Product Description

They are one of the world's legendary couples. We can't think of one without thinking of the other. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre -- those passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers -- had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. With Tete-a-Tete, distinguished biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays them up close, in their most intimate moments.

We witness Beauvoir and Sartre with their circle, holding court in Paris cafes. We learn the details of their infamous romantic entanglements with the young Olga Kosakiewicz and others; of their efforts to protest the wars in Algeria and Vietnam; and of Beauvoir's tempestuous love affair with Nelson Algren. We follow along on their many travels, involving meetings with dignitaries such as Roosevelt, Khrushchev, and Castro. We listen in on the couple's conversations about Sartre's Nausea, Being and Nothingness, and Words, and Beauvoir's The Second Sex, The Mandarins, and her memoirs. And we hear the anguished discussions that led Sartre to refuse the Nobel Prize.

The impact of their writings on modern thought cannot be overestimated, but Beauvoir and Sartre are remembered just as much for the lives they led. They were brilliant, courageous, profoundly innovative individuals, and Tete-a-Tete shows the passion, energy, daring, humor, and contradictions of their remarkable, unorthodox relationship. Theirs is a great story -- and a great story is precisely what Beauvoir and Sartre most wanted their lives to be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #390181 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-22
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .2 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Though Rowley identifies her engaging and accessible chronicle as the "story of a relationship," it is in fact the story of the many relationships forged by two of the most brilliant, unorthodox and scandalous intellectuals of the 20th century: Beauvoir and Sartre, who from 1929 until Sartre's death in 1980 remained "essential" to each other but never monogamous. Without undue prurience, Rowley (Richard Wright) romps through the major entanglements, loves, triangles, friendships and affairs engaged in by the authors of, respectively,the seminal feminist work The Second Sex andthe controversial autobiography Words. And to place these fascinating interactions into literary and biographical context, Rowley draws from vast stores of published and unpublished writings, correspondence and interviews. Though Beauvoir is the heroine of the book, Rowley offers revealing insights into Sartre: including the extent to which he juggled, depended upon and supported his many mistresses and the compulsive need he had to seduce women far more beautiful than he, despite his tepid sensuality. Intrigues aside, however, Rowley concludes that, for both Sartre and Beauvoir, the most enduring commitment was not to each other or to their many lovers but to their writing, politics and philosophical legacy. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
No matter how many other lovers the radical French intellectuals and prolific writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre got involved with, their symbiotic relationship remained sacrosanct, providing them with great solace while causing the men and women they snared like two spiders in a sturdy web much anguish. Rowley, Richard Wright's groundbreaking biographer, reveals in full the chimerical nature and painful consequences of this infamous alliance. Patiently and analytically, she chronicles the impetus and consequences of Sartre's relentless mania for seduction and Beauvoir's defensive bisexuality, and she details with some dismay the astonishing tangle of their vaguely incestuous, always manipulative affairs. Sartre financially supports the lovers he betrays, while Beauvoir is stunningly two-faced. But in spite of their exhaustingly complex and cruel love lives, Sartre and Beauvoir never stop writing or taking courageous stands against fascism, prejudice, sexism, and war. Ultimately, what Rowley so shrewdly and fairly reveals in this explicit and insightful double portrait is that these two charismatic champions for justice and freedom were committed at any cost to transmuting existence into art. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“TETE-A-TETE has just about everything... Hard as I tried, I could not put it down.” (Barbara Ehrenreich )

“Enormously rich and utterly absorbing . . . a short, concise, penetrating look into the famous couple who changed their century.” (Brenda Maddox )

“[Rowley] draws from vast stores of published and unpublished writings, correspondence and interviews.” (Publishers Weekly )

“A fast-moving yet vast saga, spanning the bulk of the 20th century and much of the world.” (Seattle Times )

“Fascinating . . . A neatly assembled record of people behaving badly in the name of literature, philosophy and amour.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“An in-depth, unflinching account . . . TETE-A-TETE provides a valuable cultural history.” (Boston Globe )

“[A] sympathetic but clear-eyed history of Sartre and Beauvoir’s lifelong partnership.” (New York Times )

“The surprise page-turner of the year.” (Newsday )

“An enthralling book.” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World )

“Exhilirating.” (Houston Chronicle )

“Compulsively readable... The surprise page-turner of the season... [A] fascinating study of a passion that transcended convention.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review )

“Engrossing... Tells Beauvoir and Sartre’s repellent, inspiring and unlikely tale more completely and concisely than it has ever been told.” (New York Times Book Review )

“A lively and fulfilling portrait... [A] wonderfully crafted narrative... Thoroughly researched and well-written.” (Library Journal )