Italics are mine

Sartre and Old Age

As promised in my last post, I wanted to touch upon Jean-Paul Sartre's old age, as described by Hazel Rowley in her book about him and Simone de Beauvoir. She also wrote an interesting article in The American Scholar entitled "Censorship in France" which deserves to be widely read, although I completely disagree with her debating whether she should have defended Sartre and Beauvoir more. Beauvoir, a self-professed heterosexual, slept with some of her young female friends and then passed them along to Sartre. This is indefensible. (More about the censorship controversy and the philosophers' love affairs here.)

But anyway, there is no love lost between Rowley and Sartre's literaty executor: his adoptive daughter, another lost young female who contacted him for career advice and whom he apparently had a brief liaison with. The woman is described in the book as a parasite who removed Sartre's belongings after his death, with the help of Sartre's secretary, before Beauvoir had a chance to retrieve his papers. (It might be useful to remind the reader that Rowley, who wrote her PhD dissertation on Beauvoir, seemed to have a lot of admiration for the author of The Mandarins.)

Sartre's secretary is also described as someone who took advantage of Sartre in his old age, especially in a series of interviews he made with the philosopher as his mental faculties appeared to be waning. This last part was discussed in the literary circles before Rowley's book found its way into print, in fact ever since the interviews were published - I became aware of the rumor a while ago.

When I read the end of Rowley's book I was reminded of the prize-winning biography of Willem de Kooning by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. It seems that "friends" of de Kooning removed paintings from his studio at the end of his life, when he was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, and claimed that they were presents of his. Being famous and old is a fraught combination. Beauvoir herself is said to have been afraid that Sartre's secretary would become his "Schoenmann", in reference to the secretary-general who claimed during the proceedings of the Russell tribunal to speak for the ninety-four-year-old Bertrand Russell , too old and fragile to do so himself.

What is interesting in the case of Sartre's literary executor is that she does seem to be fighting to protect Sartre's image. I can't say how her behavior has affected his legacy, but while Rowley hints that the woman became rich because of all the royalties pertaining to her illustrious adopted father's work, that continued allegiance makes her a more multi-dimensional character than her description in Rowley's book suggests - as if the honor of becoming Sartre's daughter had transformed her from a floundering young woman to a determined guardian of the philosopher's masterpieces.

The description of Sartre's decline (precipitated by alcohol and the excessive consumption of other substances), though, which Beauvoir also documented in Adieux, should serve as a warning to anyone hoping senescence will not apply to them - or not as much as to others - because they started off with a high IQ. The moments where Nobel Prize winner Sartre, almost blind, doesn't realize he is putting food all around his face while he eats are truly heart-wrenching - but not more so than those when de Beauvoir reads him books because he is no longer able to have a thoughtful conversation with her.

In contrast with Camus's abrupt death at age forty-six in a car accident, the physical and mental decline of such a towering intellectual figure offers a stark reminder of what happens when nature runs its course. And of the temptation by some to take advantage of such frailty, whether directly or indirectly by claiming that others did, when the main protagonist can no longer set the record straight.

Book Review: "Tete-a-tete", about Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

A few weeks ago I packed "Tete a tete: the tumultuous lives and loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre" by Hazel Rowley for my trip to Huntington Beach, California, and read it within days. (Technically, the title should be written Tête-à-tête, although few people will care.) The book is well-written, but in my opinion much too fawning toward Sartre and Beauvoir in light of the disgusting predatory sexual behavior it states they exhibited toward some of their own students - in the years when they taught - and toward the young people they surrounded themselves with throughout their lives. The author herself mentions at the beginning of her book that she used to be enthralled by Beauvoir, on whom she wrote her PhD dissertation, and it still shows. (Sadly, Rowley died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 2011 at age 59.)

While the book provides a good primer on the two philosophers' lives, its main contribution in my view is to shed light on their sexual appetite which, beyond the smokescreen of existentialism and "life without constraints", included sexual relations between Beauvoir and some of her female high school students (in fact, Beauvoir stopped teaching after an inquiry launched by the accusations of her lover's mother), an obsession by Sartre, who remained a womanizer all his life in spite of his famed ugliness, about taking the virginity of his girlfriends, and what seems to have been a pattern from Beauvoir to befriend young women she would then have Sartre meet and seduce.

Rowley comments that when these behaviors first came to light, long after both Sartre and Beauvoir had died, these two public figures were compared to Valmont and the Comtesse de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, with good reason. In the (unrelated) Sartre vs Camus battle from the grave for predominance as the leading French intellectual of the twentieth century, I have long been on Camus's side and this only reinforces my opinion. While I had read some rumors about Beauvoir's sexuality in a biography published in the late 1990s, her [highly sanitized, because she was very careful in controlling her image] memoirs are so popular in France and she represented such an ideal of female freedom that I had never realized until I read Rowley's book the full extent of her perverted deviant behavior.

