RIP Deirdre Bair

I am very sorry to hear, today, of the death of writer Deirdre Bair. She died on April 17, at the age of 84, of heart failure. She was the highly respected biographer about whom I wrote very recently, on 2/18/20, on the occasion of my having read her 2019 book, “Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir and Me.” This book was a memoir about writing biographies of these two towering writers. In my post, I raved about this book, saying it was “one of the very best books I have read recently.” The combination of the fascinating subject matter, the excellent writing, and Bair's good eye for the telling detail made the book pure joy to read. Bair also wrote biographies of other well-known people, and was an active scholar and professor. I am sad that she is gone, and sad that there will be no more books from her.