Deirdre Bair (1935–2020)

When journalist turned biographer Deirdre Bair decided to expand on her doctoral thesis to write a biography of Samuel Beckett she surprised herself by garnering his agreement. Beckett said he “would neither help nor hinder” her efforts to write “this business of my life,” as he referred to the biography. Although he agreed to be interviewed repeatedly Beckett wouldn’t allow her to take notes or record their conversations. The book won a National Book Award in 1981 and took seven years to research, write and publish. It also took a toll on her personal and professional life, eliciting jealousy and hostility from “Becketteers” and others who felt she wasn’t the right person for the job.

Bair also wrote a biography of Simone de Beauvoir, a ten year effort. She got to know Beauvoir’s friends, family and many other feminists in that decade. Her descriptions of the interview, writing and travel process for both books, as well as how it all affected the other areas of her life as a professor, wife and mother, are fascinating. Bair provides true insight to the life and methods of a biographer.

Bair writes of the difficulties of being taken seriously as a woman, journalist and biographer, both in academia and the literary world. She feels it was an “almost unbelievable privilege to know and write about these two giants of contemporary culture.” She describes the experience well in this book.… (mer)

How does an author go about writing a biography of a well known subject, while refraining from judgement, creating controversy, maintaining a good working relationship with the subject and the people around them? In this "bio-memoir Deirdre Bair relates her experiences, struggles and reactions while first compiling the biography of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir.
It was a revelation for me to see how much time, money, effort and negotiating goes into the research for a biography. This is a book about Bair herself, not about Beckett or de Beauvoir. I read it as a personal memoir , and as such it is engaging, honest and important.

I received this book in a giveaway, and I am glad to have read it.… (mer)

More a memoir than an autobiography, the author discusses her experiences writing first the biography of Samuel Beckett, because she decided as a young graduate student doing a dissertation on him that he needed a biography and she was the one to write it. Having never written a biography, and not having read biographies, she nonetheless sent a letter to Beckett in Paris. The bulk of the book discusses the seven years she worked with him and his circle, and the aftermath of writing a biography of a man so revered, with so many scholars who believed they knew his work better than anyone else, and all that by a young woman, in an age where biographies written by women were not usually read by men. Flushed with the success at achieving what at times seemed unachievable, she sends a letter to Simone de Beauvoir, and in spite of being told by publishers that no one wants to read the biography of an old French feminist, she proceeds to spend the next ten years working on the book. She found a publisher, and it became a bestseller, unlike the Beckett book, which had decent success. What is most striking to me is the difference between the two strong-willed individuals and their circle of friends. The weird coldness of Beckett's world is contrasted with the warmth of Beauvoir's world, and the circle of friends who do some of the jockeying for position, but none of the odd and possibly psychotic behavior she encountered with Beckett. Not a how to book on biography; you will not learn how to do that here. Not a biography of either subject, but a memoir of the author's time with them. She takes you tantalizingly close to answers she was seeking from the subjects, but leaves you hanging in the end, possibly with the hope that you will run out and buy the biographies.… (mer)