Customer Reviews

Simone Weil (Penguin Lives)

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It is hard for me to understand why someone would choose to write a book about a person they obviously dislike and then do a bad job of researching their lives. There are some wonderful biographies of Simone Weil out there, including one by her friend Simone Petrement. This books has gotten most of the facts wrong and turned a young woman searching in her own way for truth into a weird, comical figure which she certainly wasn't. Most of the stories quoted by the author are anecdotal at best. Reading this book is a waste of time. If you want to know Simone Weil, read her books.

I had read a few of Simone Weil's essays and admired them greatly, but didn't know much about the woman herself. This book is a good source of basic biographical facts, but the author leaves a lot to be desired in discussing Weil's philosophy. Yes, this is a biography, not a philosophy text. This being a biography of a philosopher, however, one might expect *some* sort of argument to be presented when the subject's philosophy is being dismissed.
The anti-semitic opinions Weil held are obviously distasteful to most intelligent people and no explanations are needed as to why these views of hers were wrongheaded. But when the author is dealing with Weil's specific criticisms of the Old Testament, she calls her readings of it "skewed" and "distorted by the bizarre conception of God" she had developed through studying various world religions, yet she gives no reasons why Weil's readings were skewed or why her conception of God is so bizarre. From what I've gathered in this book, Weil's conceptions of God were quite reasonable.
I'm glad this book presents the faults along with the virtues of this great thinker, but such swift and unreasoned dismissals of certain parts of her philosophies are off-putting, and this book is rife with them.
A little nit-picking: the author goes back and forth between calling her "Weil" and "Simone" with no ostensible rationale for doing so. Also, at one point in the book, for no apparent reason, she describes events in Weil's life in the present tense for a few pages.
All that being said, the book has mostly satisfied my curiosity about Weil's life. I wouldn't say it's not worth reading.

Lovers of the great, tender Weil will have no need for this little book. The danger here lies in a reader new to Weil, picking this up, reading it, and struggling with Gray's simplistic, biased agenda concerning Weil's abandonment of leftist politics(not true), hatred of sex and romance(not true), defaming and misuse of Jewish thought and history(certainly not true). In fact, du Plessix Gray spends more time celebrating Simone Weil as a sort of 1930s French version of the hideous David Horowitz(once left, now far right), then she does helping the reader understand the heart and soul of Weil's holiness and unending compassion. So don't waste your time here. Rather, try instead: Jacques Cabaud's "Simone Weil: a Fellowship in Love"; Simone Petrement's "Simone Weil: A Life"; or, "Simone Weil: A Sketch of a Portrait" by Richard Rees.

The most memorable and the most compelling thread in Gray's narrative for me is the new focus on Weil's relationship with her parents: they made great sacrifices to ensure that Simone was safe, living well, or at living decently, throughout her many willfull and ruinous physcial and spiritual experiences. Weil's mother followed her from town to town as she took on different teaching posts or factory jobs, making sure her living quarters were at least semi-satisfactory and slipping money to local food merchants so they would give her more than she would normally buy for herself. These accounts are gut wrenching in their way. Gray suggests the intensity of the relationship between parents and child through these kinds of accounts, their strenuous attempts to simply keep their child alive, but the deeper psychological attachments and tussels remain a mystery. Gray says that it was Simone who safely saw her parents to New York in the early 1940s, in escape of the war, but perhaps it was the other way around. I wonder if, when Simone then swiftly decided to return to Europe to plunge herself head first into the annilation of war her parents realized she was essentially committing suicide? How could they have let her go? And yet, how could they have made her stay? Gray doesn't say. All biographers bring something of themselves to their subjects and it was only after Gray's biography of her own parents, entitled Them, recently came out that I understood why her focus on Weil's parents was so loaded with poignancy and meaning.

If this is all you hear about dear little Simone, you will miss a great deal. The author seems to miss the profound paradox of her work and vision, choosing rather to engage in easy modern psychology. Read Simone! It is precisely the discomfort that she longs to cause that is her enduring message.

