Simone de Beauvoir's incredible novel kicks off with Regina, an up-and-coming actress, who meets Raymond Fosca, a mysterious stranger. She brings Fosca to Paris with her, and he confides in her that he is immortal. Things change for Regina; her outlook takes on a different perspective. But this is only a small factor of the book--the majority (and the strongest part) is Fosca's retelling of his immortal life.

This book is amazing on so many levels. It gives a historical recounting, one which will interest anyone with a liking for history. It shows how history truly does repeat itself, and how some seemingly informed descisions can bring hundreds of people to their knees.

But more interesting is the philisophical aspect of the story. There are times when Fosca is down and disheartened, when he is disconnected from the world--a shadow. And then there are times when he is almost like ordinary people--capable of thought and feeling and hope. It is through this immortal life that de Beauvoir explores what it means to be human, what it means to exist, and if one can ever really, truly be immortal. It also asks that if human life is so short and fragile, is it really meaningfull?

The greatest thing about this book is that you will be thinking about it long after you put it down. And that though only adds to the sheer greatness of the book. All Men Are Mortal clings to your heart--your emotions rise and fall with Fosca's, proof that he is a great character. And it will seep into your brain, making you dig deeper into both the book and your own feelings.

All Men Are Mortal is amazing.

This haunting book is about a ruler of an Italian city-state who believes that he can make his fiefdom a prosperous and contented utopia if only he is given enough time to do so. He eventually attains the gift of immortality, but soon realizes that people cannot or will not change; rather they make the same mistakes over and over again. Giving up his ideals about making the perfect society, he wanders throughout time in a daze, which is broken only at rare points when someone renews his hope for humanity's potential. However, he watches the failure of humankind again and again, and thus his immortality becomes burdensome to the point of not being able to enjoy even the simplest of life's pleasures. What is the point of falling in love or making a friendship, only to watch people you care about grow old and die? What is the point in trying to change things when their essence remains the same throughout time? Du Beauvior dedicated this philosophical book to Jean-Paul Sartre, and it is a thoughtful, chilling look at humankind and our desire for perfection.

The other reviews of this book seem to me very informative and sensitive. I can try to add that it is successfully strange. Many writers have written strange books, only some of which come out good. But the existentialist theme, despite its sometimes irritating repetition, always seems to maintain its consistency. Additionally, there are strange juxtapositions, where one character will smile, "showing her big, white teeth," and then another will smile (perhaps 200 or so years later,being the king of some Italian province, "showing his big, white teeth." So Beauvoir seems to have had the desire to let abstraction reign with quite a heavy hand. In the end, what I found most interesting, - although in itself depressing, - is that the immortal only really seemed to find himself approximating true love, and then failing, AFTER the death of his first wife and son.
The very bizarre trip and friend Fosca made in America was interesting, and "realistically," I guess, supported the idea of someone with a lot of time on his hands.
I have a weakness for reading one author and then comparing him to others. I would, in this random subjectivity, compare the primary THOUGHTS/IDEAS in this book (and this is of course nothing if not a book of ideas) to those of Borges and Dostoevsky - a rather weird combination.

Despite all of the desire that flows in and out of these pages, La Batarde does not gratify. Leduc refuses to stoop to pander to panting hearts - she simply gives you words of poetry to describe her ugliness, her love affairs, small joys and solitude. And yet, she is not all poetry. She is experimental, and is relentless is driving forth her need to tell you about what a horrible being she is - and yet in the end, you find that you feel not only sympathy but a aching heart when she falls and rises again.
From her childhood trials in provincial France, to her affairs with her classmate Isabelle and her teacher Hermine, to her forced departure to Paris (for being found out with her affairs with the music teacher), to her discovery of Gabriel, to her abortions and black-market activity during World War II, the character that Violette portrays herself is no saint, but in refusing to give herself some pride she emerges as a martyr - of fate (being born with, as she says, an ugly nose). There is no question about her ugliness - even de Beauvoir is reputed to have made fun of her behind her back. Yet this woman must have had charisma, for designers gave her clothign to wear and show off on the streets. A contradiction, this woman was, and this quality of hers is very much shown to the reader in her autobiography.

From her early beginnings with a distant mother to her activities during World War II in the black market, Violette Leduc opens her life to us in stark detail. On her journey to find her voice and become a writer, she experiences life to its fullest and darkest extents. From her love affairs with women to her failed marriage to her adoration of a gay man, she explores her seemingly tragic life to show us the beauty in every molecule of life. Definitely not a slow read, this memoir proves Leduc's mastery of expression and whets the reader's appetite for more self-spelunking.

Violette Leduc invented her own poetics of solitude. Her writings are the ravings of a mad schoolgirl, feverishly and sensually neurotic, and achingly romantic. As unhappy as Violette claims to be, you want to be her, to have her heights of perception, and to desire as intensely as she does. If you like it light and breezy, skip this writer. But if you like to take that queasy peek behind the mask, this is for you.

