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Title: The Words by Jean Paul Sartre, Bernard Frechtman ISBN: 0394747097 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: April, 1981 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4
Rating: 4
Summary: Sinister
Comment: Surpassing the likes of Huxley and Orwell in its vision of dystopic horror, told in the guise of a childhood memoir, the story is simple yet brilliantly complex. Jean-Paul is a little boy with no personality ("no super-ego") who longs for fame and eventually takes over the world by creating a new religion, sold as an antidote to fascism. The final irony in this self-reflexive work of fiction is in the title: the boy discovers his own power in that of words, the power to change perceptions and to obscure individual differences (the author knows his Wittgenstein). Infinitely more subtle than any outspoken critique of the Soviet Union, it perhaps has more in common thematically with Nabokov's 'Bend Sinister': the boy's description of himself as 'toady' suggests a kinship with that book's villain, The Toad, founder of the 'Average Man Party'. I would suggest this book was both the peak and death-knell of the existential / nouveau roman era that combined narrative objectivity with moral-ambiguity-by-numbers, a belief attested by the extraordinary poetic and imaginative range of the great French authors since 1964, such as Jean Barth, Donald DeLille and Thomas Pynchonne.
Rating: 4
Summary: Response to Robert J Crawford
Comment: Dear Sir,
I can appreciate your not liking Sartrean philosophy. It is limited, self-refuting, and one-sided. When Sartre says "man is what he wills himself to be" we tend to agree. But Sartre goes on to say that "consiousness is afraid of its own spontenaity." In fact, he argues that there is no "I" behind consciousness. In other words, we aren't really "free" after all. Not to mention his neglect of mysticism and peak experiences, which to me have more validity than "nausea."
So far so good. You're right: people have made Sartre a trend. However, your criticisms of his youth are bogously 'out of line.' Calling him names ("twirp," "abnormal") is immature at best. You show no sympathy for the young boy Jean-Paul Sartre. It seems to me that you display a jealousy to Sartre's intelligence. You put him down because you cannot relate to him. And to cover this up, you try to say that Sartre had no genious in the first place. Obviously you never read his novels, which got him a Nobel Prize. Even you cannot deny that Sartre is one of the only philosophers to be a "writer" too.
Even if Sartre was "maladjusted," as you so unbrilliantly point out, how is this Sartre's fault? His devotion to books was the best thing for him to do. Had he not done so, he would never have become the most famous thinker (next to Freud) of the 20th century. While you were dating shallow girls, young Sartre was seeking truth. While you were getting drunk, young Sartre was being an individual and thinking for himself. Keep that in mind, if you have the courage.
Rating: 3
Summary: so what?
Comment: This autobiography is rather dull, confirming my suspicion that Sartre is over-rated, as much a product of a nationalist culture-aggrandizement machine as of his talent.
Coming from a bizarre family, he was maladjusted and socially inept, and so he lived in the world of books. No wonder he thought and wrote such strange things: he didn't have a clue about how to live as a normal person. Then, in the part not covered in the book, he built a brilliant career as an independent yet professional intellectual from his obsessions. If this kind of thing is your cup of tea - and if you buy into the myth of Sartre's genius - then you will like this book. I approached on its own terms as a literary work, without a fascination for this little toad, and I was left unimpressed. Not even the writing, which a French pal praised to me and which I read in the original, is very good.
As I put it down, I felt, "so what." Sartre was just a self-obsessed, bright twerp of a kid.
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Title: Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, H. Carruth, Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0811201880 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: January, 1975 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Troubled Sleep (The Roads to Freedom) by Jean Paul Sartre, Gerald Hopkins ISBN: 0679740791 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: July, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Being And Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre ISBN: 0671867806 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: August, 1993 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness by Jean Paul Sartre ISBN: 0809015455 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: January, 1991 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: The Wall: And Other Stories by Jean Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0811201902 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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