Jean-Paul Sartre (review)

Sartre is a particularly rich subject for a series exploring the relations between the lives and works of major writers and thinkers. First, more than perhaps any other twentieth-century French writer, Sartre's life has been written and re-written, both by the author himself, by the 'family' with which he and Simone de Beauvoir surrounded themselves, and by the numerous critics and biographers whom he continues to fascinate. Second, the act of writing itself was at the heart not only of Sartre's life, but equally of his persistent philosophical and literary attempts to give that life meaning, substance and 'authenticity'. Drawing on a wealth of detailed knowledge, Andrew Leak provides concise readings of Sartre's works within the context of his personal, political and philosophical development, together with a careful appraisal of Sartre's literary and cultural legacy (the final chapter angrily attacks the quality of journalistic treatments of Sartre which, for Leak, have tended to propagate 'prejudice' and 'ignorance'). The focus of the chapters, which follow a standard chronology, is the role of writing, and the written word, in the defining moments of Sartre's life. Sartre, we learn, always attempted to write himself out of a corner: bouts of autobiographical writing coincided, for example, with the drôle de guerre, and with the years between 1952 and 1956 when he was a critical fellow traveller of the PCF. The study highlights some interesting cross-fertilizations of Sartre's private and public life as he produced his vast œuvre, such as the potent brew of Communism, Marxism, Existentialism, alcohol, tobacco and amphetamines that produced Critique de la raison dialectique, as well as a number of equally interesting internal contradictions (poetry, for example, dismissed in 'Qu'est-ce que la littérature' as 'narcissistic' is reappraised as potentially 'revolutionary' in 'Orphée noir', written the same year). Limitations in terms of space necessarily means that some texts and events are glossed over fairly rapidly, but its conciseness is also a virtue, making it a useful addition to undergraduate reading lists. At once a crisp and eminently readable introduction to Sartre's thought and works and an exploration of Sartre's most sustained act of 'engagement', that of writing, this is a valuable slim addition to the 'two-and-a-half metres' of Sartre studies that Leak describes having on his bookshelf.