![]() ![]() ![]() What could have come over as self-indulgence – clearly, there are worse jobs than researching the lives of two literary giants – is in fact an illuminating work about the business of being a biographer. Parisian Lives, a “bio-memoir” covering the genesis of Bair’s first two books, is less about Beckett and Beauvoir, who “cordially detested each other”, than an account of the complex dance between writer and subject, and of Bair’s efforts to chase down friends and colleagues, dig through personal and public archives and painstakingly separate fact from fiction. ![]() “Sure, we kiss on the lips, we hug, we touch each other’s breasts, but we don’t do anything… down there.” Irish writer Samuel Beckett, the subject of Deirdre Bair’s first biography “We are not lesbian!” she yelled at Bair when asked about her relationship with her adopted daughter Sylvie le Bon-de Beauvoir. Like Beckett, she was given to flashes of fury, particularly on the subject of her sexuality. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |