The familiar and the known, what is recognizable, that which eats away at our body and mind, that drains our breath and light, that immerses us and drowns us, is tamed in Beckett's writing. Because it is true what was said in the past—that within every great work, a beast circulates, tamed.

Objects, people, cities, streets, houses, mountains, the sea, plains, ports, lakes, meadows, stones, books, stations, pebbles, clothes, my hat and I, papers, the wardrobe, the bed, chairs, bicycles, the table, animals, fields, pencils, dogs, cats, birds; all these words, in their place and each one many times over one on top of another, one inside the other, one pressed close behind or in front of the other, one among the others, present themselves to us as new and pure.

Now we can begin again to play with things as we did then, children, carefree and young. Beckett’s old men, and you mostly encounter old men in his lines, are the toll he pays himself to keep us alive.

[A passage from the text on the back cover of the edition]