The French don't mind doing things after everyone else, as long as they do them better. The Festival Paris Beckett 2006-2007, which starts this month and will include 350 events, is a case in point.
A selection of veteran Beckettians - Robert Abirached, Tom Bishop, Pierre Chabert, Barbara Hutt and the writer's nephew Edward Beckett - presented plans for the festival to a packed audience at the Maison des Écrivains here yesterday.
"Edward is our guide. Everything was done with him, step by step, with his consent," said Mr Abirached, the president of the festival. "I have little to say," replied Mr Beckett, proving that the resemblance to his uncle goes beyond thick grey hair and eye-glasses.
In Dublin, London, Berlin and "many big cities around the world", celebrations of the centenary of the writer's birth on April 13th, 1906 have come and gone. But Mr Beckett was happy that festivities should culminate in Paris, "the city where he chose to live, where he felt happiest".
For the first time, Beckett's entire theatrical oeuvre of 19 plays can be seen in Paris. This was important, said actor Pierre Chabert, "because if you only know the big plays you cannot follow the itinerary of Samuel Beckett - the way he pared down, pared down". Beckett's shortest play, Breath, lasts between 60 and 80 seconds, "depending on the director", Mr Chabert noted.
It will be difficult to see anything other than Beckett in a Paris theatre this autumn. All of the capital's most prestigious houses - the Comédie Française, Peter Brook's Bouffes du Nord, the Théâtre de la Ville and the Athénée-Théâtre Louis Jouvet - are putting on multiple Beckett productions.
There are Beckett plays in sign language and with mentally handicapped actors. Works by Bram van Velde and Henri Hayden, painters who were friends of Beckett, will be exhibited at the Galerie Montparnasse. Lectures touch on The Metaphysics of Beckett and Beckett the Man. On November 19th, the writer's admirers will be able to visit the garden of the little house in Ussy sur Marne where he escaped to work.
The Centre Culturel Irlandais will host Premier Amour, a monologue which was one of the first texts Beckett wrote in French. Irish artists John Lalor and Mick O'Dea will exhibit works inspired by Beckett, while artist-in- residence Katie Holten will use her time in Paris to "respond" to the Beckett festival.
For more information, see www.parisbeckett.com