Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography [Paperback]

Deirdre Bair (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 1991

This definitive biography is based on five years of interviews with de Beauvoir, and is written with her full cooperation. Bair penetrates the mystique of this brilliant and often paradoxical woman, who has been called one of the great minds of the 20th century, and surely, one of the most famously unconventional figures of her generation. "As a reference work . . . Simone de Beauvoir can be considered definitive".--The Atlantic. 16-page photographic insert.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

De Beauvoir's extraordinary, long relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre is the focus of this portrait, which combines literary biography, intellectual and oral history and feminist theory. PW called pk the work "impressively researched. . . . Bair adds much to our knowledge of every aspect of de Beauvoir's life," commenting also that pk unfortunately she often overburdens readers with detail.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Bair, author of Samuel Beckett (a 1979 National Book Award winner), met with de Beauvoir for six years to compile this detailed biography of the writer best known for The Second Sex . She includes generous details about de Beauvoir's less attractive personal attributes (her slovenliness and self-centered behavior) and her questionable record during World War II. The book is an objective recording of events that shaped the life of a woman who, willingly, played down her own significant contributions to contemporary philosophical and political thought so as to remain Sartre's intellectual alter ego. Generous annotations document every chapter and provide material suggesting further research. An interesting, thought-provoking work that should dispel many myths, but Bair might well have given us a greater feel for the woman and emphasized her feminist stance.
- Danielle Mihram, Univ. of Southern California Lib.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 718 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st Touchstone Ed edition (August 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671741802
• ISBN-13: 978-0671741808
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #126,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Philosophers

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Complete, July 12, 1999

By 

Stacey M Jones (Conway, Ark.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (Paperback)

Really, this book was a page-turner, a book of facts so well-written it made one want to know more, more, more, even when the knowing was almost painful out of de Beauvoir empathy. I wanted to read it as a companion to de Beauvoir's autobiographical series and was particularly grateful to Bair for pointing out incidents in which de Beauvoir "guilded the lily" when she recounted her own life. De Beauvoir's autobiography and this make perfect companions for a study on auto/biography and its subjectivication. (Also see Silent Woman by Janet Malcom.)

I had read previous biographical material on de Beauvoir, but none I ever felt was so complete, and helped me to know her so well. I strongly recommend this as history, literary criticism, psychology and philosophy.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too repetitive, lacks analysis of her works and her ideology, July 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (Paperback)

The value of this biography is that it adds new facts andcorrects some of SdB's own mis- representations of her life. But it'stoo repetitive, often concentrating on insignficant chronologies of her trips, etc. Lacks sufficient explanation of the stultifying catholic education she rejected early in her life (was it guilt-inducing jansenistic sexophobia, the doctrine of a caring God, etc) or of the basic existentialist tenets which guided her life, such as the self-creating life project, absolute responsiblity for choices, etc. Badly in need of a final summing up chapter listing and analyzing the very disparate opinions about the contradictions and import of this amazing woman, eg was it unfathomable tenderness or simply self-delusion that enabled her to transform the ecstasy she felt with Nelson Algren into the sublimest and most poignant love affair? In many aspects of her life SdB could be a example for many women, but after reading this book one is still left wondering how and why.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF A MAJOR 20TH CENTURY INTELLECTUAL, December 22, 2009

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (Paperback)

Deirdre Bair intereviewed de Beauvoir for five years, before producing this magisterial biography. Although de Beauvoir wrote four volumes of autobiography (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Perennial Classics); The Prime of Life: The Autobiography of Simone De Beauvoir; Hard Times: Force of Circumstance, Volume II: 1952-1962 (The Autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir); All Said and Done), Bair's account give much that de Beauvoir herself left out.

De Beauvoir explains the origin of her "Beaver" ("Castor" in French) nickname, which was given to her by fellow student Rene Maheu in honor of her "prodigious work habits" (i.e., "You're a little beaver"). When Bair asked about de Beauvoir's possible romantic relationship with Maheu in these early days, "The question produced a thunderclap of anger: 'That is absolutely not true ... I never even kissed a man on the mouth then, never, never, never!"

Of course, de Beauvoir's relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre is chronicled in some detail. Bair deals frankly with de Beauvoir's deference to Sartre: "Simone de Beauvoir declared repeatedly for the rest of her life that Sartre's intellect was superior to her own, and her remarks have caused consternation and anger in equal parts among those who study her life and work. This is probably because she frequently describes herself in ways which would make it seem that she never had a thought or idea that was not first given to her by Sartre." Bair notes that they DID originally discuss marriage: "He proposed, citing the budgetary advantages of being posted to the same city and living in the same quarters. She declined, refusing to give in to bourgeois standards imposed by circumstances."

Bair chronicles the unusual sexual relationship between them: e.g., "It was the first of a succession of intense friendships Simone de Beauvoir formed with her students, all of whom subsequently acquiesed to sexual liasisons with Sartre." Sartre "openly paraded all his other women in full public view," while she "kept all her affairs as secret as possible because 'It didn't look good for me to be with other men. People expected me to be faithful, so I pretended that I was.'" Bair writes the "She told (writer Nelson) Algren that she and Sartre had stopped being lovers after their first eight or ten years together because Sartre was 'never enthusiastic in bed,' but that their friendship had become strong and deep." (De Beauvoir denied---not very convincingly---sexual relationships with women.) Her romantic relationship with Nelson Algren broke up as she wrote about the relationship: "Algren's rage over 'The Mandarins' was nothing compared to his fury over what she wrote about him in the memoirs."

Concerning the enigmatic statement "I was gypped" at the end of the third volume of her autobiography, de Beauvoir explained to Bair, "It was as if everything Sartre and I had worked for meant nothing. We had very little hope in our lives, and I expressed it in my writing."

De Beauvoir admitted her heavy alcohol use in later life to Bair: "I like to drink very much.... I mean, I feel better when I drink something in the morning.... the drinking I do during the day and the evening---that, for me, is essential. I need that."

This is a very detailed, absorbing, and insightful biography of one of the 20th century's most important and influential writers and intellectuals.