Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates

Talking with Sartre Conversations and Debates

Edited and translated by

JOHN

GERASSI

Yale University Press/New Haven & London

Copyright © 2.009 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press). without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Mary Valencia Set in Scala and Scala Sans type by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc., Grand Rapids, Michigan Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Talking with Sartre: conversations and debates / edited and translated by John Gerassi. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978-0-300 15107 7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-300 15901 1 (paperback: alk. paper) I. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-I980

Interviews.

I. Gerassi, J ohn .

B2430.S34A5 2009 194

dc2.2

200902.2.455

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Lib rary. This

pap er meets the requirements of ANS I /NISO Z39 .48-I992. (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I

For Catherine Yelloz

Contents

Preface

ix

NOVEMBER'970

,

DECEMBER'970

27

JANUARY'97' MARCH, 971 APRIL '97' MAY, 97'

47 58

76 88

OCTOBER'97'

93

DECEMBER '971 JANUARY'972

'40

FEBRUARY '972 MARCH '972 APRIL1972

'22

'56

165 '7'

CONTENTS

MAY 1972

179 205

JUNE1972

OCTOBER1972

214

NOVEMBER1972 MAY1973

227

233

JUNE1973

247

NOVEMBER1973

255

NOVEMBER 1974

262

FAREWELL Notes

272

277

Acknowledgments Index

307

305

Preface

When the ninety-year-old British philosopher Bertrand Russell launched the International War Crimes Tribunal in 19 6 6 -basically as a propaganda weapon to investigate and, inevitably, condemn the United S tate s for its aggres sion against the Vietnamese people-he realized he was too old and frail to act as its president. So he asked the century ' s most important novelist-playwright.philosopher-activist, Jean-Paul Sartre, to be its chair. But Sartre refused. So Rus sell asked me to intervene. As head of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in New York

,

I had

made various suggestions about such a tribunal, and Rus sell was aware that I knew Sartre well. This was partly because before World War II, my father, the Spanish painter Fernando Gerassi, had been his best friend, and Sartre had written about him in his trilogy, The Roads to Freedom. "Gomez," as Sartre named him, is a crucial character in the novel;

he abandons his wife

and child to go fight for the Spanish Republic during the Civil War Of193639 and becomes a ge neral, the last top warrior to defend Barcelona, which indeed is what happened in real lif e

.

But to Sartre at the time this was not commendable: nothing must in­ terfere with artistic endeavor, he insisted. By going to fight agains t fascism, Fernando had betrayed his artist's commitment. And Sartre often prodded me on why my father did go fight even after Fernando knew that the Re,

PR E FA C E

public would lose. In the novel, Sartre has my father say, "You don't fight fas­ cism because you're going to win. You fight fascism because it is fascist." A perfectly logical explanation to any political animal. And to Sartre later, but not at the time. Also, my mother, "Sarah" in the trilogy, had been one of Simone de Beauvoir's closest friends when both were students at the Sorbonne, and it was she who had introduced Sartre to her lover, my father-to-be. "Castor" (as Simone was nicknamed) and my mother maintained their friendship after the war, and she always stayed with us when she came to the United States. Thus, whenever I went to France, it was natural that I would spend time with Sartre and Beauvoir. And I had established my own reasons for spending time with them. I was writing my doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, first on Sartre's aesthetics, then, when that topic invited too much absurd criticism from the philosophy department, on Sartre's feud with Albert Camus. So I kept asking him questions, which he apparently quite enjoyed, though we inevitably discussed politics more than aesthetics or Camus (indeed, I even­ tually switched to writing my dissertation on revolutionary theory for my Ph.D. at the London School of Economics). It was at one of these discussions, upstairs at the Falstaffbar, off Mont­ parnasse Boulevard, that at the age of twenty-three I behaved like a wise-ass punk. I arrogantly told Sartre that he would never be able to combine his phi10sophy' Existentialism, with Marxism, which he was vehemently trying to do, unless he gave up his notion of "man's project," which was at the heart of his philosophy of free will. When he finally did agree and abandoned Marx­ ism, I apparently gained his trust, at least on political matters. Since I had written a few articles here and there with many direct quotes from Sartre, Russell assumed that I had easy access to him, and on December 23, 1966, he called me in New York while I was decorating a Christmas tree with my six-year-old daughter Nina, and asked me if I wanted to go to North Vietnam with the first investigating committee. which was leaving Paris on December 26. How could I refuse? In that case, Russell asked. on the way could I please stop in Paris and persuade Sartre to join the tribunal as its president? I saw Sartre on that Christmas day. We talked for almost two hours without a resolution. Finally he said, "OK. you've done your duty. You spelled out every possible argument. Now, as a friend. tell me why you are

