Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all. It is not. 'Dante and the Lobster' is the first of the linked short stories in Samuel Beckett's first book, More Pricks Than Kicks. Publish
In the first of these two plays, an old man records his comments as he listens to a tape recording of his own observations on how life felt when he was 39. In the second, a man walking along the seash