SdB wrote a book on Sade entitled Faut-il Bruler Sade? (Must We Burn Sade), and the title of this collection comes from hers. Sade is a great concern among the French left. Somehow they think that he is an important moralist (this is how SdB closes her book on him, and why she says we mustn't burn him, but must read him, and hold him close to our hearts).

I've read a lot of Sade's work, and a lot of this collection, but am left wondering whether once you dispense with God, whether this is all that's left.

Feminism has always struck me as institutionalized sadism. It burns men, and destroys them. This is the essence of it. Sade is a great justifier of acts as he puts a moral spin on what is the equivalent of getting fun out of hurting other people.

Women in recent years have turned towards Sade as a great explicator and justifier. This is why men on average are living five years less than women. It is all the things they do to us, and have always done, but that are now institutionalized. The feminist-sadist guru is Simone de Beauvoir, who loves the Marquis de Sade, and considers him to be a great moralist.

Read this book and smell the burning flesh of the concentration camps of the universities, the high schools, and the elementary schools. Sadism is the centerpiece of the left, and the very centerpiece of feminism. It is the black heart at the center of all the piety and self-importance, a black hole of rage that gets satisfaction through the humiliation, torment, and destruction of men and boys.

Sawhney's unique collaboration with renowned Sadean scholars provides us with an invaluable tool to learn and understand the enigmatic faces of the Marquis de Sade.

Sade's infamous reputation as a perverse and immoral philosopher is delightfully teased apart as we enter into the depths of the libertine's mind. Must We Burn Sade? captures and explores this most interesting figure of the Enlightenment by discussing how Sade's philosophical writings continue to influence our modern age of uncertainty and how he correctly prophesized our current state in history.

After reading the volume, I feel as if Sade, in the words of the introductory chapter, "remains our closest companion." A must-have anthology for any scholar on Sade.

The beauty of this book is portioned out equally between the skill and dexterity of Hewitt and that of her subjects. Not only does Hewitt walk with ease across the tightrope of autobiography, her entire book is, as a whole, a perfectly balanced affair. It includes the distinct, prismatic effects of each of her selected modern French female autobiographers as she shines a new light on autobiography--but it also includes how each of the autobiographers' lights reflect upon and and influence one another. The book is balanced, as well, in the experiences of the French writers, themselves; Hewitt listens and gives her attention to a wide variety of French females. feminists, anti-feminists, being French in a foreign land, being Foreign in a French land, being lesbian, heterosexual, anti-gender, a black writer, a white writer--Hewitt values the distinct spice each experience adds to the overall genre of autobiography. Although this variety makes Hewitt's book seem to be a superficial sampler of modern feminine French autobiography, nothing can be further from the truth. With concise, yet exciting language, Hewitt sometimes digs so deeply into the experiences of her subjects and how they are novel and unique, this reviewer literally had an urge to go out immediately to the library and spend the rest of her life studying autobiography. This is not to say that Hewitt's book is flawless; no book is. In order to generate her great balance, Hewitt appears to stretch the genre of autobiography too far in order to fit her specifications. In searching for non-white, non-traditionally-gendered and foreign French voices, she included the work of Maryse Conde and Monique Wittig, skilled writers, but unfortunately for Hewitt, not autobiographers. Hewitt breaches the integral attraction/repulsion of autobiography in confusing what are clearly fictions with self-references, and the autobiographical genre. Although there is no clear-cut definition of autobiography, the easiest and most efficient way to discover what is and isn't autobiography is to ask the writer. In these cases, the works of the authors are certainly self-referential, but they are clearly not autobiography. Hewitt addresses these concerns, true, but her justifications for their inclusion in a book about autobiography are not ultimately satisfying. Yet, this book is a gem, filled with fresh insights into the work of the writers she studies and very interesting hypotheses. It is a fairly easy read, clearly digestible for the non-academic, and the readers' knowledge of Hewitt's subjects is not necessary to understand and appreciate this impressive book.

Her careful readings of this newly discovered 1927 diary introduce us to the young Beauvoir taking up the project of becoming a philosopher and show us the roots of Beauvoir's distinct philosophical positions.

This a great book, which really shows the true character of Simone de Beauvoir. See the many positive reviews of "A Transatlantic Love Affair"- it is the same book. "Beloved Chicago Man" is merely the title by this British publisher. Don't get both!

Through the study of the social ethics of France under German occupation, Simone de Beauvoir describes the true question at the heart of existentialism - 'How much responsibility can one truly have for other peoples' lives?' - and the ethical and moral questions that are raised as a consequence. That said, the book is lively and weaves the philosophical theme into the story seamlessly. Profound and uplifting.

