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"Entertaining...the characters are well observed and conscientiously and intelligently studied."-- Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker
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Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, The Age of Reason follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his circle in the cafés and bars of Montparnasse. Mathieu has so far managed to contain sex and personal freedom in conveniently separate compartments. But now he is in trouble, urgently trying to raise 4,000 francs to procure a safe abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Beyond all this, filtering an uneasy light on his predicament, rises the distant threat of the coming of the Second World War.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
"You live in a void, you're an abstraction, a man who is not there. It can't be an amusing sort of life."
18 Jun 2008
Format:Paperback
The Age of Reason puts Mathieu Delarue's character on trial. We find him in a moral quandary over his mistress of seven years, recently pregnant; does he marry her, or does he try to maintain his `freedom'? The first option is seen by Mathieu as something of a dreaded defeat, the latter... well that develops into more of a problem as it dawns on him that he has absolutely no firm idea of what freedom means. The more the issue is explored the more obscure it becomes, the less assured Mathieu feels in his life, and so the more fateful his choice of marriage or abortion becomes.
The novel's really a fictional presentation of Being and Nothingness and what is mainly explored through Mathieu's character here is issue of bad faith. He criticises bourgeois life but, as the crisis of Marcelle's pregnancy proves, he is only one decision away from the traditional water-torture of career and family. He approves of his friend Brunet, a Communist, but at the same time admits to himself:
"...I don't want any change. I enjoy railing against capitalism, and I don't want it suppressed because I should no longer have any reasons for railing, I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people."
In his attempt to conform to a youthfully misconceived ideal of freedom Mathieu finds himself beholden to emptiness and ugliness, ultimately he has achieved nothing with his life. The Age of Reason is very much the realisation of a life wasted and sets the scene well for the following volumes, The Reprieve and Iron in the Soul, where Mathieu must define some kind of engagement with life as it forces itself upon him through the second world-war.
Now I know all this sounds a tad glum but Sartre is a writer with a violent sense of humour and, as with his earlier novel Nausea, I did find I was laughing plenty after my initial dismay at a world so grim had subsided. I mean;
"There was in that ill-favoured face of Sarah's an intriguing, almost voluptuous humility that evoked a mean desire to hurt her, to crush her with shame, `When I look at her', Daniel used to say, `I understand Sadism.'"
I found it took me a couple of chapters to acclimatise to Sartre's superficially bleak mood, but after that The Age of Reason was spankingly good. If you haven't read any of the philosophy don't worry, Sartre was a good enough fiction writer for the Roads to Freedom series to stand on its own merits. Top stuff.
The novel's really a fictional presentation of Being and Nothingness and what is mainly explored through Mathieu's character here is issue of bad faith. He criticises bourgeois life but, as the crisis of Marcelle's pregnancy proves, he is only one decision away from the traditional water-torture of career and family. He approves of his friend Brunet, a Communist, but at the same time admits to himself:
"...I don't want any change. I enjoy railing against capitalism, and I don't want it suppressed because I should no longer have any reasons for railing, I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people."
In his attempt to conform to a youthfully misconceived ideal of freedom Mathieu finds himself beholden to emptiness and ugliness, ultimately he has achieved nothing with his life. The Age of Reason is very much the realisation of a life wasted and sets the scene well for the following volumes, The Reprieve and Iron in the Soul, where Mathieu must define some kind of engagement with life as it forces itself upon him through the second world-war.
Now I know all this sounds a tad glum but Sartre is a writer with a violent sense of humour and, as with his earlier novel Nausea, I did find I was laughing plenty after my initial dismay at a world so grim had subsided. I mean;
"There was in that ill-favoured face of Sarah's an intriguing, almost voluptuous humility that evoked a mean desire to hurt her, to crush her with shame, `When I look at her', Daniel used to say, `I understand Sadism.'"
