Lady novelist

I ask the lady novelist if she read Beckett.

Yes, she said, I read him a long time ago.

No, I said, I meant right now.

I know what you meant, she said.

She hadn't liked what I said from the beginning. I'd said that Beckett was all I read now, that reading him didn't make me want to read any other writer.

I said that as far as I was concerned they could just keep awarding Beckett the Nobel Prize for Literature year after year, as they could have Gertrude Stein before Beckett.

The lady novelist had a reading to give. A stack of books – her latest novel – were waiting on the little table beside the lectern. After the reading she'd sign a copy for anyone who came forward and said they'd like to buy one.