This book is a must have for any fan of great theater, intelligent novels, deep poetry, critical essays, or moving short stories: because it has all of them by the master of all of these genres.

From famous works such as, "Waiting for Godot," and "Krapp's Last Tape" (plays), that force a reader to rethink their world, to classic short stories, such as, "Dante and the Lobster," that is a dive into a surreal world: this book has everything.

1,000 words is not nearly enough to get into this book at any real depth, or to even give it a proper over view. This book covers the entire spectrum of one of Ireland's greatest writers.

Creater of the theater of the absurd, world renouned playwright, and man who single handedly made a place for the "shorter play," in a world that had come to expect a minimum of two acts, for a peice of drama to be considered serious.

This book contains novels, novel excerpts and short stories, all of which, redefined the genres that they belonged to. Prolific, constantly changing, and reaching new hights, Beckett redefined every genre that he wrote in, and set new levels of perfection for the rest of us to reach for.

One can not say enough things about this true literary genius. The best advice that I can give you is, buy this book, read it, and give yourself the perfect oppertunity to become aquainted with Beckett. This book gives a wondeful over view of each of Beckett's writing stages and the evolution of his work.

This is a very wise introduction to Samuel Beckett's work. If you haven't discovered one of the most profound voices of the 20th century, then this book is the way to do it. By far his most accessible work is the short play Krapp's Last Tape and it is in this volume complete. Waiting for Godot is also here as well as excerpts from Beckett's prose and some of his later plays like Not I. This book belongs on your shelf.

If you've never heard of Beckett, this is the first thing you should check out. Richard Seaver's introduction is an added bonus, which helps us understand Beckett even more. All in all, a fabulous book.

Having disposed of the third person narrative in Watt, Beckett focused on the difficulties of articulating personal experience in the first person. Beckett is disengaged from the narratives of Molloy by giving them to the character's to write, but is present throughout the text because he doesn't have the answers to give to the characters to explain who they are and what they are to write. The structure that results is an empty frame in that it considers one explanation for a historical occurrence as valid as the next. The space in which Molloy exists is highly ambiguous and therefore the language he uses to narrate does not provide any comfort at all, but aggravates him to the point where he can extract no meaning at all from his existence. Moran begins his narrative in an ordered space and so many of the statements he makes at the beginning are simple, declarative and create a comfortable area for him to inhabit. This is where Beckett finds it necessary to impose the structure of a genre model, but it is only the proposition of a detective plot because the "case" isn't carried out in any intelligible fashion. Moran's task to find Molloy eventually becomes clear to be only an internal one. A separate physical being called Molloy may very well exist within the story, but numerous cross-connections between the characters of Molloy and Moran are illuminated in the structure. This is seen in the similarity of their names and the manner in which Moran takes on many of the characteristics of Molloy. For example, they are similar in their physical disintegration, lack of understanding for their environment and complex internal processes of reasoning which leave them with no clear understanding of reality. This results in a mystification of anything actual in the character's lives because language cannot support the fictional character's lack of substantial being.

If language presupposes a set of initial limitations it is necessary to find a method to breach them. Molloy examines a kind of ontological condition of narrative that suggests more is being left unwritten than is actually being written: Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition. He suggests that it is a human condition to be unable to really express oneself as well as being a fault of language. Rather than see language as a smooth path towards self-expression he sees numerous irregular bumps, the nots, which cut away at the original intended thought. Instead of trying to find an ulterior mode of expression he suggests that expression should simply be conscious of these limitations of language. In this way language is able to delete itself in the midst of its expression. Words are not deleted on the paper, but expressed and then claims are made afterward that the intention of the word does not inhabit the content. A conclusion drawn is that language is inherently muddy and incapable of any pure form of self-expression. This is a dramatic contrast to the use of language by many other Modernists. Unlike Molly's soliloquy in Ulysses where grammar was manipulated in order to simulate thought's form, Molloy's thoughts cannot be allowed to settle so comfortably into words but must be second-guessed and deleted in order to create an appropriate form of expression. This is one temporary solution Beckett makes to illuminate language's limitations and explain how written language can never say what is actually true partly because the actual is never quite a certainty.

