Parisian Lives Read online

  At precisely two o’clock, the time he said he would arrive, my phone rang. “Beckett here,” he said in the high-pitched, reed-thin nasal voice I would come to know well. I mumbled something into the receiver as I slammed it down and bolted for the stairs to the lobby, where I found Samuel Beckett peering intently into the gloom through which I made my clattering descent.

  I recognized his hawklike visage at once, his slightly crooked nose and the tuft of white hair that reared straight up from his forehead. I don’t think I have ever met anyone whose physical reality was so accurately captured in photographs. He was a tall man, but I was also struck by the discrepancy between his elongated torso and his legs, which appeared short in comparison. We shook hands and murmured greetings. He was bundled against the weather in a sheepskin jacket and heavy white Irish-knit sweater with a high turtleneck collar. It reminded me of the ruff worn by British Cavaliers in earlier times, particularly after I gestured toward the lobby’s tiny table and two chairs and he swayed toward them, sweeping into one with a courtly half-bow. I took the one opposite and smiled, waiting for him to begin the conversation. There was no other furniture in the lobby, and the arrangement worked fine for Beckett’s diminished vision, but it was so tight that our knees touched underneath, even though we struggled to situate ourselves so they would not. I knew that he had recently had eye surgery, but I did not know that his general vision was still impaired and that his peripheral vision had not returned at all. The only way he could see someone was to sit or stand directly in front of them, as close as decorum would allow.

  So he stared at me intently, because it was the only way he could see me. I thought perhaps he was puzzled by my heavy coat, woolen hat, and gloves, all of which I had been wearing since I got out of bed that morning. I thought he might be afraid that I was dressed for the outdoors because I intended to spend the rest of the day trailing after him all over Paris, so I quickly explained about the hotel’s lack of amenities. It did not have the effect I intended, which was to put him at ease, because I had to shout over the two Portuguese maids, who were busily trading obscenities in two languages right next to us as they pulled at opposite ends of an old treadle sewing machine that each was determined would be hers.

  When they were gone and quiet fell, Beckett and I managed to arrange our legs on the diagonal so they did not brush. He took out a lighter and a pack of something brown, whether tiny cigars or cigarettes I was too nervous to determine. He fidgeted with the lighter, all the while staring in silence straight at me through the pale blue “gull’s eyes” he gave to Murphy, the hero of his first published novel. I was disconcerted by what I mistook for the appraising boldness of his gaze. As he fidgeted with the lighter, I picked up his packet of smokes and twisted and turned it in my hands. In one swift motion, Beckett reached across the table, snatched the packet, and spat out those first alarming words, that I would be the one to reveal him as a charlatan.

  I was struck by what I thought was scorn in his voice and a cold lack of expression on his face, and I was unable to speak. The silence deepened as he stared and stared—and stared. I don’t remember my exact reply to such a stunning declaration, but it was probably something stammering, perhaps even silly, for I was a young woman proposing an ambitious project for which I wanted his cooperation, even though I had no idea how to go about it. Several months earlier I had sent Beckett a letter volunteering to write his biography, and to my amazement he had replied immediately, saying that any biographical information he had was at my disposal and if I came to Paris he would see me. Imagine then, my shock at his initial greeting.

  Beckett saw the look on my face and, courtly Old World gentleman that he was, began to stammer an apology for having upset me. No, no, I insisted, I was not upset. He had just taken me by surprise, for after all, I was in Paris at his invitation. What I remember most clearly of that awkward beginning is how so many thoughts raced through my mind. I wondered what sort of game he was playing and whether his invitation was little more than a bait-and-switch meant to sound me out before deciding whether—or how—to put insurmountable obstacles in my way so that I would never write the book. After all, wasn’t he one of the most secretive and private of all writers, one about whose personal life almost nothing was known?