Incredibly Sartre, who financially supported many of his mistresses (most psychologically fragile, I might add), appears to wonder why these women never amounted to much in their life - after they had been burnt by gravitating too close around the Sun God, aka himself! At some point in the book, Beauvoir dares writing to Sartre about a former female student of hers, whom she slept with and whom Sartre slept with as well, and tells him - as if she had not expected it - that the severe mental disorder the student has been suffering from is due to both Sartre and Beauvoir having an "incestuous" relationship with her, a conclusion also reached by the girl's psychoanalyst, who believes the girl was destroyed when the parental relationship she had with her mentors became sexual. Who are those perverts who slept with their charges! How dares anyone continue to put them on a pedestal! Some parts of the book truly made me want to throw up, especially concerning the period until World War II or so, when the two still taught and came in contact with impressionable students.

Beauvoir's and Sartre's obsession with surrounding themselves with much younger people, and their falling-out with Albert Camus once he escaped their orbit (although the argument was ostensibly not related to his fame), suggest they may have been very insecure people eager - perhaps at an inconscious level - to dominate by destroying others and possessing them as completely as they could - taking them as lovers, maintaining them in financial dependence, and writing history through Beauvoir's books (both her memoirs and her pseudo-fiction, which never amounted to more than a fictionalized account of her life) in a way that made this evil duo look good.

Louis Menand reviewed the book for The New Yorker in September 2005. Both the review and the book are worth reading to gain a better understanding of the real people behind the legends of brilliant philosophers writing in the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. What an insult to those educators among us who genuinely want to mentor students and help them become independent, successful individuals! A separate lesson must be drawn from the end of Sartre's life, though, which I will comment upon in my next post.

Summer Break

As you might have read on my other blog, I’m going to take a break from the Internet (blogging, tweeting and the like) over the summer. I still plan to check email once in a while, and that’s about it. I have already written enough posts for this blog to get me through the whole summer, though, so I’ve scheduled them to appear every week between now and August. My two (three?) readers will be pleased. I’m hoping to have developments to share in September that will mark the beginning of an exciting new phase of my life... Stay well and take good care.

B

I live in Bethlehem, want to learn more about Brooklyn (because of its community of artists and writers), have written before about my recent but very strong interest in Bethesda (read this old post of mine if you don't remember why), and would also gladly return to Boston - or the neighboring area of Brookline. So I don't know in which state I'm going to settle down, but it's safe to say the name of the city where I finally put down my bags is likely to start with a B.

The Versatile Blogger

Some time ago a fellow blogger included me in a blog post chain (pinging my other blog), specifically, people named were supposed to list seven things about themselves and fifteen blog writers not previously included in the chain.

Although the fellow blogger, whom I don’t know (I don’t even know her name – she writes an engineering blog under a pseudonym), certainly had the best of intentions, if you know me you can guess that the mere idea of participating in a blog post chain sent shivers down my spine. If you don’t know me I’ll start by explaining I have a strong sense of individuality. I join very few clubs (usually one professional organization, occasionally one alumni group, although I have let that membership lapse over the past few years). If I joined a club it’d be a club of people who have read obscure books such as “Music for Silenced Voices” or “An Honest Musician”.

If something is too popular I usually want nothing to do with it – I read the first Harry Potter when it came out in paperback and left it at that, never watched the movies; you’d have to give significant amounts of money to charity for me to consider glancing at Stephenie Meyer’s prose (or whatever you want to call it). I haven’t read “The Hunger Games” either. The only exception I recall making to that rule in recent memory is for “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, which I couldn’t put down after I made it past the first two chapters. But themes that appeal to me usually don’t make their way to the best-seller lists. Not everybody cares about the struggle of Dmitri Shostakovich.

I am most definitely not the sorority-girl type. Popularity would make me worry I’m doing something wrong. (To this day, seeing how certain professors shower their students with extravagant praise in the hope of being liked and getting good evaluations fills me with horror. Give me good evaluations if – and only if – you think my teaching was beneficial to your education. I have enough self-confidence not to need twenty-year-olds to stroke my ego, thank you very much.)

Instead, I am more of a loner and I take pride in that, since the sort of things I am interested in often require to go against the grain (such as why some people resist dictatorship or evil and others never do – not the first topic of conversation that’ll come to your mind for a cocktail party). I relate best to other loners, people who are not afraid of taking unpopular stands for what they believe in, people who understand that leadership, even on a small scale, is usually a very lonely affair.

I did think I would write a post as part of the blog chain, to make an effort, but as often happens with me when I find myself embroiled in something I don’t want to do, it slipped my mind (it truly did), and I never got around to doing it. Which I am rather glad for, because there aren’t fifteen blogs I want to mention. A few, absolutely, but fifteen? I’d rather use my blog writing posts about issues I feel strongly about rather than promoting blogs I don’t know because someone said I should.

