Parisian lives : Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir and me : a memoir / Deirdre Bair.
Publication details: London : Atlantic Books, 2020.Description: xiv, 347 pages ; 25 cmISBN:- 9781786492654
- 1786492652
- Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and me : a memoir
- Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989
- Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908-1986
- Bair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett
- Bair, Deirdre. Simone de Beauvoir
- Bair, Deirdre -- Friends and associates
- Bair, Deirdre
- Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989 -- Psychology
- Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908-1986 -- Psychology
- Biographers -- Biography
- Authors, French -- 20th century -- Biography
- Biography -- Authorship
- Women authors, American -- Biography
- Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
- Women biographers -- United States -- Biography
- Biographers -- United States -- Biography
- Biography as a literary form
- Paris (France) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
- 818.609 23
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item reserves | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Melbourne Athenaeum Library | Biography | 818.609 BAI | Available | 070515 |
In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted PhD who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could write his biography despite never having written - or even read - a biography herself. The next seven years of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games resulted in Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other - and lived essentially on the same street. While quite literally dodging one subject or the other, and sometimes hiding out in the backrooms of the great cafes of Paris, Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next.