SAMUEL BECKETT—”A KIND OF CONTROLLED, CONSENSUAL CRUELTY”.

March 21, 2015 · Literature

SAMUEL BECKETT—A KIND OF CONTROLLED, CONSENSUAL CRUELTY”. In a review of Echo’s Bones, a newly-published story by Samuel Beckett, in the New York Review of Books (March 19), Fintan O’Toole says: “The mature Beckett practices a kind of controlled, consensual cruelty on his readers and audiences….His great novels and plays…. defy us to stop reading, to get up and leave the theater.”

This describes my experience with Happy Days, the only Beckett play I have seen.