Volume 19, Number 10 · December 14, 1972
Beckett First and Last
By Christopher Ricks
The Lost Ones
by Samuel Beckett
Grove Press, 63 pp., $1.65 (paper)
More Pricks Than Kicks
by Samuel Beckett
Grove Press, 191 pp., $1.95 (paper)
The Shape of Chaos: An Interpretation of the Art of Samuel Beckett
by David H. Hesla
University of Minnesota Press, 252 pp., $9.75
At the very end of Endgame, Hamm grates out his gratitude to his bloodstained handkerchief: 'Old stancher! You…remain.' It is what you want to say by way of gratitude to Beckett himself: 'Old stancher.' How right that after a conscientious pause Hamm should come up with the bleak minimum of 'remain'—not 'You…are faithful,' just 'You…remain.' In the old days, in his first book of fiction, More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), which he has now at last allowed to be reissued, Beckett watched his act of stanching: 'They were really too numerous, she could not go through the entire list. She stanched her mouth.'
Review, 2660 words
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