Parisian Lives

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"In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted PhD who managed to secure access to Nobel Priz--winning author Samel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written--or even read-- a biography before. The next seven years consisted of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote 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 on essentially the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in appproach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair's own feminist beliefs. Parisian Lives draws on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers."--Back cover