  Then there was the business of him calling himself a charlatan. I struggled to comprehend how he could possibly believe that his writing was a joke that had somehow gotten beyond his control and managed to hoodwink the reading and theatergoing public. He was a Nobel Prize winner whose novels and plays had changed literature and drama irrevocably in our time, so how could he think of himself as a sham and a hoax? Perhaps this was just his way of testing me, to see if I would respond with flattering and insincere disavowals intended to curry his favor, to determine how serious I was about writing an “objective” biography, as I had stated in my letter.

  All this went through my mind in a matter of seconds as I dropped my head into my hands and said, “Oh dear. I don’t know if I’m cut out for this biography business.”

  His demeanor changed immediately, as did his tone of voice. “Well, then,” he replied, “why don’t we talk about it?”

  Beckett seemed nervous as he launched into an apology for having to meet me in midafternoon instead of inviting me for drinks or a meal. He apologized several times, each with increasing agitation, for needing to rush off as he had to do, saying how he hoped that this long-delayed rendezvous had not inconvenienced me and explaining again about how the last-minute trip to Tunisia had caused his appointments to pile up.

  He spoke kindly when he asked me to tell him why I wanted to take on “this impossible task” and was smiling when he said, “I would have thought a young woman like you would have more interesting things with which to amuse herself.”

  And so I began to talk, most of the time coherently, because I had practiced what I wanted to say, memorizing the key arguments. Even so, there were times when I lapsed into unorganized or unrelated remarks, because there was so much I wanted to tell him. I did not touch on any of the many questions that I wanted to ask about his life or his work. Instead I told him a little bit about myself and a lot about the current state of academic theory in the United States, particularly at Columbia University, where I had written a dissertation about his life and work, for which I would receive a doctorate in comparative literature in spring 1972. He sat there quietly, giving me no visible sign that he was receiving my remarks in any way other than just listening—keenly, deeply, and intently listening. In years to come, he often responded to things I told him in this same neutral manner, and each time I found it as disconcerting as I did on this first occasion.

  However, he must have found what I said interesting enough. Time passed, and the hour he said he could spare lengthened into almost two before he realized that he was now behind schedule for the rest of his appointments. Before leaving, he made the remark that has since come to haunt me: “I will neither help nor hinder you. My friends and family will assist you and my enemies will find you soon enough.” He began to gather his things and said we could meet again in a day or two, but he could not confirm the time or date just then and would have to phone later. And with that he was gone, leaving me to wonder when (or even if) another meeting was going to happen.

  I went back to my room, and as I opened the door, I heard the radiator cranking on. With the promise of heat, I decided that coffee could wait a little longer. Beckett had made so many remarks—cryptic, sarcastic, friendly and open, evasive and unfriendly—that I wanted to record them while I still remembered what he said. It was the first of the many times after our meetings that I hurried back to a place of splendid isolation where I could transcribe everything I retained. And after this first meeting I also needed to recall everything that I had told him about myself.

  “You need to know about me,” I had insisted. “Before we get started on a biography, I can answer your question ab
out why I want to write yours only by telling you who I am.” And so I had. Looking over my notes, his remark about his friends, family, and enemies resonated. Indeed, in the seven years to come, those people did exactly what Beckett had said they would.

  2

  A circuitous route had brought me to that tiny round table in the shabby hotel. I went to Paris because I had the grandiose idea that I would be doing the literary world a service by demonstrating in a biography (as I had done in the dissertation) that Samuel Beckett was not (as the reigning view in the academic community then held) a writer steeped in alienation, isolation, and despair, but rather one who was deeply rooted in his Irish heritage and who portrayed that world through his upper-class Anglo-Irish background and sensibility. Such a high-minded mission had taken root in 1969, the year I left a newspaper career to enroll in graduate school. At the start I was not really committed to a life of scholarship but was there only because I needed a break from the pressures of being a beat reporter on constant call in the world of print journalism.