I found it took me a couple of chapters to acclimatise to Sartre's superficially bleak mood, but after that The Age of Reason was spankingly good. If you haven't read any of the philosophy don't worry, Sartre was a good enough fiction writer for the Roads to Freedom series to stand on its own merits. Top stuff.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you enjoy reading philosophical, metaphysical works of fiction you will love this book. As popular culture reduces everything to the lowest common denominator (violence, sex, profanity, instant gratification) and treats the reader or viewer as a moron with the attention span of a dog, Sartre does the opposite. Every sentence by every character is given equal serious interpretation by every other character. Every mood and motivation is analysed, every act is considered and reconsidered. Existentialism is everywhere. And the writing is sublime. The language is beautiful. I can't wait to read the next two novels in the trilogy.
Perhaps the only negative is that I concurrently read the excellent 'Tete a tete' about Sartre's life and his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. It is clear from reading this biography that the characters in the Roads to Freedom trilogy are almost exact replicas of Sartre's friends and lovers. And of course the pricipal character is a Professor of Philosophy! as was Sartre of course.
However this does not detract from what, in this modern age of vacuous nonsense, is a breath of fresh air from a high mountain of stratospheric genius.
JP :O)
Perhaps the only negative is that I concurrently read the excellent 'Tete a tete' about Sartre's life and his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. It is clear from reading this biography that the characters in the Roads to Freedom trilogy are almost exact replicas of Sartre's friends and lovers. And of course the pricipal character is a Professor of Philosophy! as was Sartre of course.
However this does not detract from what, in this modern age of vacuous nonsense, is a breath of fresh air from a high mountain of stratospheric genius.
JP :O)
39 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Age of Reason is a narrative fiction parallel of (parts of) Sartre's philosophical work 'Being and Nothingness.' The latter is supposed to be a bit difficult to read, but the former is a joy. If it suits you.
You don't have to get into the heavy stuff about personal freedom, bad faith and the death of God etc to enjoy this, because it is written so well that you can just take it as a story at face value.
The difference for me is, however, the underlying idea. I think a novel with a great central idea is a great thing. See Catch 22 for a similar example. Here, Sartre presents to us the situation where you find tourself unable to make the next move because it will go against your principles. But that very move will preserve your freedom, which is in fact your guiding principle. So do you break your own rules to allow yourself to carry on living by them, or just chuck everything away and start over?
I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty base to build a story on. I'm afraid I can't explain it as well as it should be, but I hope you get the drift. The setting, characters and events are all presented in a very colloquial style and manner - don't expect anything really heavy here - he saves that for the 2nd and 3rd installments of the trilogy.
I liked it. Top 5 book of all time. Read it while you're young enough to appreciate the challenge. Go on! Eh? Go on....
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Free To Reason
This first book in Sartre's trilogy documents several interlocking lives in and around WWII and explores a central theme in existentialism: what kind of decisions can we make as... Read more
Published 19 days ago by demola
sartre doesnt really have a talent for fiction
i have read several of sartres fiction works and it seems they are all equally grey and boring in their style and arrangement. Read more
Published 4 months ago by asp
Tedious
The "hero" of this novel is supposedly in pursuit of freedom but does nothing but defeat himself in the most inane ways. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Malcolm Black
The Age of Resignation...
This is the first volume of the trilogy entitled "Roads to Freedom." The other two volumes, in English, are entitled The Reprieve (Penguin Modern Classics) and Troubled Sleep... Read more
Published 12 months ago by John P. Jones III
An entertaining introduction to existentialism
The Age of Reason: Jean-Paul Sartre, 1945; trans. Eric Sutton, Penguin, London, 2001.
An entertaining introduction to existentialism
By Howard Jones
This... Read more
An entertaining introduction to existentialism
By Howard Jones
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Published 18 months ago by Dr. H. A. Jones
The Age of Reason
The first part of Satre's epic "Roads to Freedom" trilogy tells of a philosophy teacher Mathieu's struggle to find the 4000 francs needed to provide his mistress with a safe... Read more
Published on 29 July 2002 by Andrew Byrne
I love this book because the characters are so real.
The hero of this book is a man who has everything worked out in his life, until his girlfriend falls pregnant and he has to question the principles that he has lived by so far. Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2001
One of the greats!
The method Sartre employs to convey the characters inner thoughts to embelish the atmosphere and tone of the whole work is masterly. Read more
Published on 31 May 2000
Very French
Our hero Maurice is philisophical man big questions and a very straight forward man with personal questions. Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2000
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