The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Boris tries to touch Lola for the money he knows Mathieu needs but makes up a clumsy cover story and causes a big argument with the singer. Walking down the street is a trial for several of the characters: the heat, the sunlight, the other people, the noise threatens to overwhelm and drown them, to flood and erase their sense of self. I am pretty much still sitting here in awe at the complexity of Sartre's understanding of human motivation.

Delarue’s predicament actively amuses him and, although Daniel is wealthy and Mathieu knows it, he pretends to be in debt.The purpose of the novel is to show the Sartrean worldview through six or seven glutinously imagined characters – and that worldview is one of gloomy despair, morbid fear of getting old, of disgust at other people’s decaying, wrinkled, smelly bodies, revulsion at your own physical existence, and a pervasive, sickly hyper-sensitive self-awareness. Mathieu is a 34-year-old, tall, gangly philosophy teacher who spends a lot of time mooching round the streets of Paris feeling sorry for himself. Last year he had been quite unperturbed, he had never thought about that sort of thing: and now—it was rather ominous that he should so constantly feel that his youth was slipping between his fingers.

He and Marcelle have been together for some seven years, but it's an odd, hidden arrangement of convenience: he sneaks into her house -- careful not to wake her mother -- a few times a week and otherwise is on his merry way. Among the others in his circle is his acolyte, Boris (who is having an affair with the nightclub entertainer Lola); the young student from a wealthy family, Ivich, facing her final exams and worried (with good reason) about failing, uncertain about what she can do when the inevitable happens; and the more established Daniel (who would also have the money Mathieu needs, but isn't willing to give it to him). She felt sick…then a sense of uttermost disgust gathered upon her tongue… She disliked her body… the sight of women suckling their babies in the Luxemberg: a feeling beyond fear and disgust…she dreaded having to despise him… (p.This is not one of those rite to manhood type stories because with Sartre the coming of age, or in his words, the age of reason, is when one reaches that stage in life (if they ever reach that stage in life) when they realise that it is time for them to take charge of their life and to take responsibility for their actions. Boris Serguine is the highly lovable young philosophy student of Mathieu’s who worships his professor. All is going well until it becomes apparent he can’t receive the loan immediately, which leads him to try and chase down Sarah again. I’m tempted to describe it as a melodrama, but this does it a disservice as all of the events which occur feel so real. Daniel had flung himself backwards, and was looking at him with amazement, his eyes sparkingly with anger.

Topics Afghanistan Africa America Ancient history ancient Rome art Augustus book Britain British Empire British Museum China Christianity Cicero civil war Cold War colonialism comedy Communism drama Egypt exhibition Feminism fiction First World War France Germany Great War H.Delarue pressures him into revealing why he is marrying Marcelle, to which he replies: “Because I’m fond of her. It immediately becomes apparent Daniel, who is gay, is a duplicitous sort who seems set on playing with his victims for the hell of it.

Even Mathieu and Ivich share a moment on the dancefloor (this, of course, being the 1930s—no breakdancing would have occurred). All I want is’ and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame ‘to retain my freedom. Maybe these ‘freedom’ sections which caused so much debate in 1945, now seem thin and lifeless because we all think like that, talk like that, and have the t-shirt. You despise the bourgeois class, and yet you are bourgeois, son and brother of a bourgeois, and you live like a bourgeois.Towards the end of the story, Mathieu sneaks back into Lola’s apartment with the key Boris gave him and this time does steal 4,000 of her Francs. This is something most of us realize, at least on some level, but I don't think I've ever seen it rendered so well in fiction. This makes Delarue laugh, but it’s apparent it’s the only way to get the money from the conniving fiend. But the feeling didn’t last: ‘Not for a moment,’ he said to himself, ‘did Mathieu cease to be balanced, composed, and in perfect accord with himself. Sartre shows how difficult it can be to take charge of one's own life -- to accept that one has the responsibilities that come with 'the age of reason' -- and none of his characters achieve it in this volume.