The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The Age of Reason is the first volume in a trilogy, and that work should presumably be judged as a whole; nevertheless, it's not a great start. He and Marcelle have been together for some seven years, but it's an odd, hidden arrangement of convenience: he sneaks into her house -- careful not to wake her mother -- a few times a week and otherwise is on his merry way. However, the review goes on to remark how Sartre seems to be preoccupied with describing the physical act of vomiting.

Entering chapter 12 and the final 100 pages of the novel, a series of events force Delarue towards the culmination of his predicament. Daniel, a strange character who has never managed to establish a normal connection with the world, has been hovering on the edge of suicide for some time.Well that got old so one day when I was poking around the props (you know - how they set up the entire fancy-pants mock bedrooms? He explains that being a member has given him a sense of purpose and brotherhood with other members all round the world. All is going well until it becomes apparent he can’t receive the loan immediately, which leads him to try and chase down Sarah again. I am planning on rereading existentialism is humanism and wanted to find out about some of the themes in Satre’s novels.

The thought of manipulating his ‘friend’ amuses the cynical Daniel (‘When Mathieu adopted a Quakerish attitude, Daniel hated him’, p. The individual’s duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.

This was my very first foray into Sartre’s fiction which I found thoroughly engrossing and thought provoking and replete with existential essence of human life. With a trick up his sleeve to get one over on Mathieu, he heads off to see Marcelle in an attempt to manipulate her thoughts surrounding Delarue, although he now considers having to deal with him: “another plunge into the clinging slime of pity”.