The first time I read Sartre I thought I was so grown-up...
...but I had no idea what was going on, and doing so stopped me reading novels for far too long.
I should explain. I had just spent three years studying English Literature at University; three years where I was immersed in ‘the greats’, all the way from Chaucer, through Shakespeare and Milton, up to James Joyce. It was wonderful! But it was regimented — we were told what to read and when to read it — as well as being intense: read Bleak House in a week (along with everything else) and all for a small slot in a 50-minute lecture!
After my exams that constraint was suddenly removed and I was faced with being able to choose what to read. And that floored me. What I settled on was Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Age of Reason. Why? Because I was now a ‘serious’ reader; I was ‘educated’ and ‘qualified’. And not having read any Sartre before, I thought “why not?” — seemed a reasonable way to add another notch to my reading tally-stick.
Not only was my decision misguided (as well as an over-inflation of my self-rewarded sense of literary understanding!) it backfired. Without the structure and support of my course, I simply didn’t know what was going on in the book — the impact of which was that I gave up reading novels for a long time. And I mean a long time. Maybe it wasn’t Sartre’s fault. Maybe I was ‘read out’ and all J-P did was to push me over the edge…
Why do I raise this now? Because I have just finished reading Nausea, and — second Sartre around — have a reasonable idea as to the messages and themes. Indeed, there are passages which actually reflect — in a profound way — how I feel about life from time-to-time. But what is more immediately illuminating is recognising that my appreciation doesn’t come from the reading per se but largely arises from the experience of living.
On reflection, I never stood a chance with The Age of Reason all those years ago. And why? Because I hadn’t lived enough to understand it. My academic reading experience had far less to do with illumination than I’d imagined.
Coincidentally, Sara Reid recently posted an article on Substack bemoaning the lack of mature main characters in fiction i.e. those at least 40 years old:
My response was:
For me, time = depth — and, as I get 'deeper' so do my characters.
It occurs to me that being able to create older characters — and make them ‘authentic’ — is not unrelated to my experience with Sartre i.e. how can you truly understand him if you haven’t lived enough? By extension, how can you truly write about a character who’s sixty if you’re only thirty-two?
Before you say anything, I know people do take on such challenges — and that many make a decent fist of it — but isn’t it reasonable to suggest that to give yourself the best chance of truly understanding — and then depicting — what it is to be sixty, there must be benefit from being near or beyond sixty yourself?
There’s a wider question here relating to writing from inexperience and the dangers of ‘misappropriation’. Although I’m not a woman, occasionally I like writing from the female perspective; I do so based on a) all my years of living, and b) the ‘qualification’ (however inadequate!) of loving, living with, working with, many women across the decades. And also because women interest me as much as men. All that doesn’t guarantee I’m any good at it of course, though the feedback I’ve had from readers suggests I’m not too wide of the mark. Or at least close enough, for a man… (And this works both ways, of course. Why wouldn’t it? I have read numerous main male leads written by women that simply don’t work. You can just tell…)
However, I doubt whether I will ever try to write as a black person or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community because I simply don’t have the requisite experience to draw upon — and because of that I have no desire to risk insulting, stereotyping or caricaturing. I’ve no idea whether that’s a lack of ambition, an admission of failure, an insult, a wise thing — I guess that will depend on your own stance — but at least it’s honest.
My ‘get out of jail’ card:
“when you see anything of mine that you don’t like remember that I’m sincere in doing it and that I’m working toward something” - Ernest Hemingway
And — given my statement above — sincere in not doing something too.
What conclusions can be drawn from all of that? Nothing earth-shattering, obviously. Perhaps merely the observation that, depending on what you are tackling, in order to be an ‘effective’ reader — or an ‘effective’ writer — you stand the best chance if you are in possession of the appropriate blend of experience, wisdom, knowledge, insight, fellow-feeling, emotional intelligence and — for the writing part — talent.
There’s no point debating proportions; as with most literature-related conundrums, there is no ‘right answer’…
Sartre and his existentialist buddies deserve to be read every decade. And if you haven't yet read de Beauvoir's All Men are Mortal, I'd highly recommend it!