  I spent the decade between my undergraduate and graduate education writing for magazines (Newsweek very briefly) and newspapers (at that time the New Haven Register), specializing when I could in short features and in-depth profiles of local luminaries. News doesn’t happen just during business hours, which made life especially difficult for a woman who had married directly after university, was the mother of two small children, and was the main family support with a husband in graduate school. I was in my late twenties and was exhausted from trying to combine a career with family life, and I felt myself quite alone doing so. Very few married women in my social circle held jobs in the greater New Haven area, where I lived, simply because they were not expected to. Their husbands were either academic or professional men, and if any of these women did work outside the home, it was at something temporary, just until their husbands established careers. Most of those who had jobs did not have children, while I already had two. I was an anomaly who did not know that I was “trying to have it all,” for the phrase had not yet found its way into women’s consciousness. I knew only that I was burned out. I could not go on volunteering at the PTA and the Junior League while also carving out time to bake cookies for my children’s classes or provide refreshments when it was my turn for my husband’s graduate study group. Nor could I participate in the local newcomers’ group dinner parties, because I couldn’t find the time to prepare the elaborate gourmet dishes; also, they ended late and I had to get up early to be at the police station by 6 a.m. to check the police blotter before I went into the newsroom to write that day’s feature story. Trying to be and do it all had become too much.

  When the opportunity of a writing fellowship in a newly formed program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts came along in 1968, I embraced it. I thought it would be a peaceful respite for several years during which I could read novels and write about them without the pressure of daily deadlines. I thought it would enable me to recharge while also sharpening my skills for a writing career as a cultural critic in journalism. At that time it never occurred to me that I might become a professor, let alone a biographer.

  My first year at Columbia coincided with the student protests in spring 1968. “Come on,” shouted one of my new classmates as I sat in the sun on the steps before the statue of Alma Mater on a sunny April day, “we’re going to seize Schermerhorn Hall.” I couldn’t, I said with regret, because I had to go home to New Haven and cook dinner for my children. It was clear from the start that I was a most unusual graduate student, a reputation I cemented when I told my classmates that I did have to rush home but first I had to stop at Saks for a sale on purses. From that day forward they joked that I was the “Bloomingdale Marxist,” never mind how many times I corrected them about the store’s name. This is a rather embarrassing story that I still blush to tell, but I do so because it shows how uncommitted I was to a life of serious scholarship, and how, even after one year of course work, I still thought of myself as a journalist in search of a story.

  I loved being in the School of the Arts, where indeed I did get to sit around and read novels to my heart’s content. But I was not learning anything new in the nonfiction program, where my instructors, many of whom had not seen the inside of a newsroom for years, were teaching my classmates somewhat outmoded explanations of what I had actually been doing every day for almost a decade. The only part of the program that energized me was the literature courses I took in the Graduate School, where I read Joyce’s Ulysses line by line with William York Tindall and modern poetry with John Unterecker. The 1968 uprising threw the university into crisis, but for me it brought resolution. I discovered that I wanted to read literature, not listen to someone tell me how to prepare copy. I already knew how to do that. I don’t exaggerate when I say that I had fallen in love with reading and talking about literature, and somehow I wanted to find a future career that would let me continue.

  And so in the fall of 1968 I went to John Unterecker, who was then chairperson of the graduate Department of English and Comparative Literature, and I said, in effect, “Let me in.” Instead of spending a second year in the School of the Arts, I wanted to transfer to the Graduate School to get a master’s degree, with the possibility of continuing on to the PhD. I thought that no matter what my next job would be, if I became a woman who held an advanced degree, whatever I wrote would command authority. I saw myself becoming a writer more than a teacher, but if a professorship would further my writing, it seemed an excellent way to proceed.

  John Unterecker was perfectly willing to sponsor the transfer, because the tuition covering the master’s degree was already paid, but he cautioned that I would have to bring my own money if I wanted to study beyond that. The Graduate School’s admissions committee would probably be reluctant to admit a woman approaching thirty, married and with two small children, and the scholarship committee surely would not fund her. He said the committee members making these decisions were all men and they would probably think of me as a gamble that would not pay off. And besides, I would be taking a place that could better be given to a man. I nodded in agreement, for at that time I agreed with cultural norms and thought this was a perfectly reasonable attitude. I thanked him kindly and set out to find a way to pay my tuition so I could enroll in the doctoral program.

