War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phony War, 1939-40 [Paperback]

Jean-Paul Sartre (Author)

Book Description

Series: Verso Classics | Publication Date: December 1999

During the phoney war that preceded the invasion of France, between late 1939 and the summer of 1940, the young Jean-Paul Sartre was stationed in his native Alsace as part of a meteorological unit. He used his considerable periods of spare time, between mundane duties like watching weather balloons, to make a series of notes on philosophy, literature, politics and autobiography that anticipate the themes of his later masterpieces, and often surpass them in literary verve and directness. These War Diaries form a portrait of Sartre in his most intense and brilliant phase. With them the twentieth century's most remarkable and public philosopher has provided us with a fitting posthumous monument to his honesty and creativity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

. . . a delight . . . -- Times Higher Educational Supplement

. . . enormously impressive . . . -- The Observer

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 366 pages
• Publisher: Verso (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859842380
• ISBN-13: 978-1859842386
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,861,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Novelist, playwright, and biographer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) is widely considered one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. His major works include "No Exit," "Nausea," "The Wall," "The Age of Reason," "Critique of Dialectical Reason," "Being and Nothingness," and "Roads to Freedom," an allegory of man's search for commitment, and not, as the man at the off-licence says, an everyday story of French country folk.

Customer Reviews

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderfully human side of an ostensibly brainy guy, February 7, 2001

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David J. Loftus (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phony War, 1939-40 (Paperback)

The main title of this book can be a little misleading, for the entries date from 1939-40, before the war in France really heated up. Sartre saw no action during this period (he was in his early 30s), but he WAS in military service on the front during the "phony war." Mostly, he had a lot of time to think and write.

Sartre worked on some of the foundations for _Being and Nothingness_ and existential theory in general, so there's some of that here, but this is a marvelously HUMAN document. As well as the sort of intellectual blasts one expects from him (Flaubert's _A Sentimental Education_ is deemed to be "clumsy, disagreeable ... utterly idiotic"), Sartre writes of his insecurities ("In relation to Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rimbaud, I have a distinct inferiority complex because they managed to destroy themselves"; "It's true, I'm not authentic. With everything that I feel, before actually feeling it I know that I'm feeling it ... I fool people: I look like a sensitive person but I'm barren ... I am nothing but pride and lucidity").

There's a lot about his love of women and burning desire for beauty -- to be IN something beautiful; and his total failure at friendships with men, save for what he termed women-men ("an extremely rare species, standing out from the rest thanks to their physical charm or sometimes beauty, and to a host of inner riches which the common run of men know nothing of ... I'm a woman-man myself, I think, for all my ugliness").

Sometimes he is flip, sounding more like he's trying out aphorisms for size ("I would condemn someone definitively for a linguistic mannerism, but not because I'd seen him murder his mother"), and sometimes simple and sincere ("A day begun with a breakfast is a lucky day"). Above all, he broods on the nature of freedom and authenticity. This is a much more accessible work than much of his fiction or polished essays.