Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend [Paperback]

Kate Fullbrook (Author), Edward Fullbrook (Author), Edward Fullbrook ok (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1995

He was France's best-known philosopher and chief arbiter of intellectual fashions during the postwar era. She was the most influential forerunner of today's feminist movement, who nonetheless seemed to live in the shadow of the great man. So goes one of the great cultural legends of today. The only problem, Kate and Edward Fullbrook argue, is that it is wrong. This biography of de Beauvoir and Sartre uses newly available documentary evidence in diaries and letters to shed new light on precisely who was the dominant partner in this peculiar relationship. The book shows that both intellectually and sexually, de Beauvoir led and Sartre followed.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The first of a projected two-volume effort at revisionist biography draws heavily on de Beauvoir's and Sartre's published statements and work to reveal the true nature of the relationship between the two writers. The authors, a British academic and a freelance writer, contend that de Beauvoir was quite as given to promiscuity as Sartre; that her philosophical ideas (dramatized in the novel She Came To Stay ) are the basis of Sartre's Being and Nothingness and other works; that her originality and influence on Sartre have been hidden in favor of sexual stereotypes; and that she actively participated in these falsifications, while leaving evidence of her true role to come to light after her death. The authors tend to overstate their case, making Sartre somewhat of an imcompetent second-rater. Still, this work is provocative and convincing, if largely incapable of illuminating the intense commitment of these two writers to each other.
- Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A provocative dual biography that sets out to recast Simone de Beauvoir as the ``true philosopher'' in her legendary relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre; by the Fullbrooks (she: Literary Studies/Univ. of the West of England; he: a freelance writer). This dry, clear, jargon-free analysis--based on the numerous earlier biographies--arrives after the stir caused by the publication of Beauvoir's Letters to Sartre (1992), which revealed her passionate relationships with women (as well as with men)- -relationships deliberately kept from public view. Beauvoir was Sartre's equal in her keeping of ``contingent'' relationships as the couple worked out what the Fullbrooks call ``a highly ambiguous desire for joint sexual imperialism.'' According to the authors, the terms of Beauvoir and Sartre's ``oath''--which allowed each to enjoy multiple liaisons--weren't what she settled for but, rather, ``the best he could get.'' But the Fullbrooks' more important point concerns Sartre's ``intellectual indebtedness'' to Beauvoir: They contend that the philosophical principles that he presented as his own in Being and Nothingness--the ``theory of appearances'' and other central ideas--were lifted from Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay, a claim deriving from close textual analysis that convincingly extracts Sartre's thinking from the Beauvoir novel. The Fullbrooks cite Beauvoir's letters and The War Diaries of Jean- Paul Sartre (1985) to prove that Sartre had read the manuscript of She Came to Stay during his army leave in February 1940--earlier than he claimed. Throughout, the authors' attempt to ``shift'' the Beauvoir/Sartre ``balance'' delves only slightly into Sartre's work, although the couple's final three decades are summarized in an epilogue. Giving Beauvoir primary place in her relationship with Sartre is another step toward the ``correction'' of the legend of these existentialists--but far from the last word. (Meanwhile, a fully wrought vision of the complex and contradictory feminist can be found in Deirdre Bair's Simone de Beauvoir, 1990.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465078281
• ISBN-13: 978-0465078288
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,153,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Parallel lives, September 10, 2003

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend (Hardcover)

The surprise of this book is the extensive myth-making engaged in by Simone de Beauvoir in regard to the founding of French existentialist theory. It would seem that as school examiners noted, she was the better philosopher of the two, and it was she who devised existentialism in her novel SHE CAME TO STAY.

The cat was out of the bag, so to speak, when the war journals of Sartre were published just after his death. Simone de Beauvoir did some fast jockeying of dates which was not totally convincing to her biographer, these authors write. It would seem that she had gotten so used to the falsities presented to the world she could not bear to have the truth revealed, even when the truth was complimentary to her.

It is necessary to understand how revolutionary she was when she began writing in the 1930's and took the position that for the sake of freedom she must refuse the offer of marriage given to her by Sartre. It turns out that he was a very good at articulating the philosophy the couple devised. False stories did more than cover up de Beauvoir's evident orginality, they also covered up her sexual adventures which could have been misconstrued by the public in general.

