Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2013), Edition: Main, 592 pages
Description
Jean-Paul Sartre was a man of staggering gifts, whose accomplishments as philosopher, novelist, playwright, biographer, and activist still command attention and inspire debate. Sartre's restless intelligence may have found its most characteristic outlet in the open-ended form of the essay. For Sartre the essay was an essentially dramatic form, the record of an encounter, the framing of a choice. Whether writing about literature, art, politics, or his own life, he seizes our attention and drives us to grapple with the living issues that are at stake.
User reviews
LibraryThing member stillatim
An odd collection, which might be more useful for intellectual historians than readers, like me, who just wanted a bit of Sartre to read after lunch. The important essays are almost all here, but the book suffers a bit by stuffing too many into one volume. Sartre's style is often oratorical to an
"No one has the right to say that the events in Hungary made the intervention inevitable. No one; not even those who decided it."
NO ONE, DO YOU HEAR ME???
On the other hand, the essays on Bataille and Kierkegaard will be gobbledygook to anyone not well acquainted with their work.
None of this is to say that the book isn't worth buying, just that you might not want to read the whole thing. Philosopher types will enjoy the Bataille/Kierkegaard/Merleau-Ponty essays; literary types will enjoy the early reviews, the Black Orpheus essay, the spat with Camus; historians will get something, at least, from the various political essays. But there's very little in here about Sartre's own thought or its development, and that's a real shame. I suspect it would have clarified much of the obscurity that isn't lifted by the generally excellent annotations.
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absurd degree, perfect for declaiming on a Parisian street corner, perhaps, but not so good for, you know, reading. "No one has the right to say that the events in Hungary made the intervention inevitable. No one; not even those who decided it."
NO ONE, DO YOU HEAR ME???
On the other hand, the essays on Bataille and Kierkegaard will be gobbledygook to anyone not well acquainted with their work.
None of this is to say that the book isn't worth buying, just that you might not want to read the whole thing. Philosopher types will enjoy the Bataille/Kierkegaard/Merleau-Ponty essays; literary types will enjoy the early reviews, the Black Orpheus essay, the spat with Camus; historians will get something, at least, from the various political essays. But there's very little in here about Sartre's own thought or its development, and that's a real shame. I suspect it would have clarified much of the obscurity that isn't lifted by the generally excellent annotations.
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Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
2013 (compilation)
Physical description
592 p.; 5 inches
ISBN
1590174933 / 9781590174937