Sein (original 1948; edição 2011)

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The five stories in this book address different life situations which provide ample opportunity for existential themes. Probably the best known is the title story, Le Mur, which involves the thoughts of men condemned to death during the Spanish Civil War. La Chambre concerns how a young woman and her parents deal with the growing insanity of the woman’s husband. Erostrate, named after the Greek who burned down the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus to get his name in the history books, has an eerily contemporaneous ring (at least in the United States), albeit it seems Parisians did not have access to assault weapons in late 1930’s France. L’Intimite takes a close look at sexual relations between men and women. By far the longest of the stories, L’Enfance d’un Chef, tells the story of Lucien from early childhood as he goes through various phases in seeking and establishing his identity. In the process, Lucien faces the choices posed by freedom but in the end escapes from freedom into bad faith. While each of these stories strikes Sartrian themes and indeed could all be fruitfully analyzed using Sartre’s principles of existential psychoanalysis, they also are interesting, and in parts compelling, as stories in their own right.

Excerpts from Albert Camus review: “[Sartre chooses] characters who have arrived at the limits of their selves, stumbling over an absurdity they cannot overcome. The obstacle they come up against is their own lives, and I will go so far as to say that they do so through an excess of liberty…. For his characters are, in fact, free. But their liberty is of no use to them…. In the best of the short stories, La Chambre, Eve watches her husband’s delirium and tortures herself to discover the secret of this universe in which she would like to be absorbed, of this isolated room in which she would like to sleep with the door forever closed.” ( )

This short story collection by Sartre was unexpected, and it's still really sinking in, but I feel that it has a lot to offer to the contemporary reader. Sartre is a complicated writer, one that has vast undercurrents and philosophical connotations with his work. This might not always be apparent while you are reading, but when you are finished sections (or stories) you kind of get the grasp of what he is trying to say- or get at. Overall, a good collection of short stories that shouldn't be missed for aspiring writers, world literature fans, French-lit enthusiasts, or those interested in philosophy itself.

3.5 stars. ( )

Fils de famille, Lucien Fleurier est à la recherche de lui - même : d'une enfance dorée et confortable aux révoltes de l'adolescence, de la bohème aux milieux d'extrême droite, le jeune homme tente de connaître l'homme qui émerge en lui.
Jean-Paul Sartre parodie le «roman d'apprentissage» dans le style dépouillé et magistralement maîtrisé qui efface l'écrivain au profit du seul dévoilement de l'homme dans le monde

Sartre is a brilliant writer of fiction and this could have made up his career in another life. I loved these short stories, but the last, "The childhoold of a Leader", tracing the life of a fascist through his own memories, is a little unpleasant when the narrator is a child and then frightening when he is a young man and becomes a thoughtless, racist brute. It's almost too believable, except for the intelligence and awareness of its main character.