Hugh Kenner

About three hours later, a pneumatic arrived in the unforgettable bleak Beckett handwriting, which you read by holding the page...

sideways and citing along the letters.

And this gave me a telephone number that I was to call at 5 p.m.

And the digits were 0011, perfect Beckett number.

I called this number precisely at 5, and a charming Irish voice wanted to know would he come to me or would I come to him, which was amazing.

I thought I'd inspect him in his habitat, so I went there.

During the conversation, I said, I don't know if you realize how difficult you are to get in touch with.

And he said, yes, I find that rather useful.

It was some time before Hugh Kenner began writing about Beckett.

When I did start writing about him, he wrote to me through the publishers offering the loan of three unpublished manuscripts, which I had never heard of and would never have been able to ask him about because I didn't know they existed.

So he was ultra-cooperative.

Apart from the fact that he would not supply information, he would supply material.

He would volunteer material.

He would answer questions with great precision.

He would answer questions about his books if they are the kind of question that a very careful reader could answer.

He would say, the situation appears to be...

And it would be as if one scholar were reporting results to another scholar.

It is not the authority of the author which he disclaims.

He will talk about James Joyce, an almost obsessive topic.

I've heard him tell three times