As a young man, Samuel Beckett (1906-89) hoped that writing could provide psychic authenticity and true representation of the physical world. Instead, he found himself immersed in artificialities and self-enclosed word games. Daniel Albright argues that Beckett sought escape through allegories of artistic frustration and the art of non-representation and estrangement. Albright depicts Beckett experimenting with the concept that an artistic medium might be made to speak. Engaging with radio, film, television, prose and drama, Albright's Beckett becomes a sophisticated theorist of the very notion of the aesthetic.