But anyway, I was supposed to list seven things about myself, so I'll probably write a post about that in the not too distant future while leaving the part about fifteen other blogs out. That will be a way to tease out inspiration without participating in the blog chain, which linked to my other blog and stopped there. I did appreciate being recognized as a versatile blogger, though. But maybe I have more idiosyncrasies than what the other blogger had expected.

Old New Novel

On Saturday it occurred to me, while I was walking in the Rittenhouse Square area of Philadelphia on a gorgeous spring afternoon, that I probably should rewrite The Lost Voice aka Novel #1 from scratch. I didn't feel as upset about it as I thought I would - in fact I felt rather exhilarated, ready to take on the challenge. (I came to the conclusion I had to rewrite after I couldn't make progress on Novel #2 and had misgivings about Novel #3, both of which will use settings I touched upon in Novel #1. At some point I realized that I was stuck because Nobel #1 was flawed. Last week it had occurred to me I should change the structure, and this week I decided to change even more.)

I have some ideas to make it better, and if it turns out the way I envision it in my head, the rewrite will have been for the best. I might even be able to salvage some of the scenes. Of course it means I'll have a hectic summer, and after eight years in the LV I'm beginning to feel I'm running out of time before the place engulfs me. (Sometimes, such as this week when my most recent PhD graduate just started her new job in a great city while I'm here, I really wish that things had turned out differently for me, and then I remember I have a choice.) This is the best moment for me to realize I need to rewrite, since I do have more flexibility in the summer. If everything goes well, I might even use the momentum to take a strong start with Novel #2. I hope I can.

The Tribe

A funny thing has happened over the past few years - in spite of the challenges of living in the quintessencial small town, and thanks to the joys of being an academic and composing a life on my own terms (which includes heading out to far bigger towns whenever I can), my tribe has kept growing. I've always been an all-or-nothing person who don't waste time "half-liking" people - I either will move mountains to help them or I will pay them no attention whatsoever - but only for the past three or four years have I been able to put my philosophy into action and not just attitude.

I've got to say, I really enjoy being an all-or-nothing person. It is very liberating. I wish more people would try it, instead of making big smiles to a person one day and gossiping behind that person's back the next. It's not something I was taught, but rather something that evolved from my personality and ideas I read that intrigued me.

For instance, a chapter in The Success Principles (a graduation favorite) by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer explains that "99% is a bitch, 100% is a breeze." The idea is that people who are only 99% committed, for instance to their marriage, waste a lot of energy evaluating whether a new opportunity will fall into the 1% of times where they renege on their commitment, even if they don't articulate it in so precise terms. If you think it would be ok to cheat on your spouse if you find the right opportunity, then whenever someone attractive comes around, you have to decide whether you are attracted to that person. But if you decide you'll never, ever cheat on your spouse, then the problem is solved and you never have to waste any energy considering it. (You might decide to divorce, but you won't cheat.)

In my life, this translates into having a tribe of people whom I will help no matter what. They might mess up, they might do things I wish they hadn't done. But if they're part of the tribe, they're my people and I'll fight for them. I don't have to think about it. If I hear they have a problem, I don't waste any time evaluating whether I want to lift a finger or not - I'll start thinking of a plan to make things right. I'll call someone, I'll get in my car - whatever it takes.

Of course, that means I've got to be selective as to whom I let into my tribe. A lot of people, including people ten or twenty or thirty years older than me, prefer to gossip and badmouth while remaining all smiles when facing the person. Those are people who prefer to drag others down to feel better about themselves. I have no place for people like that in my life. I care about people who focus on being the best they can be, stand by their values and help others being the best they can be too in the process. We make a small tribe, but a very good one.

On the Pulitzers

i wish I could focus on the fact that Silent Night, which I will see at the Opera Company of Philadelphia in February 2013, won the Pulitzer Prize in Music but of course if you follow the news in the publishing world, you will know that everyone is talking about the board's decision not to award a fiction prize this year. The decision means big dollars lost for booksellers, as Ann Patchett points out in her op-ed for the New York Times.

It is also embarrassing for the two finalists who are still alive (the third one is deceased), and especially the one of the two whose book has become a bestseller, to be told in such unceremonious terms that their novel may have been good enough to make the short list but didn't deserve to get the prize, even if none other did.

But I also wonder whether readers will notice. If you see a book cover in the bookstore with "Pulitzer Prize winner" embossed on it, you will certainly be more likely to pick it up, but if you don't see such a cover, you may not even think about it - you'll simply continue browsing, and if you really want to buy an award-winning book, other prize-winners will beacon. You might assume the bookstore ran out of copies of the Pulitzer-winning book.

