In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Two for the Show
  • Donald Schier (bio)
Tête-à-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley (HarperCollins, 2005. xvi + 416 pages. Illustrated. $26.95)

Although this book deals with two famous writers, it has little to do with literature. It presents a group portrait of those whom Hazel Rowley calls the "Sartreans." References to works and to dates of publication are there merely to establish fixed points in the narrative of these tangled lives.

Simone de Beauvoir writes at the beginning of Adieux, a Farewell to Sartre, "this is the first of my books—the only one, no doubt—that you will not have read before it is printed." Their lives were continually joined from their student days when they were rivals for honors in the Agrégation de Philosophie. Her nickname, Castor (Beaver), dated from the time she had shared a study with Sartre and his friend Paul Nizan. Already Sartre had the reputation of a drinker and frequenter of brothels. On October 14, 1929, they made love (she for the first time) and their lifelong interdependence began. Their association was never exclusive. Both parties were free to have other more transient affairs because these did not affect their basic relationship.

Once their teaching careers began, and they were assigned to different towns so that they could meet only occasionally on weekends, Sartre began affairs with two Polish sisters, Olga and Wanda Kosakiewicz, who were to be linked with him for the rest of his life, though not always at that level of intimacy. Simone soon began an affair with Pierre Bost, though he too was attracted to Olga; and Simone herself was sleeping with one of her students, Bianca Bienenfeld. Then the war began and soon came the occupation of Paris by the Germans.

Once released from a German internment camp, Sartre began writing the plays that would first make his reputation. The Flies was a great success, with Olga in the role of Electra. The most popular of the plays, No Exit, was written in two weeks in 1943 and was performed with Wanda in the part of Estelle. Camus directed it and played Garcin. Later in 1943 Being and Nothingness appeared. Beauvoir's first novel, She Came to Stay, was published in the same year. Sartre and Beauvoir had become celebrities. They belonged to the upper crust of the Left Bank notabilities, which meant that they had lunch with Picasso and Dora Marr.

At the liberation of Paris Sartre was famous. Through the good offices of Camus, Sartre was one of the Resistance journalists sent to the United States. He had read Faulkner, Dos Passos, and Hemingway, but he did not speak English. Wanda's place as lover was taken by an American woman, Dolores Vanetti. On his return to France Sartre resigned his teaching post, determined to live by writing. In June of 1945 he turned forty.

In 1947 Beauvoir also was sent to the United States, and the journal of her visit was later published as America Day by Day, which includes a description of her brief meeting with Nelson Algren. She subsequently returned to visit Algren, who had somehow accepted "that would-be [End Page lxvii] craze Existentialism." She asked Algren if she could return to Chicago to visit him for a month and was shocked when he replied, "No. Too much work."

The Second Sex appeared in June 1949. Algren paid what turned out to be a happy visit to Paris, and Beauvoir did indeed return to Chicago, only to find that Algren had lost interest and was thinking of remarrying his divorced wife. He was soon replaced in Beauvoir's life by Claude Lanzmann, though she continued to correspond with Algren.

Sartre had now entered upon a period of staggering literary productivity. In rapid succession he published nine plays, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, The Portrait of an Anti-Semite, and The Words (for which he refused the Nobel Prize), as well as a great deal of journalism.

Both Beauvoir and Sartre, unhappy with the U.S. because of the Cuba embargo, and with France because of the Algerian war, turned toward the Soviet Union, where...

pdf

Share