Uriah Marc Todoroff’s Reviews > The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 > Status Update

First line of Assumption (1929): "He could have shouted and could not." In his first two published fiction pieces, Beckett is already using free indirect discourse. The writing is extremely juvenile, he's obsessed with showing off how smart he is (and he is). But from the get-go his writing is about expression, he's inhabiting from within rather than recounting. Makes sense that he starts off with poetry, too.