[My father’s] esteem for Samuel Beckett long preceded the fame of Waiting for Godot, based as it was on the remarkable qualities shown by the young Irishman —this “reader” at the ENS, who’d been recruited to the École’s team by my father— when he played as a scrum-half during a difficult match with the AS Police de Paris. This match was so terrible (the police were both better trained and seriously brutal) that S.B. walked off the field slightly “dazed,” shaking his head and repeating with vehemence: “Never again! Never again!” “What a shame!” added my father when he told us the story of this match: “He had la vista!” (I am very happy to be able, with this story, to add my little stone (a veritable cornerstone, if you ask me) to the majestic edifice of Beckett criticism.)