The Mandarins
In her most famous novel, The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir takes an unflinching look at Parisian intellectual society at the end of World War II. In fictionally relating the stories of those around her --Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler, Nelson Algren --de Beauvoir dissects the emotional and philosophical currents of her time. At once an engrossing drama and an intriguing political tale, The Mandarins is the emotional odyssey of a woman torn between her inner desires and her public life.
The Mandarins Accessories
The Mandarins Reviews
My reactions to Simone's massive novel about life with J.P. Sartre, Albert Camus, and Nelson Algren are violently mixed. It's fascinating to read about an era where prize-winning novelists were resistance fighters and political organizers, and though they're continually bemoaning their powerlessness, I'm amazed by how much what they do and say matters in their vanished world. On the other hand, it's discouraging the way Simone turns Sartre into a plaster saint, and Camus into a heroic godlike creature every woman desires. The big revelation this novel delivers is how focused on men the author, a feminist icon, was, and how hostile she is to all women other than herself. It wasn't just the era she lived in, because Colette, born a generation before Simone, wrote many warm and appreciative portraits of women, and didn't delude herself about the flaws in the characters of the men she loved.
One of the philosophical preoccupations of the novel is Sartre's idea of "Bad Faith", which as I interpret it, is the creation of a morality or an ideology that protects us from the anxiety of having to make choices about our life. The Camus character in the novel is continually struggling with one anguished choice after the next about freedom, betrayal, life and death, but the choices of the women are limited to choices between one man and another. And even then, the choices about when to end the love affairs are almost always made by the men. Perhaps Simone's bad faith about the inability of women to be happy without being the acolytes of men is what makes her style pedantic and turgid, resembling James Michener far more than her literary predecessor, the clear-eyed and elegant Colette, so that the novel is slow going, relying on the basic vitality of the times and the characters to pull you along.
Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins is the best book I have read in years.
The Saturday Review; "There is no doubt about the brilliance of the mind behind the writing of The Mandarins" Do not miss it!
Roda Lerpold
I will allow the reader an oppurtunity to read through some quotes within The Mandarins, so that s/he will decide whether the book is worthwhile or not...
" [...] to be no one, all things considered, is sthg of a privilege [...]"
" No I shan't meet death today. Not today or any other day. I'll be dead for others and yet I'll never have known death "
" If you think you're nothing, that you can do nothing, that you have rights to nothing, what can you expect to make of yourself ? "
"... its unhealthy to insist on living in the past, but you can't be very proud of yourself when you realize you've more or less disowned it. That's why they invented that dreadful compromise: commemoration"
" To survive is, after all, perpetually to begin to live again "
"... is it that I really believe in a dream, or is it stubborness due to pride, defiance or a sense of self-satisfaction ? "
"... a habit is never bad, despite what they say..."
"... it's strange to lose yourself absolutely in another. But, how rewarding it is when you find the other in yourself..."
"... the right moment is immediately..."
"... to live is to die a little..."
"... becoming aware of my skin is the act of sex..."
The Mandarins was the book of the month for an expat book club based in Moscow, Russia. We chose the book for the following reasons: life and values in post-war France, politics torn between Soviet Russia and communism on the left and the US and capitalism on the right, feminism, intellectualism. What we got was a lively discussion about idealism, returning to life after a war, trying to make sense of values and priorities. Most of us felt a sense of accomplishment by actually finishing the book. It is a formidable read, but worth the effort, less as a novel, but more as a snapshot of a time in which we did not live, but with elements of our current life in post-Soviet Russia still as relevant today as they were 60 years ago.
The quality of writing was doubtless a little undermined by its English translation (probably through no fault of the translator), and so in my opinion deserves little comment - the style can be a little dry at times, though not exactly boring. There are some wonderful descriptions, and neither did I find them overly dramatised, but again I found myself questioning them as to their pros and cons, wondering what they had lost or gained going through the translation process.
I knew nothing about de Beauvoir's relationships to the characters she wrote about, and their connections to the people she knew (mine being an archaic charity shop edition with an extremely non-commital and uninformative blurb). In all events, I was happily surprised by the scope and emotion she conveyed with the book, despite its aforementioned dry tone. Somewhat like Lessing's Shikasta, I felt it to be one of those massively long pieces which led quite slowly to the finale, and yet at the same time the slowness was important to lay the seed of thought in my head of what she was trying to tell the reader.
This review is probably a bit of a turn-off to prospective readers, but in actuality the book is a stunning achievement, and well worth reading for those ignorant people like me who know nothing about post-WWII France, the intellectuals, etc. Simone gives us all of this information, but in a truly poetic and retrospective manner, portraying the uncertanties, political, moral and emotional dilemmas that these intelligent people had to justify to themselves, with realistic exactitude.
Additionally, she not only gives us these clever trains of thought, but portrays accurately the treacherous uncertainty of involving oneself in politics, faced with a world of high society idiots who clasp the strings of power, being from the viewpoint of intelligent, but innefectual revolutionaries. This chilling message she conveyed, to me resonated icily with the present day; a double echo from what it was then, and what it still is today - perhaps a comment on the human condition in a big world?
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