SOURCE: Cochran, Robert. “The Short Fiction.” In Samuel Beckett: A Study of the Short Fiction, pp. 3-20. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991.

In the following excerpt, Cochran surveys Beckett's early short fiction, including his short story collection More Pricks than Kicks.

“assumption”

Samuel Beckett was 23, a scholar in the making recently arrived in Paris as lecteur at the École Normale Supérieure, when his first published study appeared in the spring of 1929. An auspicious debut, it was the lead essay in the imposingly titled Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a collection of essays in promotion and defense of what became Finnegans Wake. The young Beckett's work was titled “Dante … Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” and it was soon printed separately in the literary journal transition, along with another effort by the author. This other was no learned article, however, but a short story. Titled “Assumption...