The meeting eventually took place in Meudon. Bob then wrote a piece about it, which was published in the legendary ‘Evergreen Review’, founded by the late Barnet Lee ‘Barney Fosset ( 1922-2012).

The article can be accessed from the ‘Evergreen Review’ archives – made available on their website in October 2013. I presume that the ;ER’ must have sole copyright of Bob’s work.

However, here are some tantalizing extracts:

C: I am almost 67 – in May I shall be 67…to do this torture.the hardest job in the world’.

Gallimard, his publisher, had just published his latest book, North.

BS: ‘There is a great deal of interest in you In America’

C: ‘What interest? Who is interested? People are interested in Marlene Dietrich and insurance – that’s all’.

N.B.  The US- based ‘Evergreen Review’ existed between 1957-73. In its time it published work by Camus,Ferlinghetti, Beckett, Edward Albee,Brecht, Borges, Bukowski, Nabokov, Burroughs et al,