More Pricks Than Kicks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More Pricks Than Kicks is a collection of short prose by Samuel Beckett, first published in 1934. It contains extracts from his earlier novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women (for which he was unable to find a publisher), as well as other short stories.

The stories chart the life of the book's main character, Belacqua Shuah, from his days as a student to his accidental death. Beckett takes the name Belacqua from a figure in Dante's Purgatorio, a Florentine lute-maker famed for his laziness, who has given up on ever reaching heaven. The opening story, 'Dante and the Lobster', features Belacqua's horrified reaction to the discovery that the lobster he has bought for dinner must be boiled alive. 'It's a quick death, God help us all', Belacqua tells himself, before the narrator's stern interjection to the contrary: 'It is not.'

The final story, "Draff," centres on his funeral.

The Prose of Samuel Beckett
Novels : Dream of Fair to Middling Women, How It Is, Malone Dies, Mercier and Camier, Molloy, Murphy, The Unnamable, Watt Novellas : Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho Stories : First Love , Fizzles, More Pricks Than Kicks, Stirrings Still, Stories and Texts for Nothing Non-Fiction : Three Dialogues (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam), Disjecta, Proust