Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century, Volume 1 : Protestant or Protester?

Rating:
Summary: a great bio of one of the greats of the 20th C.
Review: I don't know what's wrong with the next reviewer (I suspect it's Anne Coulter with a fake moustache- Hi Anne!). Yes, Sarte supported some bad people, and some not so worthy causes- but then if we are to judge the Soviets and China for their victims- does that mean turning a blind eye to the countless dead in Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, El salvador, Columbia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iran, and God knows how manyother places where regimes were overturned and dictators installed and bombs dropped either with US Aid/money/training or directly by us.

Choose your evils. Sartre had more gumption than most when it came to calling out his age on its evils. Are we to blame him because, post-WWII he turned away from a non-poitical stance and embraced a left-wing ideology?

This is a short, consise bio, and I think the best on the market of its kind. If you are looking to round out your perception of this enigmatic thinker- pick up a copy!

-Ed Niles

Rating:
Summary: Well- it's THE AUTHORIZED BIO... Sartre chose Gerassi
Review: One of the best sartre bios out there (and the official one). Volume One- It has the dual fortune of being both a quick read and a decent intro to Sartre's life and thought. It also calls him on his *ish*, which is rare for biographers. (Gerassi's parents were Spanish -ok his mom wasn't but married into it- friends of Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir, in fact both his mother and father as well as Jean hismelf became the basis for characters in sartre's 'Roads to Freedom' Series of novels).

While not as massive a compendium as the Annnie Cohen-Solal bio, this has much to reccommend it. In fact, preciseley that it is not the massive compendium reccommends it in my eyes. Who has time for that but the intellectual janitors in their ivory towers? Gerassi knows Sarte's works quite well, but primarily- he knew the man himself and he gives interesting insights into many anecdotes and ideas.

My feelings towards Sartre tend to be passionately ambivalent. I don't care for his philosophy, which will always be 'cool' to the pseudo-sophisticates who don't even possess a thorough grasp of it... I was enchanted with him in my teens mainly because of his persuasive skill with words (the man was an extraordinary wordsmith), and I will always be deeply enamored of his novels. 'nausea,' alone I feel should secure his place in the history of literature.

There are tons of works on Sartre purporting to unveil his thought and life. Most of the ones I've read are inadequate- they come off as hack-kneyed and reactionary, and try to compensate for their faults with an over-abundance of fruitless linguistic play that goes nowhere- does nothing, or they take him to task overly for a variety of his personal failings (and there are plenty from which to choose). Few thinkers and biographers attempt to tackle the man as a writer and an activist... Few try to work with Sartre's all-too-human imperfections and put them into context.

...And few see any kind of logic in Sarte's later years but Gerassi, because of his close involvement with both Sartre and De Beauvior, is able to show the heart and soul of the man at work, especially in his darker years (involvement with revolutionary Maoists and loss of his sight and mental faculties, most likely due to his extensive use of drugs, ampetamines, alchohol etc in his 30s and 40s)...

Stil, Sartre is a writeer and thinker worth exploring, and he was one of the more interesting men of his time. If you are at all interested in learning more about this maddening intellectual of the 20th C- this is a fine place to start. Gerassi was chosen by sartre mainly because he was not an acolyte- he had his own opinions and had frequent arguments (some quite vitriolic) with J.P. A couple of which gerassi recounts.

The book has a lot of meat. Most don't. Let me reiterate that is written cearly and concisely- a quality MUCH LACKING in most books of this kind, and a quality that I value highly, outside of experimental fiction... I have read this a couple times, always enjoy it, find it interesting and illuminating.

just one man's five cents, as always.

Rating:
Summary: Will the left ever learn?
Review: When you read over a hundred books a year like I do, you sometimes find yourself looking for "bargain" books to save a few bucks, especially if the subject is rather controversial. Who'd have thought you could find yourself feeling that you overpaid for a book that cost $2? This is such a book. Sartre is a phase that most kids go thru, like pimples, before they grow up and understand the world. Yes, we are here a short time and then we die. Get over it.
For Gerassi, a noted leftist, this book is more of an admission that he, like his friend Sartre, never grew up. While it is hard to read this book and not feel sorry for someone who will die an adolescent, I feel even worse knowing that the kind of nonsense Gerassi expounds about his fellow traveler in this book is probably standard fare dished out to the unsuspecting innocents in his political science classes at CUNY. What can you say about a book which fawns over a person like Sartre, whose entire life consisted of his fawning over mass murderers and criminals of the left? This book is a classic example of leftist snobbery, where Stalin's extermination of millions of Georgians, Ukrainians and others by starvation is ignored and the extermination of millions of Jews by an equally evil totalitarian criminal like Hitler is condemned. Sartre's equal admiration of mass murderers like Mao and Castro is made to look "enlightened" when it is simply outrageous. The only redeeming part of the book is that you can understand Sartre's narcissism and self-loathing to be possibly attributable to his warped childhood and excessive use of drugs and alcohol. I'd be nauseated and depressed too if I were as screwed up as he was.
What an unfortunate end of being and nothingness for a poor, naked, innocent little tree to give up its life to provide the paper this book was printed on. But maybe it will have a happier end and become a doorstop or some other higher purpose.