At Beckett's Call
Self-proclaimed short story month , post number 14. For the longest time, I only read literature written by authors who were dead. This was not a deliberate choice, really. Yet, to be honest, English literature has enough of these to last a lifetime. It’s been a few years since I’ve taken up other kinds of authors, namely people who are still around. But before that change in reading preferences, perhaps the closest I came to a living author was Samuel Beckett, who died just shy of 1990. I profoundly admire Beckett’s work. Most people know Beckett for his plays ( Waiting for Godot , Happy Days , and Endgame , for instance, all of which are fantastic). But it was his prose that captivated me, and three of his novels in particular: Molloy , Malone Dies , The Unnamable . Today I decided to pick up one of Beckett’s stories, and reread it. We’re lucky now to have that four-volume Grove Centenary Edition , edited by Paul Auster, from whose fourth volume I read today’s story. Back ...