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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 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75
Rating: 4
Summary: French reactions
Comment: This novel is the third in the trilogy which started with "The Age of Reason" and "The Reprieve". Through the eyes of his characters, Sartre depicts French reactions to defeat and occupation in 1940.
There is comparatively little "battle action" in this novel, so if you're looking for a conventional war book, this is not the one to pick up. Sartre seemed to me to be far more concerned with staring in the face the uncomfortable realities of 1940. What and who did the French blame for their defeat? What were their reactions to the on-coming German occupation? In this sense, it's a deeply introspective work about one of the (if not the) most difficult eras of French history.
The feelings of the characters are deeply mixed: betrayal; regret and anger at pre-war disunity; loss of "moral fibre" and so on. The reactions to occupation are as, if not more, interesting, ranging from the sheer folly of the belief that now the war had "ended" life would return to normal, through collaboration (Hitler's an OK guy and France deserved what she got, it will do France good), to the early seeds of resistance.
I thought the the Communist characters were very interesting. Within the French prisoners-of-war, the Communists find each other and start organising a "cell". They hold the most realistic views of the Nazis, and yet hold the least realistic views concerning the nature of the Soviet regime. Their great intellectual and moral struggle is to come to terms with the Communist party's ambivalence towards the Nazi threat in the immediate run-up to war and invasion.
I understand that Sartre intended to continue with further volumes of this work, and this novel does feel part of a bigger scheme: I found myself wanting to read the next instalment. The downside of it is that you can be left with the feeling that it's a somewhat inconclusive piece of work. Nonetheless, I thought that it stands on its own as a very interesting novel.
Rating: 4
Summary: Different view
Comment: This is the first Sartre book that I have ever read. I liked it enough to read more from this author. There were 2 (maybe more) other sub plots going on that just left you hanging, I thought.I have not read much literature that dealt with WW II that wasn't directlyrelated to the Holocaust(sp?) or from an American perspective. That made, for me, all the difference in the world.
Rating: 3
Summary: troubled sleep may not be the problem
Comment: THis is the first novel length fiction I've read of Sartre. Not his best form I think. Perhaps too many blank, beguiling pages to fill with unrelenting existentialism incarnate in meandering vignettes of characters that one can neither really place nor pity. A pity. Such a stunning writer in a shorter format ("The Wall" and other short stories). One grows a bit weary of self-castigating anti heros (the common man hero I gather one is supposed to infer) but a bone to lick for all one's trouble would be nice. Alas, one is not ever offerred a bone, which is not really the problem. One is never offerred a bone and therefore expects one. What one does procure, in turn, is a handful of mordant, self pitying and pitiable characters indignant that their forces were overcome with such swift Teutonic efficiency. Above and outside of this, however, Sartre has his own efficiency for writing dialogue, the sum of which, becomes many times more than the mere words which comprise it. Suffice it to say, if one is interested in Sartre's philosophy, this book, in parts, is not a bad sugarpill.
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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 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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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: The Words by Jean Paul Sartre, Bernard Frechtman ISBN: 0394747097 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: April, 1981 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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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: 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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