Stories and Texts For Nothing - "Texts For Nothing"

"Texts For Nothing"

None of the thirteen "Texts for Nothing" were given titles; they present a variety of voices thrust into the unknown. According to S. E. Gontarski: "What one is left with after the Texts for Nothing is 'nothing,' incorporeal consciousness perhaps, into which Beckett plunged afresh in English in the early 1950s to produce a tale rich in imagery but short on external coherence." Thus these texts, when compared to the three earlier stories, as well as First Love, may be interpreted as representing a movement in Beckett's writing from Modernism to Post-Modernism. Unlike the earlier stories, these pieces are no longer completed stories but shards - "aperçus of a continuous unfolding narrative, glimpses at a never to be complete being (Narrative)." This idea is voiced in text 4, where the narrator admits stories are not required any more:

There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.