PREFACE

abandoning your family at Christmas to j oin this ersatz tribunal and travel to North Vietnam." "You're right, it won't do any good politically worldwide , " I answered. " But I'm going because the Vietnamese are the victims . They need to know-even if it doesn't stop a single U . S . bomb-that' we are with them, that people like you, Sartre, and Russell, and Dave Dellinger [an influential American pacifist] are on their side, that we know the United S tates is the ago gressor and that the Vietnamese people are the courageous victims fighting for their freedom . That' s why I ' m going, even if the biased pres s of America and England never carry a word of this , yes , ersatz, tribunal. " Sartre smiled, then said, " O K, good reason, count m e in." That was the greatest moment I spent with him. But there were many others, some not so great. In 1970, no longer a professional j ournalist and blacklisted from an academic j ob in the United States because of my antiwar activities , I was teaching at the University of Paris VI II, Vincennes , and talked politics every Sunday over lunch with Sartre and Beauvoir at the noisy, degenerating art-nouveau Montpamasse restaurant La Coupole or at La Palette, a more quiet one a block away. On one such occasion , a rude yokel managed to dodge the protective waiters and ap· proach our table to ask Sartre when was he going to continue his autobiog­ raphy. Sartre had indeed started to tell his own story in The Words, but it went up only to age thirteen. He had no intention of going further.

By the end of

our lunch, however, as I described in Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century, I had agreed to write his biography, and Sartre had handwritten

out an exclusivity contract-letter. We began our conversations for his biography in November 1970 and kept them up, on and off, for four academic years, through 1974, meeting in his apartment every Friday, with numerous updates at random intervals af. ter my union lawyers won my trial and got me reinstated in academia in the S tates. Our talks were often heated arguments, sometime s so b elligerently

discordant that I feared the project would end.

Once, after I published an article in the prestigious French yearly mag­ azine Obliques claiming that his relationship with my father had to deterio­ rate since he surely felt extremely guilty about not being more active during the Spanish Civil War, Sartre actually shouted at me that he had never felt guilty about anything in his whole life, and that I would never understand the real meaning of literature. Another time, when I defended then-presi-

xi

P R E FA C E

dent Charles de Gaulle because, 1 said, h e was the only conservative world ruler who wanted the United States out of NATO since its goal was to domi­ nate the world, he sort of called me a "reactionary p im p " like de Gaulle ("vaus n'allez pas devenir un macreau reac comme lui?") . He hated de Gaulle with a rabid passion, and he punished me the following Friday by pinning a note on his door saying: "I had to go to the dentist. 1 think. " But we always made up, or rather ignored our p revious disagree­ me nts, and continued to have lunch together every Sunday, usually with Beauvoir and my girlfriend, Catherine . It was at one of these lunches that T had my worst moment with Sartre. For a few years 1 had been living with

Catherine, a beautiful, warm, sympatica student who had absolutely no in­ terest in Sartre's philoso p hy but liked to tease him about his enormous ap­ petite (though he never gained weight) , and argue with him about the cur­ rent cinema. Once, when we were all staying at the house near Nimes, in the South of France, that Sartre had bou ght for Arlette, his adopted daughter, and Arlette and 1 had gone shopping, we returned to find Sartre and Cather­ ine on all fours staring at the ground. " Did you know," Sartre explained contentedly, "that ants always greet each other by bumping heads and then go to their left to pas s ? " " Does that prove that nature is left-wing?" quipped Catherine mis­ chievously. So when, for lunch at La Palette months later, 1 showed up late, and ob­ viously shook up, Sartre asked, "Where's la petite?" That was what he always called her, because she was half an inch shorter than he (five feet) . 1 hesi­ Beauvoir noticed my teary eyes and said so. "We broke up," 1 finally ad­

tated.

