Images of Beckett - Index of

affairs, first Combat or L’Humanité, then, later on
in his life, Libération, all left-wing newspapers.
When he was over in London during the
summer to help with productions of his plays, a
lunch-time drink in a local pub would find him
with his eyes glued to a television set, particularly
when a Test Match was being played between
England and Australia. Cricket and rugby were
among our regular topics of conversation. Other
friends spoke to him about golf. If you were
visiting him in Paris, or when he was directing his
plays in London, you soon learned never to try to
make an appointment for a Saturday afternoon,
when he would be totally engrossed in the radio or
television commentaries on international rugby or
other sports. That period of the week was
sacrosanct.
Chess was a lifetime passion with Beckett and
found its way into several of his works. 13 He
idolised Capablanca and Alekhin and had dozens
of chess books in his library. He was an avid fan of
the chess columns in Le Monde and played chess
regularly for more than twenty years with his
painter friend, Henri Hayden. The Surrealist
painter and chess Grand Master, Marcel Duchamp,
was, Beckett told me, much too good for him. Yet
he said this with the quiet satisfaction of knowing
that he had played against someone of that calibre.
Often, however, an evening with Beckett could
be far from ordinary. I remember being elated on
many occasions when he revealed the vast range of
Samuel Beckett, 1973
A PORTRAIT OF BECKETT 13