Beckettian

Rónán McDonald thinks the distinctive quality of Beckett's art is 'a pitiless urge to strip away, to expose, to deal in piths and essences.' It would be better to say that Beckett, in his coolly pitying manner, strips away in order not to expose 'piths and essences', but rather to reveal that there's no such thing as pith or essence. To say that the dismantling of the epiphenomena surrounding a man or woman, if taken far enough, eventually resolves men and women into--embodiments of nothingness.