Simone de Beauvoir (Paperback)

Review
Notable bio of Sartre's lover, by two able French scholars now based in Illinois. A French version of this book has already appeared, to some acclaim. Francis and Gontier met their subject several times, yet kept a cleareyed approach to her vagaries of fact in her memoirs, even recording dutifully when she told them after an anecdote, "But don't write that in your book." Typically, the authors note that command, and print the anecdote anyway. To many readers, the news in this book is Beauvoir's hot and heavy romance with Chicago writer Nelson Algren. The account of their romance is based on 1,442 pages of love letters by Simone to Nelson deposited in an archive, epitomizing the subject's verbose emotionalism throughout her long life. Algren himself, a tough-guy writer, had little time for such French antics as Beauvoir's using their romance in fictionalized versions of her work: "Hell, love letters should be private. I've been in whorehouses all over the world and women there always close the door, whether it's in Korea or India." Ah, but not Beauvoir. According to Francis and Gontier, Algren literally dropped dead as a result of being asked about Beauvoir in his old age. This and other episodes of Beauvoir's life are considerably more fun to read here than in her humorless works. The saving grace of this bio-in-context is its understanding of the subject's literary and intellectual milieu: there are vivid pictures of the Paris she knew. A bar she merely passed as a schoolgirl is described in detail. At 10, she was already poring over lesbian novels and falling in love with another little girl. Francis and Gontier give a full and able account of her life with Sartre, even if they do slightly overestimate the pair as "literature's most disconcerting" love story; whatever happened to Abelard and Heloise? Excellent work, necessary for anyone even vaguely interested in the subject. (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Description
Simone de Beauvoir spent a lifetime practising her philosophy. Long before the publication of "The Second Sex", her classic manifesto for the liberated woman, she had determined to create herself according to her beliefs. Her 51-year partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, and all the "contingent loves" and many paradoxes that shaped it, was all the more remarkable for the fruits of its joint labours. This biography aims to shed new light on de Beauvoir's friendships with Camus, Picasso, Genet and Giacometti, and contains correspondence between her and her American lover, Nelson Algren. The joint authors were themselves friends of de Beauvoir.

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