This is an intriguing collection of three short stories by Beauvoir, written after the publication of three of her volumes of memoirs and - probably as a consequence - much less directly autobiographical than most of her earlier fiction. Each is written from the viewpoint of a 'broken', or potentially broken woman; that is a woman whose whole life is called into question by her perception that she has been let down or even betrayed by her husband and/or her children. Beauvoir had received many letters from women in such a position and what makes this collection so distinctive is that she had detected self-deception ('mauvaise foi') in many of these letters and set out to illustrate the phenomenon. In the first story, an elderly woman eventually attains a lucidity which overcomes her earlier self-deception; in the second, Murielle carries her self-deception to the extreme of mental illness, even madness; and the third story investigates the very processes of self-deception in great detail, leaving the central character at a point where she may or may not pull out of the depths of her despair. In all three cases, the reader is expected to work hard at seeing through the woman's attempts to hide the truth from herself, and, as Beauvoir records, many failed to do this, seeing the characters as simply wronged by their loved ones. In the end, however, whether they are more sinned against than sinning should probably be seen as less significant than the devastating pain that they experience - pain inextricably but intricately bound up with the fact that they live in a male-dominated society.

If there was any reason for Simone de Beauvoir's claim that "I am not a woman of action....", this book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the claim is unfounded. In an autobiography filled with heroes, villains, friends, and foes de Beauvoir cast aside all doubt that was (and still is) a person of consequence.

Hard Times: Force of Circumstance is filled (over and above her constant devotion to Sartre) with references to Claude Lanzman and Nelson Algren. We are taken into her world and all her most intimate thoughts. Her insights on Brazil, Castro, Kruschev and the Algerian conflict are from a first hand source and you really can't beat that.

Of all of de Beauvoir's acts of courage, the independent (independent of Sartre) acts relating to the Algerian conflict in general and Djamila Boupacha in particular are acts of bravery and are in her own terminology "Good Faith" as an Existentialist. De Beauvoir centers her "Action" on 3 things: motive, the act itself, and the willingness to take the consequences. As a concrete example, along with her cohort Gisele Halimi (who saw her role as Boupacha's lawyer) and Djamila Boupacha (who saw her role as sacrificial lamb/symbol), de Beauvoir was set in her role as writer. Before I go on, I should background the Boupacha case for those who have not read book. During the French/Algerian conflict, Boupacha was accused of planting a bomb (which never exploded) at the University of Algiers. Convicted solely on the merit of her confession, a confession that was extracted via torture and rape. Compelled to "Act" both Halimi and de Beauvoir moved to see the trial transferred and attention and awareness raised regarding the acts of torture in Algeria.

As much a she claims that others "Did more..." what is important to note is that the writer has an important function - that of an educator. In the realm of public vs. private, all "freedom" regarding public acts are in "good faith" if the call to action has a liberating effect on all.

In the area of perception - we see ourselves as subject and the "other" as object. Writers help us realize that to the "other" we are object to their subject. Coming back to Boupacha, de Beauvoir's actions as writer are clearly acts of "good faith". Writing the introduction to "Djamila Boupacha" and signing in as co-author is proof positive of "Action". I guess in a struggle such as this one, one cannot help but rank extent of action based on risk. In a life full with travel, writing, teaching, success and disappointment - these "Hard Times" don't seem so bad after all.

I salute de Beauvoir for a life well spent. She went beyond most of her colleagues/peers in terms of impact. Through it all, she is just as human as any of us - she cries, she hurts, she loves - she is human and she is woman (you can take that however you like) and like all of us, has struggles and triumphs. A bit like a travel diary at times, this book is highly under rated and deserves its place beside "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter". A resounding 5 stars!

Miguel Llora

Like de Toqueville before her, Simone de Beauvoir analyzes America, its present state and future promise, as only an outsider can, objectively, without influence or taint from the very values and phenomena under examination. If that makes _America Day by Day_ sound like something other than a travel book, good, because it is much, much more.

It is an insightful essay on the very things that define us as a nation: our optimism, our work ethic, our *color line,* and our politics. Offered to us episodically, in the pages of her travel journal, her thoughts on American society are so accurate and penetrating that her conclusions remain relevant today.

And her main conclusion is this: "...America is one of the pivotal points of the world, where the future of man is being played out. To 'like' America, to 'dislike' it -- these words have no meaning. It is a battlefield, and you can only become passionate about the battle it is waging with itself, in which stakes are beyond measure." Everyone should read this book to discover why we are a "pivotal point" and what that means for us and the rest of the nations of the world.

I never met Simone but the visit to America that resulted in this book ended the day I was born and we knew people in common, including Nelson Algren. This book is fun. We think of Simone as the woman who initiated the second wave of feminism with her book, "The Second Sex;" as the companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man plagued by lobsters and his own sense of self; as the globe-trotting political activist. Some may know her as the author of the frightening novel, "She Came To Stay." The Simone who wrote this book was the best part of Simone de Beauvoir. The book is a snapshot of America, entering the center stage of world power, taken by a native of a country whose time of leadership has passed. It is also the story of a middle-aged woman falling in love. This book was unavailable for many years but it is important both as a view of America in mid-century and as an insight into one of the most important women of the 20th century.

An excellent place to begin seeing America through critical eyes. A companion piece to this is Henry Miller's "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare."