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Fizzles
Eight short prose pieces, written between 1960 and 1975, continue Beckett's unsparing and spare-styled exploration of the dark ways and circumscribed passages of twentieth-century life
61 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
6 people are currently reading
211 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Beckett
911 books6,472 followersNovels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include
Murphy
in 1938 and
Malone Dies
in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as
Waiting for Godot
in 1952 and
Krapp's Last Tape
in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
May 1, 2023
Not so much stories - but prose impressions - that leave much for the reader to interpret. Leaves the reader with a feeling of ennui - as if you are at a party where everyone you know has left - and now you are the center of attention in a room full of strangers. Happy to have found this long out of print book at Goodwill for $1.79!
September 12, 2022
قلم بکت برای من بیش از هر چیز حاکی از روح گمشده زمان او ست،هنگامی که چرخ تغییر در تاریخ بشر به سرعت به راه افتد،بسیار از آنچه که بود و ابدی مینمود را در می نوردد،و انسان هایی که این مسیر اکنون تغییر یافته را می پیمایند سخت ترین آزمون حیات خویش را در تغییر تعریف خود از هویت و ارزش زندگی می یابند..چنین جوامعی بستری فراهم می کنند برای قلم بکت..قلمی که ظاهرا سیل کلمات آنچنان بر دیواره سد سنت های گذشته فشار می آورد که لاجرم می شکند..جریان تمام نشدنی کلمات بکت بر کاغذ راه می یابند..ذهنی بی نهایت پر هیاهو که خواننده در برخورد یا بدان احترام می گذارد یا پس زده از کنارش فرار می کند..کمتر فردی راه بدرون آن می یابد..چرا که اساسا بدین قصد نوشته نشده ست.جهان آنچنان پیچیده و زندگی آنچنان گسترده ست که استعارات بکت نیز در تلاش برای تعمق در آن باز می ماند..گویی دست ما را لحظه ای گرفته به ورطه زندگی می کشاند و سپس خود می رود و ما را تنها می‌گذارد تا بلکه پاسخ هایی برای خود بیابیم.
فسه ها از مرگ و زندگی..از فرد و دیگران..از همه چیز و هیچ سخن می گویند..فسه ها یک یاد آوری ست..یاد آوری از تمام آثار بکت.
فسه ها از مرگ و زندگی..از فرد و دیگران..از همه چیز و هیچ سخن می گویند..فسه ها یک یاد آوری ست..یاد آوری از تمام آثار بکت.
July 28, 2011
I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but rather to the reader who likes a challenge. Quick read and wonderfully written as expected of Beckett.
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January 19, 2023(Part of my current project of reading everything Beckett published in precise chronological order.)
This slim volume contains translations of eight short pieces that Beckett somewhat self-deprecatingly called foirades - in English translation, 'fizzles'. He wrote these pieces over so long a period of time (from 1954-75) that their collection here is in many ways deceptive, since there is a good deal of heterogeneity here.
For example, Fizzle #5 is effectively an early sketch of his much longer prose piece The Lost Ones, describing a world composed of an arena, a track, and a ditch, and inhabited by haunting, anonymous figures. And, Fizzles #2-3, with their lone figure contemplating a missed, impossible encounter with another, surely anticipate the narrator of How It Is and his fraught relationship with the figure called Pim.
Similarly, the final revisions on some of these pieces were made with a view to being paired with works by specific artists. Beckett revised and arranged five of them to be illustrated by Jasper Johns. And, Fizzle #7 (entitled "Still") was composed specifically to be illustrated by his artist friend Stanley William Hayter. Thus, as a standalone piece, it's ideally read alongside the etchings Hayter crafted for it (for example, the one below).
To complicate matters, Fizzle #7 can, as pointed out by Ruby Cohn, also be seen as the first of a trilogy of short prose pieces, the other two of which appear elsewhere. That is, after composing it, Beckett wrote "Sounds" and "Still 3" to continue the story it tells, and to read these pieces, you'll have to turn to Appendix 1 of The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989.
Still, though, there's something to be gained by reading these pieces as a series, because they give us a picture of Beckett's development over these two decades. In the early Fizzles, we find a Beckett still obsessed with portraying lone, hellishly isolated and/or confined figures writhing in torment. By the time he was composing the last few pieces in the series, though, he had reached the limits of this kind of prose narrative in pieces like Ping (1966), and begun envisioning worlds like the ones described in Lessness (1969) and The Lost Ones (1970). Thus, for example, "Still" (1972) lacks the agonism of those earlier pieces, and presents us with a figure whose solitude isn't torture, but rather quite the contrary: sublimely meditative.
I'm drawing here on an idea that I've found more and more attractive as I've been reading through the works of Beckett's later years. Namely, it seems to me that in this last period, Beckett pushed through the sense of crushing loneliness that animates so much of his work, and found something like the glories of solitude in the face of the cosmos. It isn't that Beckett became soft and sentimental in his old age. One has only to read Fizzle #8 (entitled "For to End Yet Again") with its skull, its small body, its two white dwarfs laboring erratically through a dusty grey landscape - one has only to read this to realize that these later works of Beckett's contain just as much suffering and pathos as the earlier ones. However, there is at the same time a sense of acceptance: a sober acknowledgment of our insignificance in the face of the world's brutal grandeur, but one that isn't tempted to despair in the face of it. Something changed in Beckett's later years, and this transformation is quite evident across the course of these short pieces.
This slim volume contains translations of eight short pieces that Beckett somewhat self-deprecatingly called foirades - in English translation, 'fizzles'. He wrote these pieces over so long a period of time (from 1954-75) that their collection here is in many ways deceptive, since there is a good deal of heterogeneity here.
For example, Fizzle #5 is effectively an early sketch of his much longer prose piece The Lost Ones, describing a world composed of an arena, a track, and a ditch, and inhabited by haunting, anonymous figures. And, Fizzles #2-3, with their lone figure contemplating a missed, impossible encounter with another, surely anticipate the narrator of How It Is and his fraught relationship with the figure called Pim.
Similarly, the final revisions on some of these pieces were made with a view to being paired with works by specific artists. Beckett revised and arranged five of them to be illustrated by Jasper Johns. And, Fizzle #7 (entitled "Still") was composed specifically to be illustrated by his artist friend Stanley William Hayter. Thus, as a standalone piece, it's ideally read alongside the etchings Hayter crafted for it (for example, the one below).
To complicate matters, Fizzle #7 can, as pointed out by Ruby Cohn, also be seen as the first of a trilogy of short prose pieces, the other two of which appear elsewhere. That is, after composing it, Beckett wrote "Sounds" and "Still 3" to continue the story it tells, and to read these pieces, you'll have to turn to Appendix 1 of The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989.
Still, though, there's something to be gained by reading these pieces as a series, because they give us a picture of Beckett's development over these two decades. In the early Fizzles, we find a Beckett still obsessed with portraying lone, hellishly isolated and/or confined figures writhing in torment. By the time he was composing the last few pieces in the series, though, he had reached the limits of this kind of prose narrative in pieces like Ping (1966), and begun envisioning worlds like the ones described in Lessness (1969) and The Lost Ones (1970). Thus, for example, "Still" (1972) lacks the agonism of those earlier pieces, and presents us with a figure whose solitude isn't torture, but rather quite the contrary: sublimely meditative.
I'm drawing here on an idea that I've found more and more attractive as I've been reading through the works of Beckett's later years. Namely, it seems to me that in this last period, Beckett pushed through the sense of crushing loneliness that animates so much of his work, and found something like the glories of solitude in the face of the cosmos. It isn't that Beckett became soft and sentimental in his old age. One has only to read Fizzle #8 (entitled "For to End Yet Again") with its skull, its small body, its two white dwarfs laboring erratically through a dusty grey landscape - one has only to read this to realize that these later works of Beckett's contain just as much suffering and pathos as the earlier ones. However, there is at the same time a sense of acceptance: a sober acknowledgment of our insignificance in the face of the world's brutal grandeur, but one that isn't tempted to despair in the face of it. Something changed in Beckett's later years, and this transformation is quite evident across the course of these short pieces.
July 10, 2011
Nearly a decade ago, some semester at UMass, I read this slim collection. I read it too quickly. These brief pieces demand one's attention, and are best understood when read aloud. fizzle 4 is the most exquisite of them all, but they're all worth the time of any reader who has read and enjoyed any of Beckett's other works. Below are a few lines (with fizzle numbers in brackets) that are meaningful to me.
"confusion of memory and lament, of loved ones and impossible youth" [3]
"These allusions to now, to before and after, and all such yet to come, that we may feel ourselves in time." [2]
"Or anywhere any ope staring out at nothing just failing light quite still till quite dark though of course no such thing just less light still when less did not seem possible." [7]
"He facing forward will sometimes halt and hoist as best he can his head as if to scan the void and who knows alter course." [8]
"And dream of a way in a space with neither here nor there where all the footsteps ever fell can never fare nearer to anywhere nor from anywhere further away." [8]
"confusion of memory and lament, of loved ones and impossible youth" [3]
"These allusions to now, to before and after, and all such yet to come, that we may feel ourselves in time." [2]
"Or anywhere any ope staring out at nothing just failing light quite still till quite dark though of course no such thing just less light still when less did not seem possible." [7]
"He facing forward will sometimes halt and hoist as best he can his head as if to scan the void and who knows alter course." [8]
"And dream of a way in a space with neither here nor there where all the footsteps ever fell can never fare nearer to anywhere nor from anywhere further away." [8]
January 6, 2018
Returning to my project of reading the whole of Samuel Beckett's works in chronological order, I found myself bogged down after How It Is but have now, after some months, returned to the project by reading all of the short prose pieces written between 1956 and this little gem of 1976. Now I understand why I was bogged down. Beckett himself seems bogged down, especially if you read these short texts in chronological order in fairly rapid succession in the Collected Short prose volume as I did. I advise against it. Read intermittently, by chance, in random moments without chronological order or expectations--as I'd experienced these texts separately over the years in those discombobulated Grove Press collections of old--these texts make for much better reading.
If you want to streamline or skim, then read only Fizzles. Bits and phrases of the other texts of two decades of searching, I think, for a new tone, new ground to cover, and finding only in a phrase here or there rather than in a form that would allow the outpouring of anything more substantial than a few pages, are coalesced here into a single small portfolio--barely 60 pp in super large print. The texts seem to have little in common other than their author and the time period, despite their collection into a kind of numbered series under a single heading (more than title). Maybe it's best to take these shorts as a distillation of the period's experiments, mainly failed in terms of Literature (with a capital L) but perhaps important in terms of Beckett's stripping down process and as an important step away from the logorrhoea of the great anti-novels of the postwar period and the gem-like precision of the three short anti-novels of the early 1980s. (Best, though, to me, remains the collection First Love and other Shorts which has the better and more important earlier prose of "First Love" and a smattering of these '50s-'70s experiments that includes my particular favorite, "Enough." Best to read the Fizzles as a collection of poems in prose, I suppose, as a portfolio of a period of inconclusive spurts of words rather than the literary construction of a monolithic Work (with a capital W).
If you want to streamline or skim, then read only Fizzles. Bits and phrases of the other texts of two decades of searching, I think, for a new tone, new ground to cover, and finding only in a phrase here or there rather than in a form that would allow the outpouring of anything more substantial than a few pages, are coalesced here into a single small portfolio--barely 60 pp in super large print. The texts seem to have little in common other than their author and the time period, despite their collection into a kind of numbered series under a single heading (more than title). Maybe it's best to take these shorts as a distillation of the period's experiments, mainly failed in terms of Literature (with a capital L) but perhaps important in terms of Beckett's stripping down process and as an important step away from the logorrhoea of the great anti-novels of the postwar period and the gem-like precision of the three short anti-novels of the early 1980s. (Best, though, to me, remains the collection First Love and other Shorts which has the better and more important earlier prose of "First Love" and a smattering of these '50s-'70s experiments that includes my particular favorite, "Enough." Best to read the Fizzles as a collection of poems in prose, I suppose, as a portfolio of a period of inconclusive spurts of words rather than the literary construction of a monolithic Work (with a capital W).
July 3, 2016
A favorite. I will never finish this, it doesn't appear to be made to be 'finished.' I bought this in 1977 or so at St Marks Books while attending public High School in NJ and I keep around this Grove Press edition with exclusively typographical cover design. Distilled funny and sometimes opaque, there is something almost nasty in the shortness, but honed to an icepick. About a quarter inch thick and deep as a chasm? Full of paradoxes: "It was impossible that I should have a voice"and yet here he is voicing the impossibility. "There is nothing but what is said" Not about a yearning for political representation, not that kind of voice, but rather the voice that's evidence of presence, of existence. Sometimes annoying and too hard with its fragmentary method and obscurantism, but if you take the premise that it's not trying to hide things but rather to reveal it does become marvelous.
