The long sonata of the dead

"All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and thatmakes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an endas in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead."From this sentence, Michael Robinson extracts the title of hisbrilliant and perceptive study of Samuel Beckett. Covering all ofBeckett's extant work, with special attention given to the greatprose trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, Robinsoncarefully traces Beckett's work not merely to justify a particularliterary theory but rather to illuminate what he sees as the"poetics of failure" which runs so completely and informinglythroughout the novels as well as the dramatic works.