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288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
“When I was small, I believed in God, and it was wonderful; at every moment of the day something was required of me; then it seemed to me that I must exist. It was an absolute necessity.�
I smiled sympathetically at her. “I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.�
“But when we know that we’ve found them ourselves, we can’t believe in them. It’s only a way of deceiving ourselves.�
“Why? You don’t find them just like that � out of thin air. We discover them through the strength of a love or a desire, and then what we have found rises before us, solid and real.�
“People are free,� I said, “but only so far as they themselves are concerned; we can neither touch, foresee, nor insist on them using their liberty. That is what I find so painful; the intrinsic worth of an individual exists only for him, not for me; I can only get as far as his outward actions, and to him I am nothing more than an outer appearance, an absurd set of premises; premises that I do not even choose to be…�
“Then don’t get excited,� said Marcel; “if you don’t even make the choice, why punish yourself?�
“I don’t choose to exist, but I am. An absurdity that is responsible for itself, that’s exactly what I am.�
“Well, there must be something.�
“But there might be something else…�
“I need you because I love you,� I said.
You were in my arms, and my heart was heavy on account of those cowardly festive echoes and because I was lying to you. Crushed by all those things which existed in spite of me and from which I was separated only by my own anguish. There is nothing left. Nobody on that bed; before me lies a gaping void. And the anguish comes into its own, alone in the void, beyond the vanished things. I am alone. I am that anguish which exists alone, in spite of me; I am merged with that blind existence. In spite of me and yet issuing only from myself. Refuse to exist; I exist. Decide to exist; I exist. Refuse. Decide. I exist. There will be a dawn.
"I'm useful to your happiness," said Hélène, "but I'm of no use to your life."The girlfriend in the refrigerator. One of the more notorious tropes in many a creative piece that wants to come off as serious or edgy, which, in combination with the high frequency at which such pieces fail the simple scenario of the Bechdel test, make for a normalization of dehumanization if one is unwilling to point such out. Unlike most works, this particular piece doesn't force one to look up the potentialities on websites devoted to detailing such, so the fact that I found myself not only reading it but also rating it rather highly in comparison to most of my other recently completed reads has as much to do with the broader contexts of both the work and my history with the work's author. You see, in these modern times when people love to fearmonger on and on about 'antifa' in their articles by NYT and Washington Post and their "hot takes" on Twitter and Instagram, I thought it would be good to read a work by someone who lived during the rising tide of Fascism, and while Beauvoir and I have had our ups and downs (the revelation of her being one of those types who engaged in queer relationships but only if they were predatory is something I'm going to have to wrestle with for some time), I haven't stuck with making my way through her writings for the past nine years for nothing. The work's beginning was less than promising, almost overly sentimental and silly in its middle class guilt trips, but the rollicking tide of the development of the two protagonist's respective characters under the pressures of WWII strengthened the backbone of the narrative, and by the time the inevitable denouement fell, I not only accepted the promised end, but was also satisfied by it. It's certainly not a favorite, especially when compared to the rest of the Beauvoir's repertoire, but I'd imagine it'd shake up the consciences of those who witness heavily armed enforcers threaten to enact extreme violence in broad daylight upon those who can't afford housing during a pandemic and consider it an indication of a well functioning democracy that need not be invaded by a concerned neighbor in order to stamp down on "human rights abuses" in the area.
"Who is necessary to whom?" said Paul. "You go on living."
"You live," said Hélène.
You sound like a bourgeois who always thinks that you become a Communist in order to pick your neighbor's pocket.Part of the reason why I read this when I did was to fulfill a century of reading women that included reading a work published in the 1940s, and if one's in any way familiar with the most basic of world history in conjunction with literature publication, one knows how little of that was happening during the first half of that decade compared to usual amounts in previous decades. TBoO was put out in 1945, potentially after Hitler's suicide, but all of it was written beforehand, when the various levels of collaboration both considered and enacted by various characters were still well on the table and resemble nothing so much as the oil barons and the industrial tycoons haggling over CIA-targeted countries while yet another report tells us that humanity's ability to sustain itself on Earth became irreparably fucked a few years ago, at best. Now, there are reasons why Euro and Neo-Euro cultural hegemonies keep churning out WWII style good versus evil scenarios and why they almost always bring in the bucks, but Beauvoir lived enough of what she wrote to have had her finger on the pulse point of the negotiations, the trivializations, the everyone-for-themselves, the acts of resistance, the ones who left or were taken away and never came back, and so it was much harder for her to cheapen the writing for the sake of inducing a sentiment soaked success (although her fictional treatment of showed that she was still rankled by someone who, in many ways, beat her at her own humanizing game both within and without academia). As I said, the beginning was not too great, but the fever dream that swamps the two characters until their final bedside vigil is the sort of portrayal that many a war movie apes at and ultimately ruins for the sake of holding onto its macho-ness at all costs. Beauvoir herself called the work too didactic and the characters too thin a few decades after publication, but when one considers how this work details the real conversations thinkers had in weighing Fascism against capitalism, white imperialism, and reactionary forces, it's not surprising that her work focused more on being a kick in the pants than it might have otherwise done if written during any other time. Not a perfect work, and not one I would personally recommend as an introduction to Beauvoir, but as far as fiction goes, I prefer this to the one of hers that was awarded the Prix Goncourt.
While we were busied in stating reasons why we did not wish to die, did we bother about discovering why we were still alive?I've a couple other Beauvoir works on my TBR, but considering how I haven't yet come across a copy of either of them after four to eight years of passively searching, it's safe to say that this might be my last engagement with the author for a while. Despite that, my interest in more than a few of Beauvoir's associates has manifested in having copies of their works on my physical shelves, so I'll more than likely be drawn back into tangential engagement with Beauvoir and her cultural output through the works of Sartre, Camus, and whoever else was bouncing around the 20th c. venue of that particular part of the world. It had its share of interesting folks with interesting opinions running around, but it also involved quite a hefty share of names who advocated for the abolishment of any forms of age of consent, and seeking to take on any of the associated school of thoughts without acknowledgement of such is a fool's errand at best and downright evil otherwise (Beauvoir modeled the main woman character off of and devoted this work to a former student of hers with whom she supposedly had a relationship with when student was seventeen-years-old to Beauvoir's thirty and ended up losing her teaching license over). Probably not what the aspiring antifa activist wants to be thinking about when seeking out narratives concerned with engaging in antifa work, but such is the warp and woof of real people taken in conjunction with their creative output. Take it, or leave it: just don't claim you didn't know about it.
It's all very well having moral anguish, but it's really too convenient if we limit it simply to what suits us.