Tête-à-Tête: The Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre

"Tête-á-Tête is a dual biography that focuses on Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex was Beauvoir’s theory, but this book explores the practical application of her and Sartre’s philosophy. I think this is an important book because Beauvoir and Sartre wanted to create a philosophy that could be lived, and attempted to live it as much as possible, through breaking free of social conventions like marriage and monogamy and being engaged in social activism. On the one hand, it’s voyeuristic because there are deeply intimate and often unflattering details about their relationships. On the other hand, they wrote prolifically about their intimate lives though their novels, which were not-very-concealed accounts of their actual relationships, as well as autobiographies, and personal letters. This book brings a lot of that together. “It started with Sartre not wanting to commit to one girlfriend, but grew into a whole philosophy” It started with Sartre not wanting to commit to one girlfriend, but grew into a whole philosophy. He would say to his girlfriends: freedom is the most beautiful gift we can give one another. They all went along with it for a little while, but gave up on him eventually. Then when he met Simone de Beauvoir, she embraced it. But the thing was, it wasn’t just about the freedom to have sex with other people, because they thought that would be a cheap and meaningless form of freedom. They wanted to be braver and give each other the freedom to fall in love with other people. Right. And they did form deeply meaningful relationships. That’s what made it so difficult. I think they underestimated that when you allow yourself to fall in love with other people, it raises the stakes a lot more than a meaningless sexual encounter. Sartre didn’t really like sex anyway: he preferred croissants. Some people have suggested that’s why Beauvoir went along with it, because she had desires that Sartre couldn’t fulfill. They had affairs with students, and they broke a lot of hearts. Bianca Bienenfeld had a nervous breakdown, and Évelyne Rey committed suicide. The book does a good job of highlighting the ideals and hopes, and tragedies and risks of their lives. There were a couple of lovers who came very close to threatening the primary relationship between Sartre and Beauvoir too. Beauvoir acknowledged later that they didn’t take the third person into account enough, and she thought that was a flaw in their system. Even though Sartre and Beauvoir freely chose their relationship and came pretty close to being authentic – although there is some suggestion that they did lie, or rather that Sartre lied to Beauvoir – they were having intense, loving relationships with others who weren’t existential, and these people tended to get very hurt and be jealous. For example, Nelson Algren was not impressed that Beauvoir described their relationship in quite some detail in one of her novels. Algren said: “I’ve been in whorehouses all over the world and the woman there always closes the door, whether it’s in Korea or India…But this woman flung the door open and called in the public and press…I don’t have any malice against her, but I think it was an appalling thing to do.” They did not mean that everyone should do as they did. Rather, they were successful because they challenge us to reflect on our own relationships and situations. They encourage us to think about what is authentic for us. I don’t think they claimed to be role models, and they acknowledged that they didn’t always live up to their own ideals. Sartre said he wasn’t authentic, but he wanted to point the way for others."