Sartre’s “The Age of Reason”
June 16th, 2002 — 12:00am
Slow to begin, and very, very French, my immediate reaction to this opening novel in Sartre’s Roads to Freedom trilogy is positive. It is an oddly obviously organic language, full of references to the fluids, flesh, smells, and textures of humanity; perhaps a consequence of the translation? The conclusion took me by surprise, again perhaps an after effect of losing subtleties in the translation — or the fact that most of my reading was done late at night while about to fall asleep.