Beckett’s fizzles: De-creating the short story

Abstract

An analysis of Beckett’s deconstruction of the short story and its impact on readers and writers. The importance of silence as an adjunct to his negative attitude towards language and its impact on the rudiments of short story writing is discussed. Supplementing the analysis is a summary of the arc of his short fictions from his earliest short story, ‘Assumption’, appearing when he was 23, to ‘Stirrings Still’, published the year before his death. Attention is paid to two writers influenced by Beckett, Clarice Lispector and Jennifer Egan, to show the importance of his revolutionary approach.