Book | Five things I took from "Introducing Sartre, a Graphic Guide", by Philip Thody and Howard Read

Introducing Sartre, a Graphic Guide

One of my goals for 2024 is to visit bookshops more often. 

 Oxford is, in many ways, a make-belief town. It's a place that revolves around itself as if the wider world outside didn't really exist, and living here has been different from my previous UK experience (when I lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne) in every possible way. Amidst the constant pressures or pursuing a PhD (or a DPhil, as we call them up here), and the unexpected longing for the comforts of home, it's surprisingly easy to forget that this is actually a pretty cool place in which to write this chapter of my life. I want to remind myself of this more often. Remind myself to enjoy the cool things that Oxford has to offer, and one of these things, are the bookshops. 

There are at ten bookshops in a radius of a fifteen minute walk from where I live, and that's discounting museum shops and the Bodleian gift stores (which also sell some books). There's a 4-storey Waterstones on my block, and three different Blackwells bookshops on the street behind my house. It's a treasure trove for book lovers, and I want to make visiting these bookshops a part of my weekly routine. 

Now, although I enjoy going to brick-and-mortar shops, one of the frustrations of doing that is that books are so expensive. When you're living as a student on scholarship, in a far away place, it's difficult to shed £20 for a book, when the same novel costs up to 50% less on Amazon, and is delivered to your door (or, in my case, to my pidge at the College lodge) in one day.  This is why I was so amazed when I discovered that "remainder bookshops" are a thing. 

Oxford has two of these shops: The Last Bookshop on Walton Street and Book Stop, at Magdalen street. These shops specialize in "remainder books", that is, excess copies of new books that are no longer selling well, and must be taken off the shelves to make space for new material. These books would have been discarded, so instead, they are sold for cheap. Most of the books at the Last Bookshop for instance, are priced at £4. 

During my last visit, one of the books I got was "Introducing Sartre, A Graphic Guide", and I decided to pick it up. I am not sure why... I didn't know much about Sartre, except that he was involved with Simone de Beauvoir (which seems to puzzle everybody), he wrote something called Being and Nothingness, and his branch of philosophy is called Existentialism.  I didn't even remember whatever is said about him in Sophia's World (or if he's even mentioned there at all). But, in my mind, Sartre has this aura of being the kind of thinker people come across and become very impressed by when they're at University. Well, I'm at University. I didn't know if I was about to become very impressed by Sartre, but I decided I wanted to know more.This book is but an introduction to his life and his thinking. It's sort of like a graphic novel, in that every page is illustrated, and there isn't much time to delve deeply into anything. Nevertheless, here are 5 things I took from this little volume:

1. Before he was a philosopher, Sartre was a novelist

 

One of the ways this book approaches Sartre's life is through his works, and the way they go about this is by summarizing the plot of some of these novels, short stories and plays. Sartre's novels are infused with his philosophical beliefs, but still, before he wrote any sort of technical treaty, he was writing novels, and writing beautifully at that. The first one introduced in the book is Nausea, which is about a man who is made sick by everything he touches, including his own body. The reason is that "there is no reason for anything to exist at all". In his words:

 "Everything which exists is born for no reason, carries on existing through weakness and dies by accident" 

I didn't have time to fully consider his words here (although my first inclination is to agree with them), but regardless of the philosophical message he is trying to convey, the thought is beautifully phrased. The brief descriptions of this book - the prose, the fantastical element - made me curious to read it, and I have added it to my library list. 

2. Sartre was a political activist

  Apparently, Sartre was very much a left-wing man, which I bet is the reason why so many people are smitten with him at Uni. He seems to have had integrity - or at least that is my take from him refusing to accept the Novel Prize, and to have been an important player during the war for Algerian independence - by, if nothing else, publishing anticolonialist material in France at the time and specifically arguing against the atempt to mantain Algeria as a French territory. Personally, however, from what was shown to me in this guide, his political writings hold less of my interest. 

 3. Man is condemned to be free. Or is he? 

Sartre's thoughts about free-will were, by far, the most interesting element of his thinking. I have long thought that, although people are fond of saying that they "didn't have a choice", no one - or rather, the majority of people - always have a choice. Even if the choice is difficult, or if it is a choice between two bad options. It's nearly always there*. I had never seen these thought expressed so eloquently as it is in Sartre's conviction that man is condemned to be free. He uses the example of a man who was tortured but did not reveal the information asked of him as proof of his concept - even in this extreme circumstance, that soldier was not out of choices.  

