Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates

"With a decidedly political focus, these lively and candid conversations from the early 1970s between the famed French philosopher and his godson are a fascinating glimpse into Sartre's efforts to reconcile existentialism with Maoism and his own increasingly revolutionary leanings. That Gerassi (Jean-Paul Sartre) is clearly on close personal terms with his subject is always apparent, and this allows for wonderfully frank accounts of Sartre's childhood, various affairs and women, as well as asides about his drug use and bizarre, recurring hallucinations of crabs. The author incessantly returns to political questions, examining Sartre's various left-wing commitments, his views on Soviet Russia, Cuba, the Israel-Palestine conflict, in addition to the broader questions of how social conscience relates to art and whether a doctrine of absolute individual freedom can be made compatible with Sartre's emphasis on collective action. This can make for repetition and occasional tedium that could easily have been remedied by more disciplined editing and a less ideologically strident framework. Still, as a document of both the thinker and the man, the volume paints a revealing picture of a restless mind in profound engagement with the philosophical and political crises of its time." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Authorized by Jean-Paul Sartre to write his biography, Gerassi conducted a long series of interviews with his subject between 1970 and 1974, which he has now edited to produce this revelatory and breathtaking portrait of one of the world's most famous intellectuals.