Sarah Bakewell At The Existentialist Cafe

I'm reading Sarah Bakewell's book At The Existentialist Cafe, on the existentialists Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. More about the culture and narratives surrounding them, like apricot cocktails and listened to Claude Luter and Boris Vian who died of a heart attack at 39 upset about an interpretation of his novel, and Juliette Greco who had straight long "existential hair", drowned victim look. Sartre and de Beauvoir had an open relationship and Sartre used to entice women up to his room with promise of some Camembert cheese.

The book is a gloss of many people, but it's a fun light overview that includes Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the phenomenologists, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It's a real sort of surf over very deep, complex and abstract ideas.

I was trying to think of something that represented Sartre's freedom ideas in modern culture, and I came up with I'm ready from the Star Trek musical episode, sung by Jess Bush in the show Strange New Worlds, season 2, episode 9. Of course Sartre never joined the academy, but he did study, so she's going there to study. It also leads to the song by Spock "I'm The Ex."

Supposedly Marguerite Duras was upset when during the 1969 occupation of the Sorbonne, it was only the 63 year old Sartre who was invited in to speak to the occupiers.

You can see footage of Sartre's funeral in the 80's.

Comments

Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

The case for Harris

Motley Kamuka Blog endorses Kamala Harris. In general, Trump just wants to lower taxes on the rich, and do nothing, sell whatever influence he can to line his pockets. Apparently the emoluments clause in the constitution has no teeth. Harris has a set of ideas about policy that are fairly middle of the road. In most countries she's would be seen as a centrist. Spin about her radical agendas are exaggerated. I'm not sure how he got past " grab them by the pussy ", but he did and here we are. Women: Obviously the idea of giving women pregnancy tests at the borders of the state, and then if they come back and don't have a baby, they go to jail, isn't really what most women want. Pick Harris. I understand if you think abortion is murder, maybe you've been told that by the Catholic church, which has the same ideal of Buddhism that you don't kill--so follow your religion for yourself. Not everyone is Christian or Buddhist or even has a religion. Women are ...

AOC

Dark Brandon meet Dark Alex. I see her advising the republicans to stick to their guns and never compromise. They don’t want to do anything, only obstruct. So they don’t actually need to be unified. Chaos isn’t organized. This is fine. Read all about it from Heather Cox Richardson , a historian who covers current events. "As their policies threatened to lose voters by concentrating wealth upward and hollowing out the middle class, Republicans increasingly warned that minority voters wanted socialism and were destroying the nation to get it. Trump rode that narrative to power, and now tearing down the current government is the idea that drives the Republican base." While we're at it, here's another funny photo from the Onion: And then: I listened to the Times podcast about George Santos . He basically lied about, I don't know, 80% of his resume, and has a mysterious $700k in his "corporation" which has no clients. So he's a Russian or Chinese plant, o...

Motley Kamuka

Search This Blog