January 8, 2008
This is one of my all-time favorite books of short fiction, right up there with Robbe-Grillet's Snapshots (yeah I'm Old Skool). Well, the argument about whether these pieces are poetry or extended prose poems could be extended infinitely, in an Eleatic game Beckett would probably love anyway. The edition with the art by Jasper Johns is killer good. The art complements the work well. This is the sort of book where you want to grab a telephone, call a friend and say "ohmigod, LISTEN to this shit..." :-)
June 10, 2017
While I have read Beckett in the past and really enjoyed him, I found this collection of "fizzles" to be a little disappointing. Some of them were interesting, but I felt as if many had no greater message I could easily discern. If I sat down and really tried to, I'm sure I could find meaning in the more disappointing fizzles, but this makes the collection not extremely enjoyable as a light read. Overall, though, I did like the writing style, as I knew I would, and the collection was worth it as a thrift store find.
June 23, 2008
Although included in The Complete Short Prose, I like to keep this small book--guess we'd call it a chapbook now--handy to read on its own. I consider these stories an elemental source for unconventional syntax. The stories play with many of Beckett's core themes, but it seems he is most bent on stretching language to its limits via syntactical games. So, want to know what it means to break the rules of syntax and apply it persistently amidst a narrative? Start with Fizzles.
January 10, 2019
«شاید اشتباه کرد که دست کشید، از تقلا برای رخنه در تاریکی. چون احتمالا موفق میشد، سرانجام تا حدی چیزها برایش روشن میشد. هیچ‌چیز مانند پرتو نور، گاه و بیگاه، چیزها را برای آدمی روشن نمی‌کند. و همه چیز ممکن است همچنان روشن شود، هر آن، اول خیلی ضعیف و بعد[...] تا اینکه همه چیز غرق در نور شود، راه، زمین، دیوارها، طاق، بی‌آنکه وجودش ذره‌ای آگاه‌تر باشد.»
...
اگر حواشی و تعلیقات را نمی‌خواندم شاید احساس زیادی به کتاب نداشتم.
...
اگر حواشی و تعلیقات را نمی‌خواندم شاید احساس زیادی به کتاب نداشتم.
July 31, 2008
yum, more late-period beckett to suck on. i like fizzle #4 the best. samuel is my literary father figure.
February 24, 2023
آشغال. مشک آن است که خود ببوید، نه آنکه عطار بگوید.
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April 19, 2024معروف که بشی فست هم چاپ می‌کنن، مصور!۰
September 9, 2017
Beckett's "stories" have boiled down to a startling sparseness by the time these were written, between the early 60s and the early 70s. Still, there is a lot of satisfaction to be gotten from these pieces, and they don't feel at all like fragments.
January 1, 2010
the beauty of sparse language
May 15, 2011
Mostly impenetrable chapbook with eight stories by Beckett. With the exception of Fizzle #4, this collection was completely lost on me.
February 12, 2017
Typical mid-to-late Beckett prose: confined spaces, weird phrases, no idea of what's going on. Some of the pieces seems maybe interesting, but most of them were boring and unintelligible.
March 22, 2021
سر هنوز کمی ضعیف است، زمان می‌خواهد تا دوباره راه بیفتد، سر این‌گونه است. هیچ علامتی دال بر دیوانگی نیست درهرحال، که موهبتی است. توانایی‌های ناچیز، اما متناسب. قلب؟ شکایتی نیست. باز می‌تپد، آن‌قدر که از ورای سینه ببینی‌اش. اما حالا ببین چه‌طور، مثلاً به راست چرخیده، عوضِ چرخیدن به چپ کمی جلوتر باز به راست می‌چرخد. و حالا باز ببین چه‌طور، همچنان کمی جلوتر، عوضِ چرخیدن به چپ دست آخر همچنان به راست می‌چرخد. و به همین سیاق ادامه دارد تا، عوضِ باز همچنان چرخیدن به راست، همان‌طور که انتظار داشت، دست آخر به چپ می‌چرخد. بعدْ مدتی حرکات زیگزاگی‌اش روال عادی‌شان را از سر می‌گیرند، یکی‌درمیان منحرفش می‌کنند به راست و چپ، یعنی می‌برند و می‌آورندش رو به جلو در خطی بفهمی‌نفهمی مستقیم، اما دیگر نه همان خط مستقیمی که رهسپارش شد، یا به بیان دقیق‌تر وقتی که ناگهان فهمید رهسپارش شده، یا شاید با این‌همه فرقی هم نکند. چون اگر دوره‌هایی طولانی وجود داشته باشد که در آن راست غالب باشد، دوره‌های دیگری هم هست که در آن چپ غلبه دارد. درهرحال مهم نیست، تا وقتی که همچنان بالا می‌رود. اما حالا ببین چه‌طور کمی جلوتر روی زمین می‌افتد، این‌قدر عمودی که مجبور است به‌سختی پشتش را راست کند تا نیفتد. کجاست پس آن‌جا که زندگی انتظارش را می‌کشد، در نسبت با نقطه‌ی شروعش، یا در نسبت با نقطه‌ای که ناگاه فهمیده که شروع کرده، بالا یا پایین؟ یا ممکن است دست آخر یکدیگر را خنثا کنند، صعودهای طولانی آهسته و سرازیری‌های پُرشتاب؟ درهرحال مهم نیست، مادامی که او در مسیر درستی است، و اینکه او هست، چون کس دیگری نیست، مگر اینکه گذاشته باشد پنهانی جیم شوند، یکی پس از دیگری.
