Abstract

An excellent translation of Sartre's brilliant tour de force. Sartre's style could hardly be less inviting; meanings shift in dialectical patterns and verbal "whirligigs," making quotation a hazardous affair. Yet there is probably no sustained reflection on evil equal in depth or thoroughness to this book in modern literature. Sartre's work is also a very specific attempt "to indicate the limit of psychoanalytical interpretation and Marxist explanation." The book is about Genet; but Genet "holds the mirror up to us, we must look at it and see ourselves." What we see is not only what we are, as a sociologist might describe a state of affairs, but also what we fail to be. Perhaps the book should be assessed primarily as a philosophical experience from which ideas emerge, rather than as an articulation of ideas, arguments or conclusions.—C. D.