Stories and Texts for Nothing

This book made me think about night snorkeling, how you're hesitant at first to slip into the dark unknown but once immersed you can't imagine ever having second-guessed yourself. Wonders are revealed, things that feel unreal but are in fact very much part of this world, should you be willing to acknowledge them. Beckett is stingy with his paragraph breaks, sentences stretch on endlessly, commas are plentiful. It all seems a bit daunting at first look. But once I started reading it all made perfect sense. It was like the cadence of his prose exactly matched that of my thoughts. Reading this book made me not want to read realist fiction anymore. What is the point. Rote description of domestic drama, the kind we've all lived and read show more before. So common, so mundane. Let's cut to the chase, says Beckett. He pulverizes the act of living into fine powder, scatters it into the gutter, and makes absurd jokes in its general direction. There are three short stories and 13 'texts for nothing.' The stories only vaguely follow a plot, the 'texts for nothing' even less so. I was glad because frankly I'm sick of plots.

The short winter's day was drawing to a close. It seems to me sometimes that these are the only days I have ever known, and especially that most charming moment of them all, just before night wipes them out. show less

Three short stories about aged men shouldered aside by society, expecting little, receiving even less, musing as they meander, forward, homeless, hoping to find some other place to rest world-weariness, all told in exceedingly spare and condensed style echoing the stark simplicity of the men's silent lives.
Texts for Nothing? Thirteen condensed and compressed vignettes of thoughts from the verge between life and, well, what? Maybe already past the verge, no, maybe not yet past, maybe still coming, but without a body, well maybe with, but without motion, or maybe only brain, or not, but whence thought, maybe not thought, no, thought, definite thought, but beyond the verge, no, still can't be, no brain, maybe on the verge, but of things show more earlier, things remembered, no, perhaps just voices, no, life remembered, in memory without mind, no, maybe just remembered, and voices, maybe from life, into nothing, or maybe just in nothing. Texts for Nothing.
Extraordinary! show less

Typical thematically of most of Beckett's prose fiction--Stories and texts for nothing are made up of 3 short stories and 13 untitled variations on the meaninglessness and absurdities of human endeavor. The short stories are narrated by down and outs almost totally alienated when caught outside their immediate milieus. They are solipsistic autistic characters completely out of touch with any logic not their own. The stories are more conventional however than the texts in that they follow a timeline of event.

The 13 texts are somewhat like shorter versions of his Company--musings of a ghost like being on past life--alienated as well from anything living but commenting on the confusions of human life and endeavor anyway. They have a show more rambling and claustrophobic effect not all that unrelated to Kafka. Some of Becketts later works seem to owe a lot more to Kafka than to Joyce--they also relate well to Thomas Bernhard.

Becketts work cannot be rushed. A reader needs to take his time to be able to enjoy/or even to understand them. They have their own peculiar logic and humor. They're not usually easy reads because they take concentration but given that they can be very rewarding. They are reminiscent in some way to the great Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard. Anyway Samuel Beckett is one of the best novelists/playwrights of the 20th and without a doubt one of the most unique ones. show less

I have no idea why I'm rating the book as I am-- but I couldn't put it down.

Indeholder "Den udstødte", "Sovemidlet", "Enden", "Tekster for intet: I", "Tekster for intet: II", "Tekster for intet: II", "Tekster for intet: IV", "Tekster for intet: V", "Tekster for intet: VI", "Tekster for intet: VII", "Tekster for intet: VIII", "Tekster for intet: IX", "Tekster for intet: X", "Tekster for intet: XI", "Tekster for intet: XII", "Tekster for intet: XIII".

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