Waiting For Andre — Steffan Piper

A semi-fictional account of the friendship between Samuel Beckett (the Playwright) and Andre ‘The Giant' Roussimoff (the Wrestler) when Andre was a young boy and Beckett had lived adjacent to the Roussimoff's farm in Ussy Sur Marne, just outside of Paris.

In 1960, when Andre was fourteen, the school had told his parents that Andre could not continue attending as he was too big to ride the small school bus they had for the village and it was too far to walk. Distraught, his mother Marian, had pleaded with their neighbor who owned a truck to take her boy to school to finish his education. The Roussimoff's had helped their famous neighbor extensively through the years, from maintaining his residence in his absence to laying the foundation and building his cottage. Beckett's reputation was one of an unpleasant, curmudgeonly and very private man who did not appreciate the fame that was bestowed on him. Thus, even though it was strange and out of character, Beckett said agreed and committed himself daily for almost an entire school year with this task while in his seclusion in Ussy, working on both his novel Comment c'est and his play Happy Days.

Andre, at fourteen, was already over six foot, weighed almost 260 lbs and continually maintained a positive and very jovial demeanor, contrasting his neighbor in almost every way. Of course, Andre would grow up to achieve a different kind of fame which also surrounded Beckett, but both men handled not only their fame but their families, with very different ends.