Echo's Bones

On one hand, posthumous releases allow one last crack at an old favorite; on the other, there are countless instances of literary executors publishing lesser work by big names simply on reputation. Beckett (Waiting for Godot) penned the story "Echo's Bones" to round out his 1933 collection More Pricks Than Kicks, but his editor politely declined to include it. The present edition features all the hallmarks of Beckett's mature style: the gallows humor, the aphoristic quality of the dialog, and the brilliant density of the plot. Belacqua, the protagonist, who was killed off in an earlier story, is here resurrected, but death gives him no perspective on living: "I know no more than I did." Lord Gall, the obscene and hilarious foil to Belacqua—one who invites comparisons to Alfred Jarry's Pa Ubu—is a creature so absurd that he refers to his "own, dear bowels" as his most valuable possession.