How it was

the long version

"Anne Atik, the poet, and her husband, the distinguished painter Avigdor Arikha, were part of Samuel Beckett's circle in Paris from the 1950s until the latter's death in 1989. Atik began jotting down conversations with Beckett in 1970, and these document his interests and passions - for chess, sport, music, and above all his deep knowledge of literature in several languages. Atik's recollections deal in minute particulars - details of their dinners at home or nights out in Montparnasse, the classical recordings to which Beckett preferred to listen, the passages he would quote and re-quote from the poets, the paintings he admired, the touchstones by which he measured himself and others."--BOOK JACKET.