The book is a delight. The writers give full praise to previous biographers. It is comforting to learn some truths since the myth-making did strike this reader as far-fetched. Nonetheless, one is left with a nagging sense that surely if philosophers fail to tell the truth, should not this mean that their works be taken less seriously.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seven Years After, July 14, 2000

By 

Sharon Wright (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend: Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (Paperback)

No book on Beauvoir or Sartre has led to so much discussion, provoked such consternation or so changed the way we see these cultural icons as has Kate and Edward Fullbrook's "Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend". The basis of this recently republished book (which I had the pleasure of rereading last week) is disarmingly simple. The Fullbrooks checked out Beauvoir's and Sartre's newly-available letters and diaries and found that the traditional story that says the Beauvoir constructed her first novel "She Cme to Stay" on the basis of philosophical ideas she took from Sartre's essay "Being and Nothingness" is the exact opposite of the truth. Sartre only began, the Fullbrooks carefully document, to compile notes hor his philosophical treatise after studying the second draft of Beauvoir's novel. The Fullbrooks also, and again drawing on the letters, make the case that it was Beauvoir's sexual promiscuity, rather than Sartre's that initially dictated the famous open terms of their 50-year relationship. All this radical post-patriarchal revisionism, which the Fullbrooks refused to play down, was too much for many critcs when this book appeared in 1994. Some reviewers were apoplectic, others deeply sceptical, and the "New Yorl Times" twice ran long reviews warning their readers against this "feminist claptrap". But in fact the Fullbrooks, in claiming philosophical originality for Beauvoir, were themselves not so original as perhaps they and certainly their critics imagined. Margaret Simons, Linda Singer and Sonia Kruks had previously argued the case for Beauvoir as an innovative philosopher and the source of some of Sartre's later ideas. The Fullbrooks' discoveries gave new significance to this prior scholarship and inspired Simons to go off in search of Beauvoir's student diaries. (See Simons 1999) Simons's subsequent discoveries and the slow but continuing cultural shift away from presuming that women are never the source of original ideas has taken away some of the shock value of the Fullbrooks' first book. Indeed, seven years on and their impressive scholarship has never been seriously challanged. By now scores of Sartre scholars much have checked out the letters and diaries and found, to their dismay, that the Fullbrooks did not make any of it up. But although "Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend" through its success no longer enjoys the controversy it once did, it remains, with its compelling narrative and writerly qualities, one of the best books evr written about either Beauvoir or Sartre. Even the "New York Times" had to admit that it was good read. For capturing the spirit of these twentieth-century giants and their extraordinary relationship, this book is yet to be beaten.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Fullbrooks' False Claims, March 22, 2001

By 

Terry Keefe (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend: Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (Paperback)

"Political correctness" has made it difficult to challenge even that part of the thesis of the Fullbrooks' book, Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend, which relates strictly to the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, challenged it must be, and has been, contrary to the claims of Sharon Wright in her online review. What she calls their "impressive scholarship" has come under serious and precise attack from a number of quarters. What follows is simply the lead-in to an article that I myself published as early as 1995 ("Sartre and Beauvoir: Refining rather than 'Remaking' the Legend", Simone de Beauvoir Studies, vol. 12, 1995, pp. 91-99); the rest of that article goes on to justify my claims in detail.

"The crux of their argument is the assertion that Sartre's reading of the draft of L'Invitée during his leave in Paris between 4 and 16 February 1940 was what provided him with all or most of the crucial ideas that were to form the substance of L'Etre et le Néant. [...] Now, there are least four MAJOR flaws in this line of argument: (i) we do not know with certainty exactly what was in the parts of L'Invitée that Sartre read in February 1940; (ii) the argument ignores completely Beauvoir's acquaintance with drafts of Sartre's L'Age de raison, and also seriously underplays the philosophical content of those of Sartre's Carnets de la drôle de guerre that Beauvoir had read before February 1940; (iii) we DO know that Sartre had been working since the mid-1930s on the ideas that were to be central to L'Etre et le Néant; (iv) the momentous philosophical system that the Fullbrooks ascribe to Beauvoir is simply not to be found in even the final version of L'Invitée."

Since, as Sharon Wright points out, the Fullbrooks were far from the first to argue for the philosophical originality of Beauvoir, those of their claims that are demonstrably false have done nothing to promote this case. Rather, they have tended to obscure, and direct attention away from, many of the complex and fascinating questions concerning the relationship between the thought of Beauvoir and that of Sartre. What is more, some of the sensationalist, journalistic features of the style of the book have served to inflame sensitive issues that require particularly cool, rational treatment.