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Title: The Reprieve (The Roads to Freedom) by Jean Paul Sartre, Eric Sutton ISBN: 0679740783 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: July, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71
Rating: 4
Summary: There is no fog in Paris in this novel
Comment: However one disagrees with Sartre's philosophy, his Marxism, and his anti-Americanism, it is difficult to argue against his personal involvement in what he believed in. Sartre was no pipe-smoking, arm-chair academic content to let others do his fighting. He was always there on the front-lines, perhaps bellicose in his utterings, but always visible. An issue he disagreed with never experienced-his-absence, and Sartre did not hesitate to also be a novelist-philosopher, and as such, he showed more moral courage than perhaps any 20th century philosopher. The equality of idea and action was perhaps an axiom for Sartre, and his life was definitely an empirical validation of such.
Definitely introspective to extremes, this novel, the second in his series "The Roads to Freedom", is the ultimate portrayal of life in France before the Munich Pact and the takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938. As a reader, it is easy to get trapped in the stream of consciousness approach that Sartre takes in his novel. Each character is not to be found alone, but immersed in the quagmire of panic, and for some, exhiliration, at the prospect of wartime conflict. The characters define themselves by the instant, their attitudes caught in the flux, that flux impossible to arrest, but their choices completely free nonetheless. Their individuality is sometimes robbed by the gaze of the other, but captured again by choice. Ideology has a short time scale for them.
Sartre does not really shout at the reader through his characters. But their predicament is believable. Their anxiety sometimes familiar, but they also have a perhaps hidden optimism. They know it is themselves, and no other, that determines their future history. The (burden?) of choice is with them always, and they understand fully the power of consequences. But choice works for them as well as against. This makes the appreciation of these characters easy and familiar.
Rating: 5
Summary: Munich, Sartre-style
Comment: This is the sequel to "The Age of Reason", and I thought it was by far the better book.
It's the story of Munich 1938, when war seemed inevitable as the crisis over Hitler's territorial demands on Czechoslovakia reached its peak. Sartre examines the feelings of a wide range of people through a time period of just over a week, feelings ranging from fear of a repeat of the 1914-1918 War, to the excitement of others who looked forward to conflict as a means of finally giving a meaning to their lives.
Sartre's technique is to skip swiftly from scene to scene, and location to location, doing so sometimes within a sentence. It takes concentration on the part of the reader to follow this, but I found it increased the pace of the story, and gave a sort of kaleidoscopic effect - conflicting and contrasting attitudes are exposed more easily, as are the differences between social classes, and even between nationalities.
The book is a damning indictment of appeasement, and of France and Britain's lack of courage in the face of the rise of fascism. But at the same time as condemning the appeasers, Sartre is sensitive enough to understand why people felt the way they did, and that includes the appeasers themselves - perhaps the appeasers too were trapped by the ambiguity of their own and their public's opinions, lacking the freedom to do what was right.
The add to the praise, the book's ending is great too.
Rating: 5
Summary: the collective consciousness.
Comment: The only thing I will comment (because I do not give away the book) is the writing style. If you are expecting "Age of Reason" part II, then you will not get what you were looking for...the writing style or mode is very different. The way the book is put together is there are many characters all in different parts of French territory in different walks of life, ages, sexes, etc. Often times when you are reading you will lose sight of where one character speaks or thinks and the next one. you will have to go line by line in the same paragraph, where a sentence ina paragraph represents a though of a different character and that character will not be identified...but you will know...but it becomes irrelevant who says or feels what because it is about the collective consciousness of french people in the midst of war...and this is the biggest success of the book is that this technique so succesful and masterfully implemented. It makes the book feel like events are happening so quickly and things are moving so fast which lends to the urgency of the situation in France. I feel like its a forrest fire...that starts with a brush and picks up momentum until its raging! There are new characters in this book and he has carried the old characters over. Please do yourself a favor and do not read the series out of order.
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Title: Troubled Sleep (The Roads to Freedom) by Jean Paul Sartre, Gerald Hopkins ISBN: 0679740791 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: July, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Age of Reason (The Roads to Freedom) by Jean Paul Sartre, Eric Sutton ISBN: 0679738959 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: July, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, H. Carruth, Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0811201880 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: January, 1975 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Wall: And Other Stories by Jean Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander ISBN: 0811201902 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Existentialism and Human Emotions (A Philosophical Library Book) by Joan Paul Sartre, Jean-Paul Sartre ISBN: 0806509023 Publisher: Lyle Stuart Pub. Date: June, 1984 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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