I think this is a similar idea to what happens in V for Vendetta, when Evie becomes stronger by realizing this very thing. At the end of V's "training" (let's call it "training", for now). Evie, when threatened, chooses to die. "You thought the only thing you had left was your life," V says, meaning that, for Evie, if her life was threatened she would have no choice but to yield. That however, wasn't true. The choice of keeping your life or dying, difficult as it is, is still a choice, and one we are all condemned to have.

Most people behave as if they are perpetually trapped by their circumstances: their parentage, upbringing, ethnicity, personality and socio-economical class. That, Sartre says, is because people are constantly afraid of their freedom, and trying to run away from the responsibility of their own choices. This idea really resonated with me, and reminded me a bit of The Next Generation's Masterpiece Society, when Captain Picard softly admonishes Aaron of this very behavior. 

 "You would have me make this choice for you, but I can't."

 I was a bit confused however when it came to the relationship between himself and Jean Genet. At some point, the book says : Genet decided, at that point, to take upon himself the nature of thief and evil doer which society had forced upon him". That seems incompatible doesn't it? Either you choose to become a thief or you are a victim of society. It seems to me you can't have it both ways... But I suppose I would neeed to read more of his writings to fully explore this question.  

4.There is a constant war within us, between our vision of ourselves and the struggle to reconcile that with the vision others have of us 

 

 "When two people are together, according to Sartre and Hegel, each is trying to force the other to look at him - or her - in the way that they would like to be seen"

These ideas are mentioned in the context of a play, Huis Clos. He goes on: "All of us have our own vision of ourselves which we want other epople to endorse, and this leads us to see them first and foremost as possible supporters of this view of ourselves. But them, in turn, are trying to do the same to us, and the result of this clasjh of egotistical self-visions is the permanent conflict which characterizes all human relationships."

These lines were very interesting to me. I am not sure I agree that we are all performing a certain role for eveyone else, trying to be believable as whatever it is that we want to be. That is... too cynical, perhaps. But I do agree that we are constantly striving to show other who we are, in a manner that thye can understand. And when these efforts are successful - when their vision of us matches our vision of ourselves - then.we feel seen. But perhaps the reason why we are not successful sometimes - the reason why we are no seen - is that seeing us would be imcompatible with the other person's endeavour to be seen as well. Seeing us as we are would be inconflict with who they are - or who they want to be.  I had never seen things through this light... Well, it might be interesting to give this play a read as well.

 5. A Novelist should study the greats that came before

"Mentes Apaixonadas" (Passionate Minds),  a book about the relationship between Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet was a very unexpected book, and one that had a great impact on me, without my ever seeing it coming. Part of why it was so impactful was because of what I learned from those two scientists, and the way they nurtured their intelligence and their passions - not only by exercising their crafts but also, in their case, by translating works of those who came before. Sartre too did something similar, it seems. He did at least two major studies of the lives of French writers who came before him: Baudelaire and Flaubert. Now, Sartre is more than a little judgemental about his predecessors - and the sensibilities of the Romantic movement seem entirely lost on him - but this is still a lesson for me, as a young writer, and thinker, or at least as someone who is learning to become the person they can be. 

I was also curious about whether Sartre could speak other languages. I was curious because almost everything about his life - at least the way it is presented in this graphic guide - revolved arround France: French politics, french society, even the authors he studied were French. There's nothing wrong with that -the French language seems to offer fertile ground for study... But it seems, somehow... Small... Too small. 

Overall, I think I made good use of this little book. Enough that I am hoping to go back to the Last Bookshop and get a second one (Perhaps Introducing Feminism). There were moments when I didn't like how the book was written - in this kind of material, I think authors should avoid elocubrating about their own personal thoughts and focus on presenting facts and, at most, some interpretations of the works of the individual under study. But regardless, I learned a few things, and the reading sparked my interest for even more books. Time well spent.

 

*The reason why I say nearly always is because my experience as a geneticist has demonstrated that some people, by virtue of their genetic make up, are excluded from this - often because they lack the awareness that is necessary to understand that choices are even available. They are an exception that should be kept in mind.