Sartre: No Entrance, Either

The CBC writes that "Jean-Paul Sartre appears to be fading as a French cultural icon." Sartre's certainly fading at the CBC; the Canadian broadcaster evokes the title of his major philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, to treat Sartre's decline as a headline joke: "Sartre's being drifts closer to nothingness."

What evidence is there for this supposed fade? First, this summer marks the 100th anniversary of Sartre's birth, and a major Paris exhibit celebrating him "has drawn a disappointing number of visitors." Second, his shrinking number of enthusiasts assert that "the general public today knows little about him or his philosophies." Third, "few of his plays, which include No Exit, are regularly performed in French theatres or taught to students."

Here's my favorite exhibit: "His fans complain that the Cafe de Flore in the Left Bank area of Paris, where the prolific Sartre and partner Simone de Beauvoir wrote and held court with other left-wing intellectuals, is now filled with tourists."

Of course it's filled with tourists (many of them French provincials, by the way); Parisians know better than to pay its prices. If you want to, you can still hang out with Left Bank students who are debating culture and politics, but you'll find them in the quarter's fast-food burger joints, not paying $20 for un sandwiche au jambon.

"France hated him when he was alive and shuns him in death," says Bernard-Henri Levy, who wrote a study of Sartre. "He is treated like a pornographer."

Not so: France's leading postwar pornographer is cracking her whip to ever greater applause.

Comments

scape | June 27, 2005, 5:44pm | #

So, hell is no other people?

Handsome Dan | June 27, 2005, 5:53pm | #

"Sartre is smartre!"

m | June 27, 2005, 6:09pm | #

When they say that No Exit isn't performed, are they including the movie version with Georgina Spelvin?

Ken Shultz | June 27, 2005, 6:35pm | #

He may have embraced Communism, but, to my ear, "Existentialism: What is it?" reads like a libertarian primer.

...so radical freedom goes the way of Anglo Saxon Economics?

Jim walsh | June 27, 2005, 6:47pm | #

Merde

isildur | June 27, 2005, 7:06pm | #

We stayed at the Select Hotel, which is in Place de la Sorbonne, a little courtyard next to the Sorbonne on the Left Bank.

Next door was a cafe that served American-style breakfast. And it was jammed full of the walking, talking, smoking embodiments of every French intellectual stereotype you can imagine.

Yes, the bearded guy with dark shoulder-length hair, intense eyes, and black turtleneck was there, holding forth to the gorgeous platinum blonde girl with a sketchbook clutched in one hand, both chainsmoking Gauloises and drinking vin ordinaire from carafes.

I did a double-take. It was like a movie set.

Nice hotel, though.

Mrs. Essence | June 27, 2005, 7:52pm | #

(Interior the Sartres flat. It is littered with books and papers.
We hear Jean-Paul coughing. Mrs Satrre goes to the door. She is a
ratbag with a fag in her mouth and a duster over her head. A French
song is heard on the radio. She switches it off.)

Mrs Premise: How's the old man, then?

Mrs Sartre: Oh, don't ask. He's in one of his bleeding moods,
"The bourgeoisie this, the bourgeoisie that.."



http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/jpsartre.htm

Maurice Girodias | June 27, 2005, 10:38pm | #

Ah, non. Ze Dominique Aury is not, yes, shunned. But she have only ze one movie, and we are not sure, you see, zat zi O was not written by M. Pauvert (evidemment, it was co-written, yes? Even she say so to M. de St. Jorre. And I am the one with the copyright to all translations, yes?)

Zere are, in the works, yes, several documentaries coming, about, it make me blush to say it, moi.

But you are right, yes, about one thing. Ze best-selling edition of Genet's Journal de Voleur in UK, it does not include l'introducion par M. Sartre. Vraiment, it was also not published by Barney Rossett.

raymond | June 28, 2005, 1:39am | #

Très «bouchien» comme philosophe, Sartre held that the end justifies the means, specifically defending the use of violence to achieve freedom.

Awful man.

kevrob | June 28, 2005, 4:26am | #

I always liked Camus better, anyway. Camus had a heart.

Kevin

Douglas Fletcher | June 28, 2005, 6:01am | #

Being that I'm a lifelong non-smoker, I doubt I'm qualified to join this discussion.

R C Dean | June 28, 2005, 9:30am | #

You don't have to inhale, Douglas. Faking it is the sine qua non of philosophy.

mk | June 28, 2005, 10:17am | #

Kierkegaard was funnier.

Todd Fletcher | June 28, 2005, 11:40am | #

Mrs Premise: It's a funny thing freedom. I mean how can any of us be really free when we still have personal possessions.

Mrs Conclusion: You can't. You can't ' I mean, how can I go off and join Frelimo when I've got nine more instalments to pay on the fridge?

Stevo Darkly | June 28, 2005, 2:07pm | #

So, hell is no other people?

That was good.

About The Story of O: Not many people know the story behind the "story," as it were.

Originally the novel was to be about the bizarre practice of sado-pasta-masochism, in which "pasta tops" flog "pasta bottoms" with strands of cooked spaghetti. This is where the expression "forty lashes with a wet noodle" comes from.

Orginally, the book was to bet titled The Story of Uh-Oh Spaghetti-O. However, upon the publisher's insistence, the "pasta" elements were removed from the novel out of fear that they would be too shocking to any but the most depraved minority of readers of the time, even in France.

Later, the adventurous authoress wrote a novel about having sex with musical instruments, titled Bang the Drum Slowly, but this did not enjoy nearly the success of O, in neither commercial nor critical terms.

Authoress Aury tried one more foray into the literary world of kinky sexuality, with her novel of bondage set in Bangkok, How to Tie a Thai.

When that failed to sell, she tried writing a child's book in the tradition of Lassie, Rin-Tin-Tin and Call of the Wild, called Fire and Dalmation! The Story of a Firehouse Dog. Alas, she found the publisher's insistence that she delete all sex scenes too stifling.

Finally, Aury began writing a series of novels about ships at sea. Her initial effort, about World War II naval warfare and the urban African-American experience (A Submarine Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich) sank without a trace, as it were. She gave up writing altogether after her final effort, set in the Age of Sail and titled Ah, Frigate!

Dogzilla | June 28, 2005, 3:31pm | #

Jean-Paul Sartre: A major Western philosopher who also finds time for windsurfing and sushi.

Melissa | June 28, 2005, 9:01pm | #

Ala, nobody of note even bothers to dismiss Ayne Rand.