Shrewd businesspeople in the book trade should publicize the list of finalists and ask for a popular vote. This would create demand for all three books. Cities already have programs such as "One book, one Philadelphia", where a single book is selected for a whole city to read and discuss. The Pulitzer brouhaha would make a great opportunity to engage readers in discussing what makes a great book.

According to Goodreads, Swamplandia has a low average rating of 3.17 (over 8,588 votes) while Train Dreams, with 1,007 votes, averages a much higher 3.92 and The Pale King, with 2,227 ratings, averages 3.98 (as of April 19). This suggests Swamplandia would come in third, while the other two are locked in a tie. I will have to buy both.

New Novel

I started writing the new book last week (April 10). I only got about 600 words done - the semester is drawing to a close and I had a quiz and a conference presentation to prepare - but I like to think it's already about 1%. (I routinely underestimate the number of words a novel will have, which I guess is a good thing: if I knew in advance how many words I'm going to need, I'd get discouraged).

It's fascinating to me how I always return to writing when I get swamped with mindless tasks to refocus on what is important to me, even if it's just one page late at night in the middle of looming deadlines. Once the spring semester is over I also want to revise the previous novel and give it some of my attention back. The working title for my second project is Second-hand words. (This is not the final title.) It will be a while before anyone beside me can read it, though!

Bethesda

I have finally figured out where I want to move, at least for a sabbatical and maybe longer. The town's name is Bethesda and it is in Maryland right outside Washington, DC. I had heard of Bethesda before because it was named among the Top 5 cities to "live and launch" by Money Magazine in 2008, but it is only when my very best PhD student to date, R.D., got a job offer from a company headquartered there that I looked into the town more thoroughly.

It turns out to be my dream town. Absolutely and completely my dream town. Here are some of the wonderful amenities of Bethesda, MD:

• the Strathmore performing arts center, official DC-area home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, National Philharmonic and Washington Performing Arts Society.
• my favorite stores: Panera, Pain Quotidien, Whole Foods, Lululemon, Eileen Fisher.
• great yoga studios such as Balance (they even have Pilates equipment! I've always wanted to try.)
• an independent movie theater called the Bethesda Row Theater with indie/foreign films and stadium seating.
• easy access to Washington, DC through the Red Line (Bethesda stop). Yes, I root for public transportation.
• the Politics & Prose bookstore, one of the most venerable and successful indie bookstores in the nation with an impressive lineup of daily author events, is only two subway stops away.
• a vibrant economic life anchored by the National Institutes of Health located in Bethesda, and the proximity to major universities (Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason) as well as many thriving companies.
• a Writer's Center with classes, workshops and readings.
• a "foodie hub" (in the words of Money Magazine) with over 250 restaurants.
• out of a population of about 60,000, there are - according to the MIT directory - about 600 MIT alumni or 1% of residents.1%! And that's just MIT alumni. Imagine how many people there must be from the Ivy League and other top institutions. Educated, ambitious people! 
• The MIT Club of DC is one of the most active MIT alumni clubs in the nation, for instance with a seminar series held in Bethesda. This year's topic was "Rethinking water." I wish I could have been there.
• Bethesda also has the reputation of being health-conscious with many fitness enthusiasts.

From Wikipedia: "According to the 2000 Census, Bethesda was the best-educated city in the United States of America with a population of 50,000 or more. 79% of residents 25 or older have bachelor's degrees and 49% have graduate or professional degrees." You don't have to downplay the fact that you have a degree from a good school over there. When all is said and done, I want to be able to say I gave it my all (trying to be the best I can be, pushing my limits, challenging myself, learning new things) and found what I was capable of in the process. Bethesda seems to be teeming with similarly ambitious, eager professionals.

Sadly, I can see how the past 7 1/2 years in the Lehigh Valley have affected me: I am excited to have found out about Bethesda but I'm also a bit frightened, in a good way. What if I don't measure up? (Not only was I valedictorian of both my high school and college class with grades unmatched in their memory [we don't have grade inflation as much in Europe], but I have a PhD from MIT. For years until I graduated, I faced mental challenges head on, stretched myself and made things happen. I have succeeded in far more difficult environments. This new fear alone is a hint that I have to get out of here, if only for a sabbatical.)

I feel a bit out of shape mentally because I have been able to make do without needing to give my best, and Bethesda is a whole different ball game. From Wikipedia again: "According to a 2007 estimate, the median income for a household in the CDP was $117,723, and the median income for a family was $168,385." Not the Lehigh Valley for sure.

I am amazed that this little gem was two hundred miles away from me all along but I didn't know it. It even sounds like some sort of cosmic joke, in fact, that its name is so close to the name of my current town - Bethlehem - as if some helper to the Higher Power, or whatever you want to call it, had misunderstood the instructions: "You want me to get her where?... Beth-what?... Beth-something. Well, maybe He meant Bethlehem in Pennsylvania." No! It was Bethesda.