Nothing like Godot, he arrived before the hour. His letter had suggested we meet at my hotel at noon on Sunday, and I came into the lobby as the clock struck twelve. He was waiting.

My wish to meet Samuel Beckett had been prompted by simple curiosity and interest in his work. American newspaper reviewers like to call his plays nihilistic. They find deep pessimism in them. Even so astute a commentator as Harold Clurman of The Nation has said that ``Waiting for Godot'' is ``the concentrate of the contemporary European mood of despair.'' But to me Beckett's writing had seemed permeated with love for human beings and with a kind of humor that I could reconcile neither with despair nor with nihilism. Could it be that my own eyes and ears had deceived me? Is his a literature of defeat, irrelevant to the social crises we face? Or is it relevant because it teaches us something useful to know about ourselves?

I knew that a conversation with the author would not settle such questions, because a man is not the same as his writing: in the last analysis, the questions had to be settled by the work itself. Nevertheless I was curious.

My curiosity was sharpened a day or two before the interview by a conversation I had with a well-informed teacher of literature, a Jesuit father, at a conference on religious drama near Paris. When Beckett's name came into the discussion, the priest grew loud and told me that Beckett ``hates life.'' That, I thought, is at least one thing I can find out when we meet.