Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T20:32:04.170Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Beginning again

the post-narrative art of Texts for nothing and How it is

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
H. Porter Abbott
Edited by
John Pilling
John Pilling
Affiliation:
University of Reading
Get access

Summary

‘TEXTS FOR NOTHING’

'Yes, I'd have a mother, I'd have a tomb, I wouldn't have come out of here, one doesn't come out of here, here are my tomb and mother, it's all here this evening, I'm dead and getting born, without having ended, helpless to begin, that's my life.

(CSP, 101)

From the start, Texts for nothing, which Beckett wrote in 1950-i, has been one of the orphans in his oeuvre. Few major critics have adopted it, and its individual texts are rarely anthologized. This has come about not so much from its difficulty as from the location of that difficulty in the course of Beckett's development. The referential uncertainty and drift in the passage above is easily matched by passages in the book Beckett wrote just prior to the Texts:

I have no explanations to offer, none to demand, the comma will come where I'll drown for good, then the silence, I believe it this evening, still this evening, how it drags on, I've no objection [...]

(T, 376)
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Beckett , pp. 106 - 123
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×