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After the War: Force of Circumstance, Volume I: 1944-1952 (The Autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir)
«Peu de temps après le jour V, je passai une nuit très gaie avec Camus, Chauffard, Loleh Bellon, Vitold, et une ravissante Portugaise qui s'appelait Viola. D'un bar de Montparnasse qui venait de fermer, nous descendîmes vers l'hôtel de la Louisiane ; Loleh marchait pieds nus sur l'asphalte, elle disait : "C'est mon anniversaire, j'ai vingt ans." Nous avons acheté des boute
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Published
(first published 1960)
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While Memories of a Dutiful Daughter is the most beautiful example of the autobiographical form I have read, I had zero illusions that the author could possibly maintain such a feat through five volumes. And volume three appears to be the drop off. It is still worthwhile for her description of the hardships of Paris after the liberation and the slow transformation of post WW II hopes into cold war fears. The carefree traveler in volume 2, who slept on park benches and takes off for weeklong moun
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Oct 06, 2012
Manny
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
french
,
life-is-camus
A Taxi-Driver Writes
Saw you was reading La force de choses , wotcher fink? 'Er and that Nelson Algren, right guv? Nah, 'aven't read it meself, more of a Marguerite Duras man, know what I mean? Saw that article in Paris-Match though. Them pictures, phwoar. Wouldn't mind a bit of that if I saw it on order, know what I mean? That Sartre musta bin plumb off 'is rocker, right guv? Shoulda strung 'im up, it's the only language them 'egelian phenomenologists understand.
I 'ad that Iris Murdoch in the bac ...more
Saw you was reading La force de choses , wotcher fink? 'Er and that Nelson Algren, right guv? Nah, 'aven't read it meself, more of a Marguerite Duras man, know what I mean? Saw that article in Paris-Match though. Them pictures, phwoar. Wouldn't mind a bit of that if I saw it on order, know what I mean? That Sartre musta bin plumb off 'is rocker, right guv? Shoulda strung 'im up, it's the only language them 'egelian phenomenologists understand.
I 'ad that Iris Murdoch in the bac ...more
I'm not usually a huge memoir fan, but Beauvoir's memoirs are a notable exception. The narrative is part slice-of-history, part doomed love story, part existential philosophy. She reflects upon her life in France after the war, her travels, and her affair with the American writer Nelson Algren, all the while also reflecting upon what it means to be self-reflective. Her musings on gender and identity are perhaps the best aspect of this memoir; since "The Second Sex" was written and published duri
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Jun 22, 2015
Samantha
is currently reading it
"Happiness exists, and it's important; why refuse it? You don't make other people's unhappiness any worse by accepting it; it even helps you fight for them. Yes, I find it sad the way everyone seems to be ashamed of feeling happy nowadays." -- Camus (173)
"I don't regret that it existed. It brought us more than it tore from us." -- de Beauvoir on Algren. (171)
Reviews of the second sex. P. 196-203
"I don't regret that it existed. It brought us more than it tore from us." -- de Beauvoir on Algren. (171)
Reviews of the second sex. P. 196-203
Sections were the typical "who I saw," "where I was," "what I did" of any biographical piece (especially autobiography), which can contaminate and belittle a good work (as in Charlie Chaplin's autobiography) but the sections of this book that did not follow such a formula wholely redeem it. Simone is brilliant. More in love with her than ever. Hard to escape such a mind. Near the end, too much was made of the writing of the Mandarins, as if all of her experiences in this book (from the Liberatio
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Pakko vähitellen myöntää, että hyvän ensimmäisen osan jälkeen Beauvoirin muistelmat ovat olleet pettymys. Onhan niissä mielenkiintoista asiaa, mutta pyrkimys tehdä tekstistä elämänmakuista dokumentoimalla joka ikinen matka ja elokuvissakäynti tekee sen elämälle vieraaksi luetteloksi. Ehkä oon liian yhteiskuntatieteilijä, mutta toivoisin Beauvoirilta enemmän analyysia ja reflektiota niistä maailman (ja miksei myös oman elämänsä) muutoksista, joita hän kuvaa.
Ah, this journal by Simone De Beauvoir is great. It covers a period of time that was very important to France and its arts. I bought the book to research Boris Vian, who was a friend of DeBearvoir - and in fact he went out shopping with her to buy a turntable as well as some recordings. It is these little life details that makes this book essential.
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"Simone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including
She Came to Stay
and
The Mandarins
, and for her 1949 treatise
The Second Sex
, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary femin
...more
More about Simone de Beauvoir...
“A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.”
—
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