Customer Reviews

The Prime of Life: The Autobiography of Simone De Beauvoir

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is my favorite volume of de Beauvoir's autobiograghy. It covers her life from her graduation at age 20 to the beginning of her fame after the war, when she was about forty. This book paints a vivid piture of now famous Left Bank intellectuals; their philosophies, politics, love lives, travels, and various predicaments they inevitabley get themselves into. I stumbled across this book by accident as a teenager and read it only because I was bored. It opened up an entire world for me;existentialism, feminism, socialism, French history and culture, all of which I now study at university. This book is aslo a great introduction to de Beauvoir's THE MANDARINS, which is a fictionalized account of the same people and places

This is the second volume of de Beauvoir's five-volume autobiograpy, and it covers 1929 to 1944.

This one was harder to break into than the first, I felt, as she began somewhat vaguely about her philosophy, the things she was working on, etc. The first part of the book vaguely and distantly describes the beginning of her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, so the personal is perhaps rather squashed here (maybe that's why I found it less engaging than "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter" at first). But as I made my way forward, I found the same compelling qualities of the first, and more -- as de Beauvoir is older: Her interests and her circle of friends are expanding.

This book is interesting on so many levels, and I would recommend it to stand on its own (it doesn't have to be read as part of the whole), as well. It's interesting, as the first one was, for the way she describes her life in Paris at the time (she names all the cafes, neighborhoods, etc., that she frequents), and, as the first one, because it still dwells on how she is beginning her professional life that would lead her to be one of the foremost twentieth century philosophers and writers. So it's got something on both personal and broader themes.

But this book also adds the elements of the writer, as during its years, de Beauvoir writes her first books "She Came to Stay" and "The Blood of Others." I like to read about how writers work, their processes, and de Beauvoir very interestingly dissects her work in retrospect, writing things like, "What I was trying to accomplish at the time through Francoise's character was... but I see now that she comes across as ..." De Beauvoir was a very vigilant and disciplined worker, researcher and writer, and she writes of these routines. For writers interested in how others work, where they get their ideas and how they edit and redraft, I would certainly recommend this.

But this work is also interesting on another level; its most compelling part is when she details the beginning of WWII and the occupation of Paris. Rather than summarize it with the view the passing years have given her, de Beauvoir excerpts her diaries from the time, so that the reader feels the fears, understands the unknown dangers that she felt and gets the immediacy and intimacy of the worries of Parisiens such as de Beauvoir. I really couldn't put these sections down as she wrote about fleeing the Nazi occupiers, then deciding that if Sartre were released, he would only be able to find her in Paris and her desperate journey home again.

The book also starts a theme I can see will continue in all of them, outlining her travels as she (sometimes alone, sometimes with Sartre or others) goes around France and abroad and writes of how she feels and what she discovers there. In this volume, to name a few, she goes to Greece, Spain and all over
France.

The voice of these autobiographies is somewhat distant and aloof, which I find useful, as she seems intent on presenting her life very objectively, but when Sartre is attacked or criticized, she loses this coolness of tone and makes personal attacks on his critics.

The last aspect I'll mention of this long volume (nearly 500 pages) is the circle of friends she creates. She happens to befriend Alberto Giacometti, who is my favorite artist, in Paris and writes very fondly of his intellect and engaging conversations. She meets Hemingway and is an aquaintance of Picasso and his longtime lover Dora Marr. She also meets Cocteau through Sartre's theatrical work.

I found the wartime writing of this second one particularly engaging and probably of wider interest than the episodes of de Beauvoir's daily life later on... but we'll see!

This second volume of de Beauvoir's autobiography made me feel as if I had been transported back in time, observing her daily activities, people she interacted with, and also made me think I was privy to her private thoughts, as I had with Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, the first volume of her autobiography.

The Prime of Life continues her life from 1929--picking up where she left off in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter and when she is finally independent of her parents, to the end of WWII--the Liberation of Paris.

After I finished the first volume, I couldn't imagine how another autobiography--a sequel, if you will, could be just as good, but Prime of Life IS equally good.

Her descriptions of enjoying her personal freedom captivated my imagination: being able to go wherever she wished, dress however she wished w/o care to what others may have thought, socialize with whomever she wished, etc. On her many travel adventures, alone,with and without Sartre. or other friends, she made me feel I was right there beside her, whether she was on one of her many walks into an unfamiliar town or moutain area, or riding alone in a train--imagining she was some kind of international spy! Or on a mountainous bicycle ride (and then having a near-fatal accident).

I was intrigued by her self-criticisms of her writing. And she had me engrossed in the many suspenseful moments of the second half of the book describing the war years--of the days leading up to it, the years of want during the war, and the Liberation.

It all was very exciting!

It's a lot of good food to digest for your mind.

Simone de Beauvoir is one of my favorite writers, and her books are always to be savored. This is the second volume of her autobiography, and covers her life as she leaves home and school until just the end of the war. If Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter was a record of her formative years, then this could be seen as a woman and a writer coming into her own.

As a reading experience, it isn't quite as engaging as Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter-- at least not initially. (Although, as I recall, I had some trouble getting into that book at first as well.) In these autobiographical efforts, de Beauvoir has a habit of minutely examining the past and her memory of how it all fit together. It makes sense with her project, and is part of what makes it rich. However, it can also make it challenging to read-- particularly when dealing with topics that are already as complex as philosophical and political development.

What I most took away from the book was the way that Beauvoir struggled with her vocation, and how she compared herself to Sartre in that sense. She says many times in many ways that unlike Sartre she saw her life as her goal and not her work and writing. She spends a lot of time examining what that meant in terms of how quickly she developed her novels. It's a question that I struggle with myself, and I found it quite rich to watch Beauvoir working it out during her young adult period.

Recommended, particularly if you have any particular interest in de Beauvoir as a writer and thinker, but I would naturally start with the first volume and not here. I read the edition with the translation by Peter Green, and while I cannot evaluate the quality of the translation, I at least did not trip over the text.