Texts for Nothing is the third and final volume in Faber’s new editions of Samuel Beckett’s short prose, following The Expelled and Company, and includes almost 30 pieces written between 1950 and 1976, some in English and some in French subsequently translated by Beckett. The works collected here are almost unanimous in their brevity, both stylistically and in terms of length. The shortest is less than 100 words, most are only two or three pages long. In terms of form and content they are closer perhaps to prose poems than to short stories, intense in their attention to language but rarely following any sort of narrative; as the fourth of the ‘Texts for Nothing’ states: “no need for a story”.

This abstraction is perhaps most evident in the title section, comprising 13 monologues, each only a few pages long, which contains some of the most explicitly lyrical passages of Beckett’s writing: “All is noise, unending suck of black sopping peat, surge of giant ferns, heathery gulfs of quiet where the wind drowns, my life and its old jingles”. At other times the language is, unusually for this arch-minimalist, noticeably multisyllabic: “With his consolations, allusions to cancer, recollections of imperishable raptures, he’d prevent discouragement from sapping my foundations.” These ‘Texts for Nothing’ are the most approachable of the pieces included here and certainly deserve to be ranked alongside the other short prose of his recently published by Faber.

There is much else here to interest Beckett fans, sometimes for the relationship of the pieces to his more well-known work, at other times for the spectacle of Beckett pushing his prose to breaking point. There is also a surprising stylistic range, including the almost sci-fi strangeness of ‘The Lost Ones’: “Abode where lost bodies roam”, the obsessive calculations of ‘Imagination Dead Imagine: “Two diameters at right angles AB CD divide the white ground into two semicircles ACB BDA”, and the breathless “All Strange Away” reminiscent of William Burroughs’ cut-ups: “black right eye like maintain hell gaping any length then seethe of lid to cover imagine frequency later and motive”.

That said, many of the other works included here do not do justice to Beckett’s genius. Overall this collection is something of a miscellany, including as it does much that Beckett published to sate the appetite of his publishers and his public. There is some profound and beautiful work on show, however it will probably mainly appeal to the Beckett completest. Despite the stark poetry on offer, much of the prose will be hard going for those not familiar with Beckett’s middle to late style and this is best encountered first in the other two short prose collections.

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