A brief but inspired reimagining of the latter years of the existentialists.
Great 20th-century thinkers apply wisdom to current events in this fictional account.
What would writer Albert Camus and existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre make of this modern world? That’s the idea behind this slight fiction that finds the philosophers debating politics and war in the present day. The book opens in Paris 2005 and reveals that Camus did not die in a car crash in 1960, and Sartre did not succumb to his addiction to amphetamines in 1980. Now old men, the two philosophers push past their political differences. Along with absurdist writer Pascal Pia (1903–1979), the characters deftly argue about contemporary dilemmas facing humanity, including the war in Iraq and global terrorism. Camus struggles with memories of his World War II experiences and still indulges his love for the sea, which he shares with the protagonist in his novel The Stranger. But when faced with a manifestly postmodern Europe, the writer suffers a “crisis of confidence.” To cope, he embraces his long-dormant religious feelings and converts to Catholicism. Sartre remains a committed atheist, but years of self-abuse takes their toll. A psychotic episode sends him reeling into the Paris streets, and Camus and Pia drunkenly search for their friend. Finally, a religious epiphany brings Sartre closer to Camus’ newly found faith, and Camus struggles with his own devotion to God and man in the wake of a terrorist bombing in the city. While the framing of these well-known philosophical views in a somewhat superficial religious context smacks of an agenda on Schauer’s part, the characterizations are reasonably sound, and the book may appeal to students of existentialist literature.
A brief but inspired reimagining of the latter years of the existentialists.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-59800-836-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