  My quest began at a fortunate moment in women’s history, when the lack of women professors and administrators in higher education became a subject of national concern. The St. Louis–based Danforth Foundation decided that something had to be done to rectify the situation, and in 1965 a fellowship program was set up for “mature women” who could get themselves admitted to a graduate school (no easy task in a male-dominated world). These women were expected to work hard and study fast enough to earn advanced degrees in a few short years, after which they were expected to glide easily into full-time positions in colleges and universities. The Danforth Graduate Fellowships for Women was a remarkable program, and everyone I know who became a GFW alumna will tell you how it changed her life. It certainly changed mine.

  Even though staying at Columbia meant continuing the commute on the old New York, New Haven, and Hartford trains, then taking the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square and the subway to 116th Street—two hours door to door in each direction—I never thought of taking my GFW to Yale. You could say I was put off by a conversation with the chair of the Medieval Studies Department, who once told me casually at a party that I would never be admitted to any graduate school because I was “too old [I was twenty-seven at the time], too poorly prepared [I was a Penn honors graduate], and…a faculty wife [of a teaching graduate student].” But such banal chauvinism didn’t touch on my real reason, one that I later learned was common among women throughout the 1970s. I was afraid I might fail, and if I did, everyone in my circle would know about it. I reasoned that if I failed at Columbia, I could save face by saying that I had decided to drop out because commuting pro
ved too difficult. That was how women thought in those days, even women like me, who had been on the front lines of their professions and subject to all sorts of rejections, insults, and abuse. Looking back, my reasoning may have been faulty, but it turned out to be the right decision.

  Columbia was a graduate school for grown-ups. There were many students just like me, who had been in the world of work, and there were professors who understood that when students returned to school after years in “real life,” the curriculum had to accommodate them. At Columbia, professors seldom required routine papers and tests. Students were expected to do their course work and, when ready, to present themselves for exams, written and oral. This atmosphere led to an urban legend about the English and Comparative Literature Department, of the student who had just finished his fifteenth year and still believed he didn’t know enough to answer questions on the two-hour oral exam that was the prelude to writing a dissertation. I had an entirely different attitude: The Danforth GFW gave its women three years from start to finish and supported a fourth year only under extraordinary circumstances. Relating this fact to my classmates, I said that if I could not manage to bullshit my way through two hours of chattering about literature, I did not deserve the degree.

  And so I set myself to it. I began by concentrating on medieval studies for two reasons: because I wanted the deep background and because I thought I needed to prove that I could do “hard work.” Reading novels had been “fun,” but now it was time for “real” scholarship. Still, I found myself constantly drawn to the novelists of the twentieth century and Irish writers in particular. I grew up with parents who were both serious readers and who established an impressive home library and encouraged regular visits to the local public one. They belonged to several book clubs and were devoted to contemporary literature. Joyce had been my lodestone since I first read Ulysses in high school and was barely able to comprehend such an astonishing novel. I read it again as an undergraduate, and at Columbia I devoted my year-long master’s thesis to a single chapter (17, “Ithaca”). Studying Joyce led to immersion in Irish culture, in everything from history and politics to landscape and real people. Thus Joyce led naturally to Beckett, whose fiction I read with more of the same astonishment. But no matter how compelling modern literature was, I still thought of it as something I read for pleasure, and I had the misguided notion that if I were to become a professor, I would have to “work.” And work meant medieval studies, which for me meant plodding slowly through Anglo-Saxon and Latin. I started on a dissertation about garden symbols that required a thorough understanding of medieval Latin because a central text was Saint Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. As I recall, there were eighty-six and at that time none had been translated from Latin into English.