More Pricks Than Kicks [Paperback]

Samuel Beckett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 1994

Samuel Beckett, the recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the greatest writers of our century, first published these ten short stories in 1934; they originally formed part of an unfinished novel. They trace the career of the first of Beckett’s antiheroes, Belacqua Shuah.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He was educated at Portora Royal School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1927. His made his poetry debut in 1930 with Whoroscope and followed it with essays and two novels before World War Two. He wrote one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, in 1949 but it wasn't published in English until 1954. Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame and firmly established him as a leading figure in the Theatre of the Absurd. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. Beckett continued to write prolifically for radio, TV and the theatre until his death in 1989. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 7, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080215137X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802151377
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #410,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He was educated at Portora Royal School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1927. His made his poetry debut in 1930 with Whoroscope and followed it with essays and two novels before World War Two. He wrote one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot, in 1949 but it wasn't published in English until 1954. Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame and firmly established him as a leading figure in the Theatre of the Absurd. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett continued to write prolifically for radio, TV and the theatre until his death in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beckett says: "Don't be a Belacqua", July 3, 2000

By 

Aaron Goldhamer - See all my reviews

This review is from: More Pricks Than Kicks (Paperback)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a neglected great, December 3, 2007

By 

Thomas Beltzer "Thomas Beltzer" (Fredericksburg, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: More Pricks Than Kicks (Paperback)

Beckett's More Pricks Than Kicks is a hilarious collection of short stories. Far from being "stark" or "grim," it is a fudge-brownie layer cake of language and thick with dark, rich, black, earthy humor. These stories are a valuable corrective in reading Beckett who can come across as despairing, minimalist death warmed over. In fact, like Yeats and Joyce, he is as stout as Irish beer and as bracing as Irish whiskey.

7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars another Dublin, November 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: More Pricks Than Kicks (Paperback)

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.