"Helping to keep his hand in, the influence of the daily rhythms of correspondence on the real writing, when it came, should not be underestimated. Beckett was also surprisingly relaxed about sharing that writing with correspondents. A letter to Jérôme Lindon launches without preamble into an extract from a work in progress, while many letters break into poetry (his “doggerelizings” of Chamfort, and the Mirlitonnades), not to mention an Irish variation on an obscene Kurt Vonnegut limerick (“There was on old man from Kilcool, / Who soliloquised thus to his tool . . .”)." David Wheatley TLS

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