WORSTWARD HO

by Samuel Beckett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 28, 1983

On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on. Till nohow on. Said nohow on."" So begins Beckett's new prose-poem variation on his view of the anguished human condition: plodding on through life because there is no better alternative--despite hopelessness, physical decay, inner paralysis, the certainty of failure in all endeavors. (""All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."") A handful of words and images is gently tossed from page to page, with telegraphic compressions and echoing shifts of rhythm and stress: a skull, a stare, a woman's bowed back, an old man and child; ""better,"" ""worse,"" ""dim,"" ""void,"" ""twain."" As in Play, there's the vision of three, of ""Nothing from pelvis down. Nothing but bowed back. Topless baseless hindtrunk. Dim black. On unseen knees. In the dim void. Better worse so. Pending worse still."" And, most piercingly, there's the sardonic despair about the dependence on words--about the largely futile attempt to capture any of this, any of anything, in words: ""The words too whosesoever. What room for worse! How almost true they sometimes almost ring! . . . What when words gone? . . . No words for what when words gone. . . ."" Familiar Beckett themes in one of his increasingly tiny, grenade-like packages: opaque at first glance, yet starkly disturbing and strangely musical once you surrender to the sounds, the liturgical swing, and the dark vision.

Pub Date: Nov. 28, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION