Samuel Beckett's new piece of short fiction is both familiar ground and, as its title suggests, a progression into new territory. Beginning with Belacqua Shua in More Pricks than Kicks, a series of overlapping Beckett protagonists have been struggling “on” toward unattainable relief from compulsion. They are either compelled from without to push “on” in a physical journey in quest, flight from pursuers, or movement in some abstract pattern. Or else they are compelled from within to “say on” (page 7) until some story is completed or there are no more words to use up.

Each new Beckett character in a new situation is also another stage in an apparently endless progression. Like one of these characters, Beckett seems compelled to present all of the possible situations. Together, the succession of protagonists is his attempt to exhaust his own mind. Worstward Ho is thus, as the narrator informs us, the “latest state” (page 46) in the process of “all gnawing to be naught. Never to be naught” (page 46).

An unidentified speaker ruminates to himself. Slowly out of the verbiage a vision emerges of narrator represented by a skull “oozing” words out of one black hole.