Samuel Beckett's Mute Interview

Nope.

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What do you get for that friend who has everything? How about a few months of idiosyncratic praise? Give the gift of The Enthusiast:

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In October of 1969, word got out: Irish novelist and dramatist Samuel Beckett would be the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The story goes that Beckett’s publisher broke the news to him over telegram, not offering congratulations but advising him to go underground. The hawkishly private author agreed and got out of Dodge (i.e. Paris, France) choosing to wait out the frenzy holed up in a hotel in Tunisia.

Despite his professed discomfort in success (he apparently preferred obscurity with his works viewed as “failures”), and the voracity with which he sought to avoid the European press, Beckett agreed to an interview request by a Swedish television station, though with the sticky stipulation that he be asked no questions.

The offer had to be a joke — how can there be answers without questions? — but the intrepid Scandinavian crew saw an opportunity, or sensed a bluff, and decided to call it. Perhaps they figured if they made the effort to travel sixteen hundred miles south to share a room with him, the taciturn Beckett would at least open his mouth.

Nope.