Sartre

How would you rate his fiction?

search/destroy/starting points and all that jazz.

Le Mur (The Wall) stands up. I read it every four or five years.

I've read the first one in that trilogy, and it was surprisingly funny. Really liked it. But yeah, the Wall is ace.

It is a trite statement to make that Sartre's fiction is better at revealing his philosophy than his philosophical works, but I believe it to be true. Nausea is far and away my favourite, as it really encapsulates existential angst (and the reasons why it goes beyond teenage angst), but pretty much all of his fiction is worth a shot.

Long time since I read Sartre's fiction and then only "Nausea" and the Roads to Freedom trilogy. Nausea was far and away my favourite as well. I read it 3 or 4 times, whereas I've never been tempted to reread the trilogy.

Nausea is more poetic, and more tightly constructed than the "Roads" novels, and it's more purely philosophical - the roads novels are more political. Sartre's politic views interest me less than his philosophy, and they benefit less from being presented through imaginative fiction rather than simple argument.

Thanks everyone - so far I've read Nausea which I liked in parts. Will try The Wall soon enough.

Anyone read Louis Guilloux? Don't think Black Blood is available on translation.

A film of the trilogy was made for TV in 1970 (good ol' Beeb!) and gets a re-screen at the BFI today.

Won't be able to go but has anyone seen it?

I picked this up yesterday:

http://www.amazon.com/Existential-Imagination-Sade-Satre/dp/B008G5VNLQ/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404471292&sr=1-3

These are bits of fiction that the editors believe slot into Sartre's existentialism - even if many of the stories predates this.

So there are passages from Karamzov, Tolstoy, Musil (The Moosbrugger sketch from MwQ), Proust. What caught my eye was a story by Pavese (called Suicides which I know I'll never come across).

More on the intro later, have yet to finish it.

The Roads to Freedom is an acclaimed, taboo-busting 1970s drama series based on the novels of Jean-Paul Sartre. Set in 1938's Paris, it looks at the lives of Mathieu, his mistress Marcelle and their friends. Watch tonight on #BBCFour from 10:10pm and after on @BBCiPlayer. #BBC100 pic.twitter.com/Zke8NCT2sV

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) July 27, 2022

Can see the inner monologues getting annoying.

In that clip I can see the guy is ashamed to buy sex. Don't know if I need to hear it.

Never heard this incredible Jean-Paul Sartre story before. pic.twitter.com/iEkksIatck

— Mark Walsh (@_Mark_Walsh_) June 25, 2024

pvmic: i learned this story from the nme review in 1978 of ELP's LOVE BEACH!

(the reviewer said it was LOBSTERS tho, which is apparently how simone de beauvoir tells it)

Pet lobster far more acceptable in French literary history. De Nerval had one. Fromm the wiki:

Nerval had a pet lobster named Thibault, which he walked at the end of a blue silk ribbon in the Palais-Royal in Paris.[18]

According to Théophile Gautier, Nerval said:[19]

Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad.

outdoor cats discourse is nothing compared to onshore lobsters discourse: de nerval is cancelled