BECKETT, Samuel

Working against the grain of his upbringing, Beckett was an Irishman whose first successful works were written in French. A disciple of James Joyce , whose succession of books increasingly came to epitomize esthetic abundance, Beckett instead explored lessness or, to be precise, lessness as moreness, or, to be more precise, the possibilities of moreness with lessness; for Beckett's fundamental effort has been language so spare it would render the surrounding silence resonant. At the end...