Books: Words of the Bard of the Bitter End

by SAMUEL BECKETT 128 pages. Grove Press.

FIZZLES

by SAMUEL BECKETT 61 pages. Grove Press.

Each $6.95. $1.95 paperback.

Coming from almost any author but Samuel Beckett, 70, these two collections might seem slight to the point of frippery. Ends and Odds contains eight brief pieces for the stage, radio or television. Fizzles offers an even more self-derisive title, generous margins, plenty of white space and eight snippets of prose, the longest of which does not quite fill nine pages. Yet in Beckett's case, the oddity is not that $13.90 (plus tax) purchases so few words, but that those words were written at all.

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