The authors have included exceptional pieces from every period in Sartre’s life, giving readers a precise understanding of a...
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) need no longer be feared as the intensely deep analytic writer of all things existential. His essays show his brilliant ability to explain the unexplainable.
Aronson (History of Ideas/Wayne State Univ.; Camus and Sartre, 2005, etc.) and van den Hoven (Sartre Today, 2006, etc.) exhibit their incredible knowledge of Sartre, right down to tweaking the translations of almost all of the essays included in this collection. The essays have been collected from Situations, Selected Prose and newspaper articles written in 1945 and presented chronologically. His “passing thoughts” cover a wide spectrum, from literary criticism to jazz to Calder and Giacometti. Especially fascinating are his views of America in 1945, particularly New York, “the harshest city in the world.” Sartre’s observation of American workers and their unions are still relevant. The editors clearly explain Sartre’s falling out with Camus, and his “Reply to Camus” is a true joy to read—it makes one wonder what an interesting attorney he might have been, along with all his other talents. Sartre minced no words, and his easy, natural way of writing enabled him to expound on diverse subjects with hardly a moment’s hesitation. Suddenly, existentialism is clear and logical, and the philosopher’s development clearly illustrated. Sartre wrote essays probing every political and social theme of his time, providing not only his own thoughts, but a remarkable view of history. His literary criticism should be the established standard for book reviewing.
The authors have included exceptional pieces from every period in Sartre’s life, giving readers a precise understanding of a talented writer and philosopher.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59017-493-7
Page Count: 600
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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