Parisian Lives

Fascinating... Wonderfully entertaining and absorbing * Sunday Times * Anyone planning to write a biography of a living person might be forewarned by Deirdre Bair's bio-memoir, her gripping account of uncovering the lives of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir... In Parisian Lives, which reads much like a making of... documentary, she gives us her off-camera take on her first two biographies. And, to our delight, we become voyeurs... A story well told. * New York Times Book Review * [An] insightful and gossipy memoir of a biographer's voyage around two towering subjects... Using her detailed diaries and notes of the time, Bair conjures the atmosphere of the city in which her two subjects lived - never forgetting her own excitement and trepidation, and frustration at moving between salon and cafe-tabac in a sometimes comical search for their stories. -- Tim Adams * Observer * Bair, who is 84, has always stayed silent about the shadow side of her great undertaking, the one that made her name and set her on a path as a prizewinning biographer. But with all the original players in the Beckett universe safely dead... Bair finally feels free... The result is deliciously indiscreet. -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian * Absorbing... Informative and highly readable. -- Jay Parini * Literary Review * Sparkling . . . Bair spent seven years on Beckett and ten on Beauvoir, and her dedication to her subjects is apparent. Into her accounts of working with these eminent, often exasperating writers she weaves recollections of malfunctioning tape recorders, grandstanding sources, and her travails as a professional and a mother commuting across the Atlantic, working in a field dominated by men. * New Yorker * This juicy book, which [Bair] dubs a bio-memoir, is at once a record of triumph over the skepticism and sexism she encountered on her path from journalist to academic and biographer and a valuable lesson in the art of biography . . . Parisian Lives is an unqualified success. * Wall Street Journal * A lively, incisive and personal exploration... What Parisian Lives makes clear is that Ms. Bair is a gifted storyteller with the ability to recount not only what happened with whom and where, but what motivated her subjects and what made them the fascinating people they were. Now 84 and no longer young and naive, Deirdre Bair retains her unique talent for biography and autobiography. * Washington Post * Hugely entertaining... The litany of characters she crosses paths with couldn't be invented. All are folded neatly into her protracted game of chess with Beckett with as much weary regret as gossipy relish. * Irish Independent * The Irish master's pioneering biographer recalls her own tale with endearing charm. * Evening Standard, 'Book of the Week' * A charming, thoughtful memoir * Tatler * 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... A rare, welcome look at the art and craft of biography. * Kirkus Reviews * By turns scholarly and salacious, biographer Bair has loosened decades of polite tongue-biting to write the backstory in what she calls a bio-memoir of two influential writers... A generous and graceful writer... Bair's exhaustively detailed and lively memoir also serves as a solid study in the art of biography. * Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) * Full of encounters, reflections, tribulations, and revelations - an enthralling account of a biographer's lot, by one of the art's most distinguished practitioners. -- Sarah Bakewell, author of At the Existentialist Cafe A totally compelling account by a master biographer of the joys and frustrations of writing another's life. While some of her revelations are explosive, Bair manages to present her legendary subjects, Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, as poignantly human. This groundbreaking work returns us nostalgically to a literary Paris that teems with intrigue and humor. -- Rosemary Sullivan, author of Stalin's Daughter This memoir is one of a kind. The backstory of two of the great biographies of our time, it is absorbing from start to finish. I read it in two sittings: that's how eager I was to know what came next. -- Vivian Gornick, author of The Odd Woman and the City Parisian Lives is a signal achievement. Deirdre Bair's engrossing account of nearly two decades of adventures in Paris brings the city to vivid life. And her personal story, told here in gripping fashion, becomes as compelling as those of her illustrious biographical subjects. -- Mary V. Dearborn, author of Ernest Hemingway Parisian Lives gives readers insight into Bair herself as a woman and writer undertaking the alternately arduous and thrilling, hilarious and inspiring task of writing the biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir. As pure memoir it is transporting, and as tribute to the art of biography it is a crucial guide for those aspiring to take a similar journey into someone else's life. Bair shows how it should be done, which is to say how she did it. -- Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women