Samuel Beckett is the greatest living master of the English language. When it comes down to the elemental craft involved in placing one word next to another he has no equal, indeed he has no close rival. Few would seriously attempt to deny this. But many would go on to add that the purposes to which he puts his artistry somehow constitute a sad waste, as if in selecting his austere subject matter he has deprived us of some beautifully written tales of family life or of a series of panoramic novels about society, history or culture.

In one sense such a reservation is understandable. Ever since his first poems Beckett has had no truck with the narrowing banalities of conventional artistic expression. His mature plays and novels are fiercely concentrated products of his determination to deny himself the luxuries and distracting categories of aesthetic experience. This is...