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Title: The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir ISBN: 0-393-31883-4 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Memorable record of postwar Paris
Comment: There are plenty of great books and films about the squalor of life during wartime, and even more about shellshocked soldiers coming to grips with life during peacetime. But surprisingly few novels deal with civilians faced with the task of rebuilding the devastated world around them. The Mandarins would have to be at the top of that very short list. Most critics, here and elsewhere, have tended to focus on the book as Beauvoir's record of her affair with Nelson Algren, but like all great artists, Beauvoir transforms the raw material of her life into something far more profound and encompassing, especially as it is played out against the grand, ruined backdrop of postwar Paris. The resulting book succeeds on so many levels: as roman a clef (Camus, Sartre, Koestler, and obviously Algren all feature prominently), as novel of ideas (of the "where do we go from here?" variety), as a love story (really two love stories--we can't forget Henri/Camus, whose story takes up half the book!), as a Jamesian exploration of brash New World vs. exhausted Old World culture, and finally as a portrait of an intelligent, civilized woman wrestling with her darkest impulses in the wake of Europe's darkest moment.
Is the book overly long? Probably. Melodramatic? At times. Too cluttered with phrases of the "smiled knowingly" variety? Without a doubt. But it's redeemed time and again by the keen intelligence Beauvoir brings to bear on her characters and herself. For days after I put the book down, I found myself literally pining for the company of Anne, Lewis and Henri. Is there any greater testament to a novel than that?
Rating: 5
Summary: Finding the Conflicts and Humanity in Existentialism
Comment: The reason that I love Simone so much is defined in this book. What happens when you live with atrocities? What happens when you have to see lives terribly torn apart by evil? What can a person do?
DeBeauvior takes these questions and makes them human, and gives hope to our world. But, with any great existentialist thinker, makes the point that living is hard. To exist well we must make choices and be able to live with them. All of the characters in this book show the angst and chaos of war. How they are able to live with each other and themselves is displayed with amazing depth and insight. The complexities of women are shown vividly - especially if you have read The Second Sex. Each of the woman characters are shown struggling with their societial place as Other, yet, show this trancendence that is even more important to her gender.
This is also an incredible demonstration of the power and pain of love. I read this book as a teenager and found that I reread it at least once a year to remind me of the beauty and pain of life. It is a wonderful book about being a woman, and a thinker. I recommend it to anyone who is disturbed about events in this world and how to deal with them.
Rating: 3
Summary: A PRIZE WINNER?
Comment: "The Madarins" won the Priz Goncourt, FRance's highest literary award. Can one really give an award to a novel? The winner of a race is usually easy to spot, but how can a novel win an award? In the case of The Mandarins, the merit may have been due to the depiction of the political fragmentation of France immediately after the War. Simone de Beauvoir was bitterly disappointed that France did not emerge as an authentic world power with the coming of peace. The division within the country, however, was more painful to her than France's diminished stature. During the War, some of the factionalism of that country with more than 260 kinds of cheese abated somewhat, but peace meant a return to acrimony. Most of Simone's fiction is based on her life and the people in it. However, no character is ever a one-to-one representation of any individual. To say that the fictional Anne is Simone and Anne's husband is Jean-Paul Sartre is to over-simplify for Simone invested some of her personality traits in both characters. The correspondance between Anne and Simone is greatest when Anne falls in love with the American known as Lewis. (Lcarver of Florida thought this was the weakest part of the novel and I heartily disagree. I knew Nelson Algren. I think Simone wanted to love him but there were many reasons why she never fully allowed herself that luxury.) Once Anne meets Lewis, Simone's writing becomes freer and more relaxed. Simone desperately needed an editor, someone who would have sent the manuscript for the Mandarins back to her with orders to tighten. It may have been that by the time she wrote The Mandarins, she was an embryonic sacred monster. One of my criticism's of Simone as a novelist is her 19th century habit of acting as the omniescent author. It is annoying when Anne smiles knowingly or Lewis nods sleepily. The young Simone (aged 10) read and admired Louisa May Alcott -- who had more in common with Simone than most Americans might suppose -- and Louisa loved melodrama. So did Simone. In fact, her novel, "She Came to Stay," has been criticized as being melodramatic. Toril Moi, who has written a study of Simone called "The Making of an Intellectual Woman," says that book is melodramatic because existentialism is a melodramatic philosophy. There is more than a bit of melodrama to The Mandarins. It is a shame that the fine writing of which Simone was capable -- America Day by Day and Force of Circumstance -- didn't transfer to her novels.
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Title: She Came to Stay by Simone De Beauvoir ISBN: 0393318842 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir, H.M. Parshley ISBN: 0679724516 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 1989 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone De Beauvoir, Somone De Beauvior ISBN: 080650160X Publisher: Citadel Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: My Mother's House and Sido by Colette, Una Vicenzo Toubridge, Enid McLeod, Judith Thurman, Colette Sido ISBN: 0374528330 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 20 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: All Men Are Mortal by Simone De Beauvoir, Leonard M. Friedman ISBN: 0393308456 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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