Beauvoir’s fiction arose from amazement when reality stops being taken for granted

Evidence

Beauvoir herself. Sartre bodied forth ideas in a fleshy way in Nausea, but never as plausibly as Beauvoir did, perhaps because she felt them more deeply. She had a kind of genius for being amazed by the world and by herself; all her life she remained a virtuoso marveller at things. As she said in her memoirs, this was the origin of fiction-writing: it began at those times when ‘reality should no longer be taken for granted’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 360

Categorization

• SEED: A possible essay angle: the phenomenologist’s ‘astonishment at the world’ as the shared wellspring of both philosophy and literary fiction — using the Beauvoir-Sartre contrast as the case study.
• XREF: The moment ‘reality should no longer be taken for granted’ is essentially Husserl’s epoché/bracketing described as literary origin — connects the movement’s method to its personal motivation. — connects to: Beauvoir’s early fiction portrays self-deception as a failure to let reality penetrate consciousness — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 556; Contingency of personal origin generates Beauvoir’s existential wonder at being oneself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 987; Sartre saw Beauvoir’s amazement as authentic philosophy yet philosophically poor — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 361

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir’s early fiction portrays self-deception as a failure to let reality penetrate consciousness #expands (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 556
• Contingency of personal origin generates Beauvoir’s existential wonder at being oneself #corroborates (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 987
• Sartre saw Beauvoir’s amazement as authentic philosophy yet philosophically poor #responds-to (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 361