Samuel Beckett's art through the eyes of Vladimir Nabokov, from the latter's 1970 interview.
[Q:] Did you know SAMUEL BECKETT in Paris?
[A:] No, I did not. Beckett is the author of lovely novellas and wretched plays in the Maeterlinck tradition. The trilogy is my favorite, especially Molloy. There is an extraordinary scene in which he is crawling through a forest by dragging himself, 'by catching the crook of his walking stick, his crutch, in the vegetation before him, and pulling himself up, wearing three overcoats and newspaper underneath them. Then there are those pebbles, which he is busily transferring from pocket to pocket. Everything is so gray, so uncomfortable, you feel that he is in constant bladder discomfort, as old people sometimes are in their dreams. In this abject condition there is no doubt some likeness with Kafka's physically uncomfortable and dingy men. It is that limpness that is so interesting in Beckett's work.
[Q:] Beckett has also composed in two tongues, has overseen the Englishing of his French works. In which language have you read him?
[A:] I've read him in both French and English. Beckett's French is a schoolmaster's French, a preserved French, but in English you feel the moisture of verbal association and of the spreading live roots of his prose.
dingy
adjective
dark and often also dirty:
a dingy room/corridor
Her hair was a dingy brown colour.
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