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

John Gerassi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 1989 | ISBN-10: 0226287971 | ISBN-13: 978-0226287973 | Edition: 1

Countless biographers have tried to unveil the real Jean-Paul Sartre without his consent or cooperation. Only John Gerassi—the "non-godson" of Sartre, an atheist—was honored with the responsibility of being Sartre's official biographer. After drafting the commission with Sartre on the back of a menu at La Coupole, Gerassi recorded over one hundred hours of interviews with him between 1974 and 1979, and another hundred hours with Sartre's friends, colleagues, and enemies. Gerassi also immersed himself in Sartre's literary, philosophical, and personal writings. Gerassi had access to all of Sartre's files, unpublished manuscripts, and extensive notes for planned but undelivered lectures. Simone de Beauvoir gave many of Sartre's unpublished letters to Gerassi as well. Sartre trusted the integrity of Gerassi so completely that he considered Gerassi's biography to be the continuation of his own autobiography, Les mots. As a personal friend, Gerassi writes with advantages shared by no other biographer of Sartre.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

To Gerassi, political science professor at City University of New York and longtime friend of Sartre, the French philosopher remains the 20th century's "most unrelenting conscience," its greatest intellectual; he charges that many critics and biographers have tried to twist Sartre back into the mainstream. Most remarkable about this brilliantly original biography, the first half of a two-volume opus, is that it is authorized: Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir cooperated with the author from the early 1970s onward. Sartre's life is shown to have been an existential drama--he lived his childhood as a "fraud," fathered by a "small, sickly Catholic technocrat" who raised him as a girl; small and physically ugly, the mature Sartre constantly seduced attractive women. He and de Beauvoir presented themselves as the ideal liberated couple, but Gerassi finds jealousy and possessiveness on both sides. Writing with energetic immediacy, the author argues that Sartre "had never pretended to be a resistant during the war," and limns a gutsy intellectual caught between Gaullists and French Communists. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Gerassi knew Sartre, and he has not written a detached, academic study. In the first chapter he conveys a vivid sense of the man as someone of honesty and humor who tended to judge people by the extent of their commitment to revolutionary politics. Unfortunately, the remainder of the book does not live up to the initial promise, for Gerassi retells a largely familiar story. While he has some good anecdotes, especially about Sartre as a teacher and about his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, he glides quickly over Sartre's philosophy. He does not discuss important lectures on Hegel given in the 1930s and essential to understanding French philosophy at the time, and describes opponents of Sartre in sharply negative tones. The work's principal value lies in its portrayal of the author's own personality rather than his insights about Sartre. Not recommended.
- David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (April 25, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226287971
• ISBN-13: 978-0226287973
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #574,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well- it's THE AUTHORIZED BIO... Sartre chose Gerassi, January 23, 2004

By 

Campbell Roark "tri-zeta" (from under the floorboards and through the woods...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century, Volume 1: Protestant or Protester? (Hardcover)

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.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great bio of one of the greats of the 20th C., April 1, 2004

By 

Ed Facile (Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century, Volume 1: Protestant or Protester? (Hardcover)

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

3 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Will the left ever learn?, February 10, 2004

By 

J. Adams "History buff" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century, Volume 1: Protestant or Protester? (Hardcover)

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.