Molloy is searching within his narrative to find a purpose for writing. He declares early on in the narrative that he does not know why he writes other than that it is for someone else and if he doesn't he will be scolded, but he does not know to what end the writing is for. It is more an obligation than a wish to express himself or to find a means of communication. Even though Molloy writes every day he never arrives at a sense that his identity has been collected and transcribed into a permanent form: And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. When arriving at a conclusion he immediately negates it by explaining why the opposite is true. Writing does not explain his experience. It only filters his thoughts into a form with a prearranged value attached to it. He is criticizing the false revelation of narrative that seeks to convey a true meaning through dead words. It is commonly and mistakenly perceived that there is a physical attachment between words and things when really as Molloy states there are: no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. The relation between a word and object has no basis in reality, but is merely circumstantial. Because Molloy is unable to explain things without naming them he is only capable of conveying an approximate sense of what he is trying to describe. This prevents the possibility that what he writes will be regarded as a set of absolute truths related from one person to another. It allows reality to be maintained as an open question rather than a closed answer. This seems to be the central point of most of Beckett's work. He makes fascinating statements about the nature of language in Molloy. As always in Beckett's work, it achieves a comic and devastating quality that you will find in no other work.

"Molloy" is the best of the Beckett trilogy, the whole of which has been sadly ignored by readers in lieu of the (inadequate) texts of Beckett's plays. In summary of the "plot" of "Molloy" I prefer the critic who calls it "a grim revery of empty progress through time and space." The book is a glory. Playful within its leadenness, parodically plotted, it is the perfect and ultimate expression of everything in human experience unencompassed by joy, light, hope, and faith. What remains, however,is, nevertheless, humanity, warmth and...the darkest, keenest, most mordant utterances ever set to the page. Let readers not be deceived by the note that the book has been "translated" from the French. This is a masterpiece of the English language, translated by Beckett himself, who was generous enough to let a youngster have a byline. If it really is better in the French, they sure are lucky.

One of the best studies ever written about Proust's novel is also one of the earliest. Beckett's reading underscores the novel's pessimism--the bleak futility of human relations, the stupifying effects of Habit, the "poisonous ingenuity" of Time--yet is itself a brisk, erudite, hilarious, dark, and exhilarating piece of Modernist literary criticism.

Beckett's 'Proust' is a powerful and revelatory work, largely because it analyses not only the writing of Marcel Proust but also perception itself: the literary high. It can only enrich the reader's life. I'd recommend it to anyone.

This volume, Beckett Short No. 4, contains only Worstward Ho - a prose piece implying that humanity exists turned Worstward. But not worstward alone - worstward aged hand in child hand, bowed and plodding. This is one of the more poetic of the prose works in terms of images, using his familiar re-emerging of images slightly modified to emphasize his points. One is tempted to summarize this work with the first law of Buddhist - all is suffering.

This is a very enjoyable and relatively accessible piece by Beckett that is well worth your attention.

To most of those who DO know, Beckett's genius has manifested itself in the double act of of Vladimir and Estragon; a kind of existentialist slapstick if you will. However, the purest beauty of this Irishman's vision lies in his prose. It is here, and only here, that it resolves into a state approaching the calm and the silence, toward which each and every one of silently yearns. At first glance, Beckett's prose may seem minimalist in the extreme but, for those of us who penetrate beyond the mere black-on-white of print on page, there lies a remarkable fecundity of imagery and ideas; the starkness of Beckett's literary style forms a deliberately shallow veneer to his own universe. In "Worstward Ho",the reader is confronted with a kind of Cartesian duality: we listen to a mind lamenting the fact that the body it inhabits,in conspiracy with a world outside, inhabited purely by "shades", combine to separate it from God. A God who created these obstacles inthe first place; The Creation was meant to DENY Life. However, as with all Beckett's works, life erupts triumphant, if slightly bowed, at the end. As I said earlier, Beckett isn't meant to be easy on the eye or the brain, but that's what makes him so wonderful: we stretch-and thus exercise- ourselves.

My interest in Irish theatre brought me to this book. What a find! A fascinating look at a fascinating actor. The author brings alive the work and times of MacGowran. A well-researched and thorough work recommended for any student of theatre. I was especially impressed with the variety of interview subjects. Made me do a search for MacGowran's available work on video. While not a big fan of Beckett, I was impressed by the relationship between the playwright and this ultimate interpreter of his works.

When it comes to Beckett, there are two schools of thought as to how to approach him for the first time. Some feel that we should just plunge in unprepared. Others feel that his writing is so strange and original that a certain amount of preparation is advisable before taking the plunge. But on the principle that two or more heads are better than one, there can be no-one whose understanding, after having read Beckett, will not be deepened and enhanced by reading what at least some of Beckett's many sensitive, intelligent, and informed readers have to say about his work.

