Simone de Beauvoir (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

In SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, author Deirdre Bair covers de Beauvoir’s life from earliest childhood memories, following her birth in 1908, to her death in 1986. Writing a biography about a subject who has already published four volumes of autobiographical memoir is no easy task. Yet Bair has seemingly left no stone unturned in her search for pertinent material. She interviewed and collected papers from myriad friends and relatives. Supplementing this information are the interviews she conducted with de Beauvoir herself during the six years preceding her death.

What Bair has succeeded in presenting to the reader is a very down-to-earth person--neither romanticized nor glorified. De Beauvoir had difficulty finding subjects to write about, and time to write. She drank to excess, she neglected her personal appearance. And from her well-known life-long liaison with Jean-Paul Sartre, to her affair with American writer Nelson Algren, the reader will also discover de Beauvoir to be a very passionate woman. Her way of life, as well as her writing, often scandalized her fellow Frenchmen.

Finally, Bair makes intriguing references to de Beauvoir’s own writing. When Bair mentions, in reference to some event, “She [de Beauvoir] describes her leave taking in such wrenching language that her pain is palpable,” the reader is at times made to feel compelled to put this book down and read about the event in the subject’s own words. Thus Bair succeeds in embedding the desire in the reader to continue the study of Simone de Beauvoir. For what understanding of the life of a writer could be complete without extensive reading of her oeuvre?

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXVI, March, 15, 1990, p.1417.

Atlanta Journal Constitution. April 1, 1990, p.Nb.

Choice. XXVIII, February, 1991, p.933.

American History Illustrated. XXV, July, 1990, p.15.

America. CLXIII, September 29, 1990, p.190.

Choice. XXVIII, October, 1990, p.324.

The Atlantic. CCLXVI, December, 1990, p. 131.

Choice. XXVIII, January, 1991, p.782.

Booklist. LXXXVI, February 1, 1990, p.1063.

The New York Review ofBooks. XXXVII, October 11, 1990, p.35.

Chicago Tribune. September 30, 1990, XIV, p.1.

The Atlantic. CCLXV, May, 1990, p.139.

Booklist. LXXXVII, September 11, 1990, p.138.

Business Week. July 16, 1990, p.13.

Belles Lettres. LXXXVII, September 15, 1990, p.138.

Booklist. LXXXVI, December 1, 1989, p.705.

Booklist. LXXXVI, August, 1990, p.2124.

The Atlantic. CCLXV January, 1990, p.94.

Chicago Tribune. March 4, 1990, XIV, p.7.

Booklist. LXXXVI, December 1, 1989, p. 724.

The Christian Science Monitor. October 31, 1990, p.14.

Booklist. LXXXVII, December 1, 1990, p.694.

American Spectator. XXIII, September, 1990, p.35.

Booklist. LXXXVI, July, 1990.