Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It - Softcover

Aronson, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226000249 ISBN 13: 9780226000244

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2005

Synopsis

Until now it has been impossible to read the full story of the relationship between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Their dramatic rupture at the height of the Cold War, like that conflict itself, demanded those caught in its wake to take sides rather than to appreciate its tragic complexity. Now, using newly available sources, Ronald Aronson offers the first book-length account of the twentieth century's most famous friendship and its end.

Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre first met in 1943, during the German occupation of France. The two became fast friends. Intellectual as well as political allies, they grew famous overnight after Paris was liberated. As playwrights, novelists, philosophers, journalists, and editors, the two seemed to be everywhere and in command of every medium in post-war France. East-West tensions would put a strain on their friendship, however, as they evolved in opposing directions and began to disagree over philosophy, the responsibilities of intellectuals, and what sorts of political changes were necessary or possible.

As Camus, then Sartre adopted the mantle of public spokesperson for his side, a historic showdown seemed inevitable. Sartre embraced violence as a path to change and Camus sharply opposed it, leading to a bitter and very public falling out in 1952. They never spoke again, although they continued to disagree, in code, until Camus's death in 1960.

In a remarkably nuanced and balanced account, Aronson chronicles this riveting story while demonstrating how Camus and Sartre developed first in connection with and then against each other, each keeping the other in his sights long after their break. Combining biography and intellectual history, philosophical and political passion, Camus and Sartre will fascinate anyone interested in these great writers or the world-historical issues that tore them apart.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald Aronson is Distinguished Professor of interdisciplinary studies at Wayne State University. He is the author or editor of seven previous books, including Sartre's Second Critique and Stay Out of Politics: A Philosopher Views South Africa, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning with Camus's introduction, from pied noir roots, into the Parisian circle dominated by Sartre and his existentialist milieu, Aronson (Sartre's Second Critique) opens this chronological tale with two resistance writers finding differing paths in the violent days of occupied France. Aronson's perceptive grasp of the distinct orientations of Sartre and Camus helps navigate the reader through their fluctuating political positions and oscillations between popularity and ostracism. While the initial divergence saw Camus supporting an activist resistance and Sartre offering a form of disengagement, Aronson documents the dramatic change during the Cold War and the rise of the Algerian resistance, when Sartre shifted toward embracing violence and Camus thoroughly denounced it. Through much of this postwar turmoil, each evolved his thought in an intimate opposition-an opposition that came to a decisive showdown in the pages of Sartre's Les Temps Modernes. Following a review of Camus's The Rebel, which unflinchingly panned the book, the author responded with a livid letter to the editor. Sartre's counterresponse was to be the last conversation the two ever shared. Aronson's evenhanded analysis of the quarrel reveals the frighteningly personal tack taken by these two amid a political debate that decisively ended their friendship. The consistently close reading of the writings of these authors reveals those writings in many places to be utterly personal, casting the other as a rival until the very end. Aronson's literary acuity combined with an entertaining use of anecdotes on social and personal jealousies Sartre and Camus harbored makes the book a useful biographical background to the major works of these authors and a most enjoyable tale of the turmoil of intellectual life in postwar France.
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About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0226000249
• ISBN 13: 9780226000244
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 302