Having read many of the other books in this Penguin biography series, I looked forward to this book on Simone Weil. I was not disappointed. Ms. Gray has presented us with a careful, thorough treatment of Weil's life and thought. One of the strengths of the book is the insights the author provides into the motivations that lay behind Weil's unusual life: her Marxist activism, her mystic Christianity, her sacrificial identification with workers and soldiers that ultimately led to her pre-mature death. There is a nice balance between describing the events of Weil's and the elements of her thought. In other words, the latter does not overwhelm the former. Weil's story is one that bears reflection, and this book enables the reader to do just that.

I knew very little about Simone Weil before picking up this volume. The author does a terrific job laying out family backgound and medical background (very important in this case)while presenting Weil's often-difficult philosophy. I was fascinated by Weil's complexity and perversity. Gray's right: you would like to throttle Weil at times and many of her thought processes are likely to provoke anger (particularly if you are Jewish!) but you never lose interest in this exasperating, amazing woman. Fantastic writing throughout.

Ms. Grays' "Simone Weil" is a remarkable story about one of the most unusual and strangely attractive minds of the last century.
A refined poseur with a bleeding heart for the cause of the toiling masses; a petty-bourgeois mademoiselle "obliviuos[...] to "normal" boy-girl relationships"; an inquisitive and penetrating reason armed with the fruit of one of the best systems of education of that time; a heart finely attuned to the grievances and calamities of her time-- what a zesty mixture it was. Perhaps there were many mademoiselles like that among millions of their sisters in the interwar France, and whom of them do we remember now?

What was left after Simone in 1943? Just collections of graceful, mind-nourishing haiku-like religious poems in prose. It is incredible as to what those do to your mind-- not unlike cognac, that gently envelopes your intestines and permeats them with warmth, and energy, and good mood, and gratitude. Reading Weil your mind is attentive and amazed and absorbing the beauty, grace and utter wisdom of the world and of its creator.

Reading Weil is very much like meditation, like unspoken prayer to the miracle of life, and of knowledge, and of "I" inside me, and of "You" outside.

It is actually quite easy to lapse into some "esoteric" incomprehensible stuff, which Ms. du Plessix Gray happily avoids. Gray's lucid, elegant prose flows graciously, meandering calmly between dates and events of Simone Weil's life. With every turn it unveils more of fascinating vistas of Weil's character and thought. The warm irony of the book, its compassion to the subject is charming and inspiring. As one feels pity for poor Simone, wishing she got a partner and took better care of herself, and wonders how such a neglected flesh produced such a formidable spirit-- the reader (or maybe it's just me?) wants to do good to the world, people, relatives.

There are some less persuasive passages, like the one about Weils "Jewish self-hate"(it's fashionable in every work on Weil to squeese some juice from her Jewish ancestry). Some passages beg for attention of TV-folks like Seinfeld, e.g.:
"[Simone] taught her friend some(!?-- It's a full-time job!-- Z.R.) Tibetan in order that they might read Milarepa together. [She], on her part, tried to teach Simone how to drive, but gave up after one attempt--Simone had two small accidents within ten minutes." (Oh, those short-tempered friends with little or no knowledge of Tibetan!)

Weil's longing for justice and equality, her attempt to synthesize "the incarnations of the Word prior to Christ" with Christianity, her questions like "Is the knowledge of God given to non-Christians in contemporary India are as genuine as the knowledge of God offered to Christians?" communicate directly to my heart and the nobleness of her mind and heart makes me think of the world as of better place.

Thnaks a lot to Ms. Gray for the book.
Thanks God for Simone Weil.

Francine Du Plessix Gray has done a phenomenal job in distilling the life and and thoughts of Simone Weil. Most importantly, while illuminating the experiences, insights, and influences of the noted French philosopher, Du Plessix Gray has not shied away from Weil's darker sides, including her virulent Jewish self-hatred. It is sad that such a deep thinker could be so blind to the suffering of her fellow Jews when they faced the greatest catastrophe in their history. This is a book to be read not only for those who wish to understand modern French thought, but also for those who need to understand the limits of the intellect as well.

While this is the first book on Simone Weil that provides a coherent biography and chronology of Simone Weil's life and thought (and it is excellent in that regard) I think that it would be a shame if new readers had not read Weil's 'Waiting for God' before this volume. Otherwise they would have a hard time figuring out what the fuss is about.