| Author Quoted | Samuel Beckett |
| Title Quoted | More Pricks Than Kicks |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1968/01/20 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1934I |
| Quotation | Beckett arrived in the midst of a flu epidemic and so it happened that last night, being holed in up here in the woods and unable to sleep, I finally hoisted my ruined frame out of bed, opened up the Mass wine and the Beckett underground Xerox special. Great midnight illumination. The book is every bit as good as [Joyce's] Dubliners and perhaps better. Anyhow I like it better. The writing is superb. "Dante and the Lobster" is a perfect piece of work, and shattering. Much to be said about all the loneliness stuff, solitude and society and so forth throughout the book. And merciful Mother Church ("Ding Dong"). The whole question of mercy, suffering. I mean, is the man such a cur if he demands that, after all, those who talk about mercy finally mean something by it? And if he declines to be convinced by their protestations in a dead language? (By which I don't mean Latin, either) "¦ Still flung face down with flu. |
| Quotation Source | The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 640 |
| Letter to | June J. Yungblut |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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