The present collection is a fitting addition to the distinguished Cambridge series of Companions and contains thirteen pieces which cover all aspects of Beckett's work: the essays (Proust); the early English fiction (Murphy, Watt); the trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) and four nouvelles; Waiting for Godot and Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape to Play; Texts for Nothing and How It Is; the radio and television plays and Film; the 'dramaticules'; the Residua to Stirring Still; Beckkett's poems and verse translations; Beckett as director; Beckett's bilingualism; Beckett and the philosophers. The book also contains a Chronology of Beckett's life; detailed topical bibliographies accompanying each essay; a useful guide to Further Reading; an Index of works by Beckett; and a General Index. Physically the book is well-printed on excellent paper, and bound in a sturdy glossy wrapper.

Of the thirteen essays, which are of varying merit, I was particularly impressed by three - Paul Davies on the trilogy; H. Porter Abbott on How It Is (with his insightful analysis of how the poetic prose of this book works to generate multiple meanings as we read); and P. J. Murphy's leraned treatment of Beckett and the philosophers - though most of the other essays are well worth reading and add considerably to our understanding of this deep and enigmatic writer. Happily only three of the book's contributors were so balefully under the influence of French theory as to have given us pieces which are not so much about Beckett as about themselves, and which will be of interest only to those who are interested in 'Beckett Studies' as opposed to Beckett himself.

All in all, then, this is a useful and stimulating collection of essays which ought to be of considerable interest to most serious students of Beckett, and as such it may be strongly recommended.

A collection of six short pieces by Beckett (Cascando, Words and Music, Eh Joe, Play, Come and Go, and Film) for different performance mediums (radio, television, stage, film). None of these pieces are over thirty pages, and make for easy reading. The theme of the book can be summed up in Beckett's Berkeleyan introduction to the script to "Film":

"Esse est percipi. All extraneous perception suppressed, animal, human, divine, self-perception maintains in being. Search of non-being from flight from extraneous perception breaking down in inescapability of self-perception."

In a word, existence is defined by perception, which in the end is self-perception, which is inescapable since you are... well, you. Most of the pieces in this book dramatize this very effectively: in Cascando, a slavish "Opener" is resigned to opening and closing the expression of his conscious experience, which is merely fragmented and meaningless thoughts. In Film, a man flees from perception, only to find that perception follows him to his room and witnesses his final resignation, sleep, with merciless scrutiny. Word and Music dramatizes the struggle of artistic expression, which inevitably fails.

The most interesting piece, also the longest, is "Play." Here the stage is occupied by three urns with people in them. The play consists of the three urned characters taking rounds in describing a disastrous love triangle. The play ends on the terse cue from Beckett: "Repeat Play." (When performed as a radio play, Beckett suggested speeding the dialogue up 5% and turning down the volume 5% every rotation -- by increasing and decreasing in percentages, the play never ends, but becomes more and more distant and indiscernable). These urned characters are among Beckett's crueler and more inventive creations. The suggestion is that the self-perception cannot end with death, since the self never percieves its own end -- therefore, the last moments, in theory, must live on forever as the last of organic experience... a kind of sordid revision of Nietzsche's eternal return. The urned characters are, in effect, in eternal purgatory.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though I'm not used to such extreme philosophical literature. Beckett's boldness in pursuing the depths of existentialist extremity deserves applause, and confirms him as one of the bravest and most selfless writers of the post-war era. Art like this can't come easy to the mind that concieved it, and must be the product of an agonizing creative pregnancy. It reminds me of that craft that Villion, like Beckett, felt obligated to express when he wrote: "Now there's work that awaits the smith/ I'll smash down anguish and begin."

...of this excellent compilation when writing my senior thesis and directing Godot in 1988. Cohn collects some of the most cogent, insightful and stimulating readings on this seminal work of twentieth century theatre. If you involved in a production of Godot and want to gain insight into the layers of meaning and musicality of the text, or if you simply love Beckett and want to read some very exciting and non-pedantic writing about his magnum opus, this book is a great find.

"Company" is a haunting tale of one man about whom nothing is known, who spends his final hours alone in a pitch black room. His sanity is questionable at best in this sensory-deprived state, and he tells himself stories and even makes up imaginary friends with whom he converses to pass the time (this is the titular company he seeks). Beautifully written, this piece flows like a prose poem and is as easy a read as one will find in Beckett's works. Bringing up important questions of rationality and the concept of the self, "Company" is not to be missed.

