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Taken as a whole, this collection of essays reflects one of the issues at the heart of Beckett's works, namely, the inadequacy and failure of language to communicate. Reading straight through the book requires fortitude and determination. There are several challenges: one is that these articles are written for an audience already familiar with and immersed in Beckett and his works. In fact, this collection is the outgrowth of the Smithsonian Institution Symposium, “The World of Samuel Beckett,” held in March 1989. The contributors include some who participated in the conference and others who were subsequently invited to submit essays. (Of the twelve authors, three are psychoanalysis; the rest are academicians from the fields of drama, English, comparative literature, modern languages, and linguistics.) Another difficulty confronting me was that several of the essays are written in language so technical as to be arcane. However, persistence does pay. There emerges from the struggle and, at times, from the difficulty of comprehending these diverse and unconnected essays, a certain “sense” of Beckett beyond the attempts to dissect and categorize him.
The title, The World of Samuel Beckett, permits several readings. Herbert Blau brings his personal role in Beckett's life and world to the fore in his “Quaquaquaqua: The Babel of Beckett,” which begins the book, and “The Less Said,” which ends it. While the first essay does attempt to locate Beckett in his culture and his