Sartre’s first novelistic hero was a biographer troubled by the rearrangeable past

Evidence

In fact, by the time he was writing Words, Sartre was worrying that something was ideologically wrong with this analysis of freedom and self-determination as modes of being enjoyed most fully by writers. Should one really spend one’s life trying to take control of existence solely through art? Is this not self-indulgent? Perhaps one’s energy should be used another way — such as marching shoulder to shoulder with the proletariat in the service of revolution. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 698 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sartre came to doubt whether art alone could justify a life — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 698

Broader Connections

• Sartre came to doubt whether art alone could justify a life #complicates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 698