These three novels represent Samuel Beckett's greatest accomplishment. What are they about you might ask? Let's just say that they're about everything and nothing. They are profound commentaries on the universal existential crises plaguing all of mankind, and an utterly fascinating reduction of what it means to be a human. Be forewarned: these novels are extremely modern, abstract works of art, and for many will be very difficult reading. The final installment, _Worstword Ho_ is officially the greatest work of fiction, page for page, that I have ever read. It is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. These novels are not to be taken lightly and it should be noted that Samuel Beckett put the "high" in highway. This is abstract literary thought at its far-seeing outer limit.

This slender volume brings to us one of the great achievements of 20th century art and it establishes Beckett indisputably as one of the great figures of world literature.
Throughout his long artistic life Beckett had more than his share of blustering critics and disparagers. Yet it was always a matter of assailing Beckett's supposed 'view of life', even with an occaisional embarrassingly small-minded questioning of his 'sanity', and there has never been, and can not be, a substantial and coherent assault upon his artistic ability. It is appalling that there are professional people (and lay) so perverse and petty as to resent a man's artistic genius simply because they feel an aversion to his personal vision. But no matter, Beckett has a substantial body of serious readers whose devotion he has earned, for no artist has struggled more bravely and honestly with his craft.
Though I can read French and have read several of Beckett's works in that language, it is not my native language so I will not presume to assess Beckett's standing as a writer of French literature (though Fin De Partie is unquestionable great writing), but I will put forth the view that Beckett is the greatest English language writer of his generation. Even if he had only written the works reaching from MURPHY (1938) to HOW IT IS (1964)which fall into two basic groups with WATT as a dividing line, he would still have no real peers in international English literature in his time, but the fact that he went on from there to create a third group of works which culminates in the three 'novels' that comprise NOHOW ON is amazing and moves him far out of the reach of any other literary artist of his time or after. It is a simple fact that no one writing today can approach Beckett's artistic standard. He was a genius and more, he was an artist of rare devotion and integrity.
One does not need to be familiar with the long span of Beckett's work to perceive the greatness of COMPANY, ILL SEEN ILL SAID, or WORSTWARD HO, but their greatness seems only deepened by the knowledge that they are preceeded by greatness (WATT, MOLLOY, ENDGAME...). Still I would suggest that if you like NOHOW ON and you are not familiar with Beckett's earlier work that you become so because it will only increase your appreciation of Beckett's extraordinary artistic depth.
Finally, I for one would like to say that few things in my life have moved me as much as Beckett's courageous turning away from an art of 'general truths' and so sensitively and deeply exploring the difficult and often painful mysteries of actual human experience. Beckett taught me that art is a genuine vocation as deep and demanding as any in the world, and more so than most.
Thank you, Sam Beckett.

Beckett was uncomfortable with comparisons to Joyce - which is understandable both in light of their relationship and of the difference in their respective aesthetics. However I believe that "Worstward Ho" holds a place in the Beckett canon similar to the position of "Finnegans Wake" in Joyce's work. Both are the last major works of their authors and both represent the most perfect realizations of their artistic visions.

"Company" is the union and fulfillment of two of Beckett's recurrent themes - autobiography and "closed place" imagery. Its prose is spare and lyrical, evoking powerful images while its narrative style explores the ambiguities of the relationship between narrator and auditor.

"Ill Seen Ill Said" is a beautiful narrative which is singular among Beckett's prose works in having a female narrator. Its expanded, yet still abstracted and "distilled", cosmology (in comparison to the "closed place" works of the '60s and '70s) represnts an interesting new direction (or destination?) for Beckett's writing. Originally written in French, this work's poetry is best appreciated in that language.

"Worstward Ho" is, I believe, Beckett's masterpiece. It recapitulates all the major themes of his work - the futility of the act of expression, the poverty of language and the problematic dichotomies of perceived and perceiver and of narrator and auditor. It is written in the barest, most stripped-down prose ever composed. At the same time, it is repetitive and resonant. Less than five thousand words long, it compresses volumes of meaning. The more reduced and undetermined the language is, the more potential meanings and significations its words take on. The attempt to pare and refine leads to an ambiguity which grows and dilutes - a paradox Beckett uses with mastery. Despite appearances, the work's structure is as intentionally articulated as its prose. It is also a work of great and black humor, full of punning and wordplay. It should be savored and read and reread.