Customer Reviews

Early Beckett: Art and Allusion in "More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy"

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Of scholars in the field who have published extended studies of Beckett's early prose (Dream of Fair to middling Women, More Pricks Than Kicks, Murphy, and Watt) three stand above the others and are required reading on the subject for scholars. Anthony Farrow's Art and Allusion ... is one. It is hampered by the lack of an index and extraordinarily poor proofreading. Lawrence Harvey's Samuel Beckett: Poet and Critic is another. Published in 1970, it is out of print, a big shame. Harvey's is the only serious study of Beckett's poetry. The style of both Farrow and Harvey is discursive. Rubin Rabinovitz's The Development of Samuel Beckett's Fiction is the third, written in a more concise scholarly style that makes it the most entertaining of the three for the non-specialist. Rabinovitz is likely to be the most useful to the specialist as well, though of course this depends on what you're after. I have not read John Pilling's new book Beckett Before Godot, and there are, as one would expect, numerous article-length studies of the early prose that are required reading for the specialist.