May 27, 2018
پنج شش سالی میشد که کسی مرا ندیده بود،در وهله ی اول خودم.یعنی چهره ای که خیلی درش غور کرده باشم،تمام این سالیان.
February 21, 2020
[He is barehead] 3/5
[Horn came always] 4/5
Afar a Bird 5/5
[I gave up before birth] 4/5
[Closed place] 3/5
[Old earth] 3/5
Still 3/5
For to end yet again 4/5
[Horn came always] 4/5
Afar a Bird 5/5
[I gave up before birth] 4/5
[Closed place] 3/5
[Old earth] 3/5
Still 3/5
For to end yet again 4/5
March 1, 2020
Language magic. Beckett's sentences don't make any kind of meaningful sense but they make sense.
July 11, 2020
بازی با کلمات.
December 29, 2022
[...]Κοίτα τον ουρανό, ένα μεγάλο βλέμμα, αλλά όχι λυγμοί και σπασμοί, μια θάλασσα παιδικότητας, άλλοι ουρανοί, ένα άλλο σώμα.[...]
March 1, 2024
beautiful copy from LA bookstore. need to find the version with jasper johns illustrations
March 3, 2024
شیوه‌ی نگارش و بازی با کلماتش خیلی برام جذاب بود.
February 9, 2023
on it no two ever meet.
like a ray of light, from time to time, to brighten things up for one. And all may yet grow light, at any moment, first dimly and then, how can one say?, then more and more, till all is flooded with light, the way, the ground, the walls, the vault, without his being one whit the wiser.
a life not worth having, because of me, it's impossible I should have a mind and I have one, someone divines me, divines us, that's what he's come to, come to in the end, I see him in my mind, there divining us, hands and head a little heap, the hours pass, he is still, he seeks a voice for me, it's impossible I should have a voice and I have none, he'll find one for me, ill beseeming me, it will meet the need, his need, but no more of him.
grey cloudless sky grey sand as far as eye can see long desert to begin.
like a ray of light, from time to time, to brighten things up for one. And all may yet grow light, at any moment, first dimly and then, how can one say?, then more and more, till all is flooded with light, the way, the ground, the walls, the vault, without his being one whit the wiser.
a life not worth having, because of me, it's impossible I should have a mind and I have one, someone divines me, divines us, that's what he's come to, come to in the end, I see him in my mind, there divining us, hands and head a little heap, the hours pass, he is still, he seeks a voice for me, it's impossible I should have a voice and I have none, he'll find one for me, ill beseeming me, it will meet the need, his need, but no more of him.
grey cloudless sky grey sand as far as eye can see long desert to begin.
January 7, 2023
Which is truer: the existential panic that wakes you up at 3AM, or the daily boredom that dampens the panic until the next 3AM? “Fizzles” is like a roiling boil of the two.
Fizzle 3 seems to be written from the perspective of a fictional character and his relationship to the writer that created him; their reliance on each other for a meaning to their existence. I could be completely wrong. And, for me, that’s the humbling joy of reading Beckett.
Fizzle 3 seems to be written from the perspective of a fictional character and his relationship to the writer that created him; their reliance on each other for a meaning to their existence. I could be completely wrong. And, for me, that’s the humbling joy of reading Beckett.
June 15, 2013
couldn't finish it! nerve-racking :|
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews