Parisian Lives

Starred review from July 22, 2019
By turns scholarly and salacious, biographer Bair (Samuel Beckett) has loosened decades of polite tongue-biting to write the backstory in what she calls a “bio-memoir” of two influential writers. With humiliating candor, she admitted to a complete ignorance of how to write a biography when she approached Beckett in 1971 and obtained his promise to “neither help nor hinder you.” Interviewing those in his social circle, Bair discovered that by “compartmentalizing people,” Beckett pitted them against each other, each currying favor and reporting back to him on her research. She struggled to fund research and travel, balance her obligations as a wife and mother, and write. Upon publication in 1978, her Beckett biography was disparaged by several critics—some of whom accused her of trading sex for access; it eventually won a National Book Award. Bair refused offers to write another biography, until 1980, when a colleague suggested she write one of Simone de Beauvoir. Theirs was a more cordial relationship, marred only when Beauvoir grew cold and dropped “the Lucite curtain” to avoid uncomfortable topics. Beauvoir’s death in 1986 propelled Bair into an extensive rewrite, delaying publication another four years. No matter her subject, Bair, a generous and graceful writer, has followed her dictum in writing biographies: “those of us who wrote literary biographies should ensure that our readers ended our books by wanting to turn immediately to our subjects’ writing.” Bair’s exhaustively detailed and lively memoir also serves as a solid study in the art of biography.

September 15, 2019
A biographer recalls the challenges of writing her first books. Bair (Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend, 2016, etc.), who won a National Book Award for her first biography, of Samuel Beckett, and critical acclaim for her biography of Simone de Beauvoir, has been asked, time and again, "what were they really like?" In a candid and engrossing memoir, Bair creates unvarnished portraits of those two headstrong, demanding, and brilliant individuals as well as of her growth as a researcher, writer, and feminist. The author had just completed her doctoral dissertation on Beckett when she asked for his cooperation in writing his biography. He replied immediately, agreeing to meet her in Paris. "I will neither help nor hinder you," he told her. "My friends and family will assist you and my enemies will find you soon enough." During many years of research, she discovered the truth of his remark, as she interviewed scores of his friends, relatives, hangers-on, and vociferous enemies, all of whom she renders in lively detail. Although Beckett did not overtly interfere, he kept tabs on her research, often making her feel "like a marionette whose strings he was pulling." After her book was published, she found that she had made her own enemies among critics and scholars she calls Becketteers, who reviewed her book with "unrelenting hostility." Suffering "a minor breakdown," Bair thought the biography would be her last. When an admiring editor encouraged her to think of a new subject, however, de Beauvoir quickly came to mind. She was, Bair thought, "the only modern woman who had made a success of everything," an achievement that astonished Bair, who was juggling the responsibilities of a wife, mother, writer, and professor. She often considered the aging de Beauvoir to be "lumpy, dumpy, frumpy, and grumpy"; although agreeing to cooperate, she was reluctant to discuss sensitive issues, notably regarding sexuality. Besides offering privileged views of her celebrated subjects, Bair reveals herself struggling with structure and style and negotiating a world of publishing and academia not welcoming to women. A rare, welcome look at the art and craft of biography.

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Starred review from November 1, 2019
Bair had no idea of what she was getting herself into when she decided to leave journalism for literature. Married with two children when she entered graduate school, her fascination with Samuel Beckett and his work inspired her to leap into biography, a literary endeavor she knew nothing about. In this gripping bio-memoir, Bair candidly, dramatically, and sometimes bemusedly recounts the shocking adversity, both devious and outright vicious, that she encountered throughout the seven long years she worked diligently on her groundbreaking book. She chronicles difficult separations from her family, conducting hundreds of interviews, exhausting struggles for funding, the cruelty of turf-defending academics, and, at every turn, rampant sexism. Though she won the National Book Award, Bair decided that she would never write another biography. Yet, as she records in this riveting tale of literary courage, she spent an arduous decade portraying Simone de Beauvoir. Bubbling with piquant profiles, astounding anecdotes, and illuminating insights into the ethics of and obstacles to biography, Bair's look-back makes all the more remarkable her subsequent and exceptional biographies of Ana�s Nin, Carl Jung, Saul Steinberg, and Al Capone. A zippy biographer's tale in sync with Shoot the Widow (2007) by Meryle Secrest, The Shadow in the Garden (2017) by James Atlas, and This Long Pursuit (2017) by Richard Holmes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2019

National Book Award-winning biographer Bair (Samuel Beckett: A Biography) turns her lens in a new direction with this "bio-memoir," detailing her experiences during the 1970s and 1980s researching and writing about Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. Bair's transformation from a journalist and a harried, conflicted wife and mother to an academic chronicler of major 20th-century cultural figures takes place against a backdrop of burgeoning feminism. This dense account of her studies and nearly two decades of traveling to Paris to conduct research includes myriad examples of sexual discrimination and harassment almost inconceivable today. Relying primarily on the notes she kept in her daily diaries, Bair presents an exhaustive report of a seemingly endless list of literary notables she met and ate with and puzzled over, as she tracked down the inner and outer lives of Beckett and de Beauvoir (who, we are told, despised each other). VERDICT Bair settles some scores and remains moot on a few issues of interest in the literary world in a narrative that will hold the most appeal for Beckett and de Beauvoir aficionados.--Th�r�;se Purcell Nielsen, Huntington P.L., NY

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2019

Esteemed biographer Bair launched her career with the National Book Award-winning Samuel Beckett: A Biography, whose subject she met in 1971 as a budding journalist with a new PhD. Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir were neighbors, and Bair soon engaged with her as well--if carefully, as the two were on deeply adversarial terms. Bair eventually learned that when writing biography, different subjects can make for different processes, and her de Beauvoir biography became a New York Times Best Book.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.