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Jean-Paul Sartre at 100
Sartre’s Image in De Beauvoir’s Memoirs
Willie Thompson tries to see Sartre through the eyes of the person who knew him best.
In Erica Jong’s best-selling novel of the seventies, Fear of Flying, two characters amuse themselves by telling a third that they’re Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, their acquaintance being vaguely conscious that these are names he ought to recognise, but unable to quite locate the reference. It is presumed that the readers will do so and that awareness of their significance will be part of an educated person’s intellectual equipment. Indeed, the pair formed the most renowned couple of the twentieth century – and in addition Beauvoir effectively wrote Sartre’s adult life-history as well as her own (“a dazzling biography of Sartre in her memoirs”, according to Claude Francis and Fernand Gontier) . Although his public image was not altogether Beauvoir’s creation, she was certainly its principal disseminator, and showed herself determined during her lifetime to maintain control over it. Consequently much of what was known about Sartre’s private life and the image of their relationship was constructed on the basis of her memoirs.
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