"It is one thing to be informed by Shakespeare that life "is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing"; it is something else to encounter the idea literally presented in a novel by Samuel Beckett. But I am reasonably certain that a sensitive reader who journeys through How It Is will leave the book convinced that Beckett says more that is relevant to experience in our time than Shakespeare does in Macbeth. It should come as no surprise if a decade or so hence How It Is is appraised as a masterpiece of modern literature. This poetic novel is Beckett at his height." -- Webster Schott
"A wonderful book, written in the sparest prose. . . . Beckett is one of the rare creative minds in our times." -- Alan Pryce-Jones
"What is novel is the absolute sureness of design. . . built phrase by phrase into a beautifully and tightly wrought structure -- a few dozen expressions permuted with deliberate redundancy accumulate meaning even as they are emptied of it, and offer themselves as points of radiation in a strange web of utter illusion." -- Hugh Kenner
Writer. Critic. Translator. Street cat photographer. President of the Great Clown Pagliacci fan club. Enjoyer of posts and content. #JewishPope2023
Finished reading Samuel Beckett’s HOW IT IS, which is just… so fucking good. Beckett’s prose exists in a cognitive purgatory that is at once hellish to experience and gorgeous to read. We would all be lucky to write even a tenth as well as he did