declarative sentence, constantly condemns his main character; Belacqua cannot find it within himself to shed a tear when one of his three wives dies, nor does he buy his new wife a new ring, recycling his old wife's ring (inscripted with her name and all) for his supposed new love. This incorrigible bumbler is intellectual to a fault, and dies friendless and unmourned. So all in all, read about Belacqua, but don't be him.

"Yellow" is worth serious attention as well as "Dante and the Lobster".

By turns alright and horrid, this collection/novel is not the thing for you if Beckett's later novels (_Malloy_,_Malone_ _Dies_,_The_ _Unnamable_) or plays (_Godot_, _Endgame_) have attracted you to the area. More Pricks Than Kicks is the work of a young man, and one who is visibly struggling to get out from under a perturbing combination of Joycean influence and inedibly rich bombast (making this, to some palates, a game of spot the difference). *Dante and the Lobster* is a worthwhile read and comprises the vague first layer of the palimpsest that grew steadily sparser and attractive over the course of his career. *A Wet Night*, however, is simply horrid. Buckets of obsfucation poured through a fine seive of humor; little gets through. Leave the muck.

(why rated then an 8? the worst of Beckett is still better than so much else...)

Still, there's something of a diary to a young artist's work. Portrait would not be inappropriate, though Beckett, the artist he became, deserves better.

The hard to find piece "Dante...Bruno.Vico..Joyce" is included in this collection, and for this piece only, this is valuable for all Beckett enthusiasts. "Dante" was the leadoff essay to a collection of essays by James Joyce's peers on "Work in Progress," which later became "Finnegans Wake." Beckett's insight into the works of Dante, Vico and Joyce is scary (I'm not sure that Beckett cared too much about Bruno). These three figures have come to be important influences in Beckett's writings, and the fusion of Dante and Joyce reveals the very core of Beckett's own oeuvre. (This is the piece where Beckett defiantly stated: "Here form is content, content is form." Also, the line: "Literary criticism is not book-keeping.") In any case, Beckett the great prose-stylist, a healthy rival to Joyce, demonstrates his worth as a critic, perhaps the best critic of Joyce. Also, included in this book is the "Three Dialogues" with Georges Duthuit. This is the classic pseudo-interview that reveals some of Beckett's greatests remarks on art:

"Yet I speak of an art turning from it in disgust, weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road."

"The stars are undoubtedly superb, as Freud remarked on reading Kant's cosmological proof of the existence of God."

"All that should concern us is the acute and increasing anxiety of the relation itself, as though shadowed more and more darkly by a sense of invalidity, of inadequacy, of existence at the expense of all that it excludes, all that it blinds to."

Superb. It's hard to imagine giving good word to Beckett. It is better to let these words trickle, slide, and coagulate on their own. As Beckett quoted from Freud, "The stars are undoubtedly superb..."

Beckett at 22. Who could write that essay at 22, but Beckett? In fairness, most of the ideas are from Joyce's mouth to Beckett's pen: but it is Beckett's pen, not Joyce's mouth that interests us. Lines scarely better than those in Beckett's "Proust".

The danger, after all, is in the neatness of identifications.

This short and unusual novel by Samuel Beckett, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature (this book was the first major puplication of Beckett after the award was announced), depicts a "universe" that is made up of a flattened cylinder fifty meters wide and eighteen meters high containing 200 bodies of all ages. The insides of the cylinder are basicly featureless except for a few niches that can be reached by a few ladders (these ladders are the only inanimate objects in the cylinder). Some of these niches are interconnected by tunnels. The cylinder is lit slightly by a dim yellow light that is everywhere. The temperature changes from 25 degrees to zero in four seconds and then back again. Some of the people are searchers and are looking for an exit. Others are the vanquished. As time goes on, all become the vanquished except one. When I came to the end of the novel, all I could think of was entropy.

This is a very short work, but meaningful. I won't try to give a description of it, for that would be thoroughly useless and not do justice to the work. I will say that it is a must for fans of Kafka, and even existentialist writing in general.

There is no way that reading this play can come close, even in imagination, to approximating the strange theatrical experience. A mouth, just a mouth, suspended some feet above the stage, gabbles at speed for about fifteen minutes, as a woman, although claiming it is 'Not I', tells her life story of silent emotional repression finally released in ceaseless logorrhea, like one of Joyce's passive Dubliners finally shrieking. This verbal onslaught is counterpointed by a silent auditor figure and his physical gestures. Reading the play is very useful, however, just so you can get some idea of what the woman is saying if you ever do get a chance to see it performed.

Read. In the air. Not in the mind. Extraordinary. What? Extraordinary? Yes. Intense. Mellifluous. Poetry, no doubt. A mouth. Nothing more. All that is needed. A single mouth. Bizarre? Perhaps. Read. Challenging to the psyche. There is that danger. Ineffable? No question. No questions remain. Extraordinary. Read.

