Dinner with Jacque Roman, French poet

Jacque and I agreed last night that Beckett was the end of writing as we'd known it, that he'd finished it once and for all, and that finishing it was the biggest part of his project.

I'd started by asking Jacque what he thought of Beckett, knowing he couldn't understand my question, not speaking English, nor would I understand his answer, not speaking French. Understand, we'd both been drinking a great deal of wine, first white and then red in the French tradition, and eating great quantities of paella, bread, olives, and slices of chorizo, and had just this night been introduced to one another as writers ourselves; Jacque as a poet and I as a writer of prose whose prose tended toward the poetic. Which is to say that Jacque and I could not understand one another as writers other than on a pre-lingual tableau we'd need to create right then and there.

At some point I said, "if I was really a writer I wouldn't write." I'd lit a firecracker; what I said made a universal sound both of us understood, and Jacque and I started laughing. More red wine and more after that, after which no more was understood between us, other than we are both writers who write because writing seems like the best thing to do with our lives.