Samuel Beckett

An Exercise in Redemption: On Deirdre Bair’s “Parisian Lives”

November 14, 2019   •   By Sophie Madeline Dess

AWARD-WINNING WRITER Deirdre Bair likes to call herself an “accidental biographer.” Apparently, she “had never read a biography before she decided that Samuel Beckett needed one and she was the person to write it.” One is inclined to call this a “happy” accident since the Beckett bio won the National Book Award in 1981 and started Bair on a prolific career. However, given the mortifying and fury-eliciting anecdotes laced throughout her new memoir, Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me, happy is not the word that comes most readily to mind.