![]() ![]() ![]() Bair refused offers to write another biography, until 1980, when a colleague suggested she write one of Simone de Beauvoir. 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. She struggled to fund research and travel, balance her obligations as a wife and mother, and write. 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. 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. ![]()
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