My only coffee table book of literary criticism, this is an invaluable resource for information and insights into Irish author Samuel beckett, particualry for the early Joyce influenced poems and novels(More Pricks than Kicks, Murphy), but also for interesting glosses on the more obscured prose from the trilogy on to Company. Filled with pictures of the bogs, seasides, asylumns and Dublin streets that set the scene for most of the prose & drama. By paying close attention to the texts, O'brien makes a silent but convincing argument in favor of Beckett the realist, if condensed and reduced to suit his artistic purposes. Filled with cultural detail instead of biographical detail, it is also an interesting look at Dublin before the war. It also contains a printing of "The Capital of Ruins", the short essay Beckett wrote for radio about his experience in St Lo, France, as a memeber of the Irish Red Cross. A quote to show a possible significance:"I mean the possibility that some of those who were in Saint-Lo will come home realising that they got as good as they gave, that they got, indeed, what they could not hardly give, a vision and a sense of a time-honored conception of humanity in ruins, and perhaps even an inkling of the terms in which our condition is to be thought again". A beautiful, well-researched, and thought-provoking study.

Is Samuel Beckett's Eleutheria a failed play? Brodsky's translation's one. But Madame Krap:

MME. KRAP: (At the height of excitation) Let him leave the neighbourhood, the city, the county, the country, let him go croak in---in the Balkans!

and Dr. Piouk:

DR. PIOUK: I would prohibit reproduction. I would perfect the condom and other appliances and generalize their use. I would create state-run corps of abortionists. I would impose the death sentence on every woman guilty of having given birth. I would drown the newborn. I would campaign in favor of homosexuality and myself set the example. And to get things going, I would encourage by every means the recourse to euthanasia, without, however, making it an obligation. Here you have the broad outlines.

O connoisseurs!

Despite its mathematically precise stage directions (there's even a diagram), pinning down the dramatic events, 'Footfalls' is ultimately as elusive as its heroine, pacing endlessly up and down a strip of light, tending to her sick mother. The pacing is interrupted by two monologues which may, or may not, tell the story of May's life - it is typical in a play with a literally self-effacing heroine that her story should haunt others' stories, that others should speak for her, that the imagery should be ghost-like, inchoate, tantalising; one voice doubled, splintered. Her mother is a mere voice; by the end of the play, May is on her way - is this the natural fate of women for Beckett?

It goes without saying that such a visually precise play doesn't read very well, although there is an accumulation of words and feelings that is tremendously powerful.

Certainly the reader will not come away from this book with mixed feelings, but that will depend on how much of an icon the reader considers Beckett to be. When I first read Beckett in the early '60s I was enthralled with the turgid atmosphere Beckett created. He was a new voice to me, but I was troubled by the underlying irritation I felt, the futility of the plot, and the seeming helplessness and ineffectualness of his characters. That has not changed over the years. Beckett is excellent for dredging up all the anxieties of the little life.

I must confess, however, that the desire of people to ascribe genius to the man leaves me somewhat mystified. He is not as deep as Joyce or as inaccessible as the prose of Dylan and I find these two Celtic sons much more rewarding. They had their own widely acknowledged demons. Beckett has his. Therefore I did not find this work by Mr. Stephenson anything more than insightful into another of Beckett's grotesque wrinkles.

Mr. Stephenson has his own writing style and his voice is forceful, however, it seems to me that the reason for reading this piece is to gain insight into the work of Beckett. What else is an academic monograph for? You can agree or disagree with an author's premise, but a reader must take away some new things to consider about the subject of any monograph. I did, and felt that the reading of Mr. Stephenson's criticism was worth my time because it added the overall personality of this sad, bewitched, grim Gael.

Anthologies are the way to go when you want to discover new (or old) poets with minimal risk. Anthologies give you a sampling of many different poets and then you decide which ones you really like.

This is a method I have used to explore the wide range of world poetry out there. It gives me a taste of many poets without having to purchase a thousand books. Having financial limits, this is greatly beneficial.

"Mexican Poetry" is a collection of poems translated by Samuel Beckett and edited by Octavio Paz. These two Nobel Laureates have provided us with nearly 400 years of poetry beginning in 1521 and ending in 1910. This comprehensive book includes 35 different poets and provides a great overview of the great poetry produced by Mexico.

Paz, being a Mexican poet has great insight into the poetic history of his country. He endeavors to include poets from the entire four century span. He also writes a fine introduction to place proper historical perspective to the many poets included here.

The collection features poets such as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz who is an early model of a feminist heroine. Her beautiful poems still resonate over three centuries later. It also has works by Bernando de Balbuena, Juan Ruis de Alarcon, Alfonso Reyes and Juana de Asbaje. This book will instill in one a sense of the breadth and range of Mexican poetry. It is a great way to familiarize oneself with a great poetic tradition that is often overlooked.

Ms. Drew's collection of essays on the Shakespeare -Beckett connection is a well balanced look at the remarkable similarities between these two literary giants. With contributions from the academic as well the theatrical perspective, "Past Crimson, Past Woe" delves into the often overlooked practical side of the issue. Particularly interesting, is the editor's own contribution concerning the connections between "Hamlet" and "Endgame". Ms. Drew insightfully casts Hamlet and Hamm side by side as two frustrated directors, who do not realize the futility in their attempts to control events, and more so, do not realize their kinship with their antagonists, Polonius and Clov, respectively. There is certainly something here for every level of interest. The theorist can consult Laura Marvel's essay, and the actor can gain perspective from Edward Atienza's contribution. Ms. Drew here presents us with a deeply compelling look at two important author's who stand at different ends of time.