BOOKS
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committed to his career, but he was also a very private person. He
was operating on the elite circuit of French literature, publishing in
NouveLLe Revue Franfaise,
writing novels, essays, and stories that could
not help but have a limited audience.
Nausea,
published in 1938, was
considered a success when it sold 10,000 copies. His books were read
and reviewed, but he was no star: his friend Paul Nizan's
The Con–
spiracy
handily beat out
Nausea
for the Prix Interallie. There was no
question of
Nausea
winning the Goncourt, the most prestigious prize .
Sartre, at the outbreak of the war, was a promising young author of
literature
in a milieu dominated by figures such as Gide, Malraux,
Aragon, Breton , Giraudoux, and many others.
The real turning point was the Liberation . Almost overnight,
Sartre went from obscurity to fame; existentialism became the new
wave; there were not only other writers (Camus, de Beauvoir) who
could be seen as existentialists, but singers Ouliette Greco), jazz
musicians (Boris Vian, also a writer) , even artists (Giacometti's style
was seen as being somehow "existentialist"). Hayman , at the begin–
ning of Chapter Fifteen ("Chief Existentialist") gives a good sum–
mary of the reasons why, after so many years of obscurity, Sartre
"caught on" and became a public figure so quickly. What people
wanted above all in 1945 was a lessening of the burden of guilt that
seemed omnipresent in a country that had collaborated, actively or
passively, for four years with the occupier. Surrealism was
discredited (not least by Sartre in his own writings) : Breton and
many others had fled to the United States, and their brand of revolu–
tion seemed feeble and petty when compared with the force - and
force of evil- of Nazism . Literature - belles lettres , the maunder–
ings of a Gide or a Mauriac-was guilty of the same weakness.
Communism was attractive, but not everyone could delude himself
about benefits to be gained from a Stalinist "liberation." This is
where existentialism stepped in, for , unlike Stalinism, Sartrianism,
while stubbornly (and bravely) upholding a Marxist view of society
and social questions , nevertheless saw the role of the individual (and
the individual conscience) as decisive in moral and political activity.
As Hayman says:
Sartrian ex istentialism mingled optimism with responsibility:
each of us chooses the historical context in which he lives.
If
this
idea had been formulated cynically to secure a maximum of pop–
ularity for Sartre, it could not have been more effective. What he
was offering the French people was a chance to accept a share of
