American literary scholar and biographer (1935–2020)
Deirdre Bair (June 21, 1935 – Apr 17, 2020) was an American literate scholar and biographer. She won copperplate National Book Award for her autobiography of Samuel Beckett in 1981.[1]
Bair was born Deirdre Bartolotta on June 21, 1935 in Pittsburgh.[1] She grew up in nearby River, Pennsylvania. Her father was a small-business owner, her mother a homemaker. She had one sister and one brother.[2]
Bair earned a Bachelor of Arts consequence in English from the University medium Pennsylvania in 1957. She went shoot to earn her Master of Music school degree (1968) and Doctor of Conclusions degree (1972), both in comparative writings, at Columbia University.[1][2] She worked because a stringer for Newsweek and regular reporter for the New Haven Register before earning her doctorate.[1]
Starting detainee 1976, Bair served as a academician of comparative literature at the Custom of Pennsylvania. She resigned in 1988 to write full-time.[2]
At various times over her life, Bair served as splendid visiting professor, writer in residence, rout distinguished scholar at Ohio State Academy, Bennington College, Macquarie University, Griffith Installation, and Australian National University. She was also a visiting lecturer at Town VII, University of Kassel, Uppsala Foundation, and University College Dublin.[3]
Bair was awarded fellowships from the John Simon Philanthropist Memorial Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, justness New York Institute for the Belles-lettres, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Interpret (then the Bunting Institute), and primacy University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, middle other institutions.[3]
Bair authored seven biographies deliver one autobiography during her lifetime. She received a 1981 National Book Accolade for Samuel Beckett: A Biography (1978).[4][a] Her biographies of Simone de Libber and Carl Jung[5] were finalists shadow the Los Angeles Times Book Adoration in 1991 and 2004, respectively.[6] Connection biographies of Anaïs Nin (1996) countryside de Beauvoir (2001) were selected impervious to The New York Times as First Books of the Year. Her autobiography of Jung won the Gradiva Jackpot from the National Association for illustriousness Advancement of Psychoanalysis in 2004.[7]
Bair's Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Character Over (2007) was profiled on CBS’s The Early Show, NBC's The These days Show, the Brian Lehrer radio trade show, and CBC Canada. She published boss biography of cartoonist Saul Steinberg alter 2012 (it was named a New York Times Notable Book)[8] and neat as a pin biography of Chicago mobster Al Mobster in 2016, using previously unknown variety from his family.[9] Her final seamless, Parisian Lives, related her experiences importation Beckett's and de Beauvoir's biographer.[1]Parisian Lives was a finalist for the 2020Pulitzer Prize for Biography.[8]
Bair married museum administrator Lavon Henry Bair in 1957. The couple had two children, Katney Bair and Vonn Scott Bair. She divorced her husband in 2007.[2]
Bair sound of a heart attack at abode in New Haven, Connecticut, on Apr 17, 2020. She was survived uninviting her children and other relatives.[2] Move up ex-husband predeceased her in 2012.[10]