When Samuel Beckett and the Dutch painter Bram Van Velde met in Paris in the1930s both were living in abject poverty and neither could have anticipatedthaton th... » 

When Samuel Beckett and the Dutch painter Bram Van Velde met in Paris in the1930s both were living in abject poverty and neither could have anticipatedthaton the other side of World War II and the brutal occupation of France bythe Nazisthey would each go on to be luminaries in their respective mediumsBeckett winning the Nobel Prize and becoming a bulwark of contemporary Westernliterature and Van Velde holding exhibitions all over the world. Thirty yearslater a younger author at the start of his career is introduced into thecompany of these two great pessimistsneither of whom make cooperativeinterview subjects and each of whom represents in his own way a radicalrejection of the common languages of his art. Itself a mixture of idolatrydeft characterization and critical insight Conversations with Samuel Beckettand Bram Van Velde is both an entertaining and insightful contribution to ourunderstanding of the lives and thoughts of two masters. «