Among living writers, I most admire Samuel Beckett because he is the least living of them. "Imagination Dead Imagine," he says, as if he already speaks to us from the other side. Nothing in his work is the least fashionable, and yet no other writer—not even Virgil or Dante—has been more avant-garde than Beckett. And very few writers—excepting Swift and Kafka—have been so funny and terrifying at once as Samuel Beckett. The great ones always speak from the other side….

As for his language—the basic and ultimate test of a writer's value—Beckett compares well even with great modern poets. For this I admire him most of all. (p. 62)

Leonard Michaels, in The New York Times Book Review (© 1977 by the New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), December 4, 1977.