About The Book

In 1933, Chatto & Windus agreed to publish Samuel Beckett’s More Pricks Than Kicks, a collection of ten interrelated stories, which was his first published work of fiction. At his editor’s request, Beckett penned an additional story, “Echo’s Bones,” to serve as the final piece. However, he had already killed off several of the characters—including the protagonist, Belacqua—throughout the course of the book, and had to resurrect them from the dead. Despite Beckett’s efforts, the story was politely rejected by his editor and excluded from the collection, as it was considered too imaginatively playful, too allusive, and too undisciplined; qualities that are now recognized as quintessentially Beckett. As a result, “Echo’s Bones” (not to be confused with the poem and collection of poems of the same title) remained unpublished—until now, nearly eight decades later.

This little-known text is introduced by the preeminent Beckett scholar, Dr. Mark Nixon, who situates the work in terms of its biographical context, its textual references, its Joycean influences, and how it is a vital link in the evolution of Beckett’s early work. Beckett confessed that he included “all I knew” in the story, attesting to its importance in his oeuvre. It harnesses an immense range of subjects—from science and philosophy to religion and literature—and combines fairy tales, gothic dreams, and classical myth. The posthumous publication of Echo’s Bones marks the unexpected and highly exciting return of a literary legend.

Praise

“It’s pungent early Beckett, written while he was still under the sway of his mentor, James Joyce, but with a soundscape all its own: rude, surreal, death-haunted, sex-addled, dry as bone. . . . The story’s pleasures are real, however, and reside in Beckett’s full tilt, Devil-ready language. His paragraphs unfurl like parades, notations on life’s sick pageant. . . . It’s a punk’s manifesto (Beckett was 27 when he wrote it) that gets at why Beckett continues to matter. . . . Echo’s Bones returns Beckett the troublemaker.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times

“[Echo’s Bones] helps us to see Beckett becoming Beckett—a development of some importance in the genealogy of twentieth-century literature. . . . In this story, he is beginning to sense the path toward his own way of walking—that persistent, pointless, but strangely heroic trudge through the valley of the shadow of death that will be the trajectory of his mature work. . . . [It is] picaresque and fantastical . . . vigorous and engaging.” —Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books

“A fascinating glimpse at an essential author at the start of his career. . . . [Echo’s Bones is] exuberant, allusive, full of puns and wordplay.” —David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times