mitted. Sartre looked hard at my face through his walleyes, then said: "Well, 1 envy you. 1 have never cried for a woman in my life . " Beauvoir w a s crushed. Sartre sensed i t , so h e quickly tried t o explain: "When Castor and 1 decided to h ave what you call an open relationship , we realized that passion inevitably leads to possessiveness and j ealousies. So, as you know, we decided that our relationship would be 'necessary' but that we would be free to have others, which we called 'contingent. ' That demanded that we eliminate passion, the kind of hard emotions which often manifest themselves with tears . But now 1 realize . . . well, 1 envy you-you can cry at forty, and 1 never have at seventy. " 1 could see that Beauvoir was suffering dee p ly. Obviously. she had of-

xii

P R E FA C E

ten shed a tear for her lover, Sartre or another, and obviously was hurt that he had not. It was extremely painful for me, too. Especially because by then Cath­ erine was part of my setup with Sartre. She didn't transcribe the conversa­ tions I had with him; that was done by a professional. But she corrected the names, described the places Sartre mentioned that I knew nothing about, took me to some of them, and told me stories, hers or what her parents had said, about the events Sartre described, making them so much more hu­ man. She used to mark with a green felt pen, on the copy of the transcrip­ tions, one set of which I kept, the sections that interested her most, and they were indeed the most fascinating. She was always eager to listen to the tapes, especially because Sartre and I had agreed not to dwell on his philosophy. "Let's let the academicians do that," Sartre said, betraying his contempt for that breed, which spent a lifetime dissecting the works of others. "So we'll focus on the lived [Ie vivantj," I quipped.

"D'accord, he had agreed. "

My interviews with Sartre, therefore, were more like conversations. I was and am a political animal, an internationalist, especially a third­ worldist. I had traveled all over the world, usually as a journalist, often as an anti-imperialist militant, inevitably also as an ordinary tourist. Sartre had probably traveled as much, but as a celebrity, met at the airport by high officials, accompanied by translators. By the time our conversations began, I had published a dozen books on Latin America, Vietnam, the Spanish Civil War, and, with a friend, the firm connection between organized crime and capitalism in the United States. Sartre had written literature, plays, essays, novels, and his brilliant autobiography of his youth, The Words, and won the Nobel Prize for it. We brought our baggage with us to the table. But, without being Marxists, we had one indisputable fact in common. We agreed that, no matter what the pragmatic scholastics ranted, no matter what almost every American high school teacher droned into the heads of their gullible students, no matter how often the fat cats of the developed world shouted that they care about the poor, that everyone benefits from the wealth of the few (the trickle-down theory) , the world is at war, a class war: the poor versus the rich. And we agreed that until the poor can rise up and expropriate the wealth of the rich, and then distribute it equally to all, the class war will be a shooting war, periodically at least. So our task was not to discern who did what or when. But why. We

xiii

P R E FACE

would search for the political causes of our actions ("our" because Sartre hoped to gain insights into my father's behavior by probing into my own re­ actions) We would stick to the existential motto that the personal is political. _

and the political is always personal. Under no circumstance, Sartre and agreed, would we rehash what he had so eloquently written in The cept ifI thought that he had lied, as he sometimes had.

I

Words. Ex­

I had committed my­

self to write his political biography-to describe the roads he traveled on that led him to become, as

I named the book, the Hated Conscience of His

Century. Our conversations were to give me the tools for understanding both-that is, why he was hated and why he remains the conscience of the world's students, intellectuals, and militants. Our conversations amounted to seventy-odd cassettes, quickly trans­ ferred to a dozen top-quality professional reels and transcribed to more than two thousand single-spaced, legal-size pages. Obviously much that we talked about is now redundant, repetitious, even incoherent, and often refers to incidents that no longer interest either the academician or the fidgety reader. So in translating our conversations

I have edited those parts

out. Some of the events mentioned, however, were, and perhaps still are, his­ tOrically important . If they need explanations,

I have added these as notes.

And I have added bits of dialogue that took place at our lunches, for which I have notes jotted down after we parted, carefully gone over by Catherine (un­ til that fateful day when we split up), but no tapes. For those who are curious about what

I have cut out or added, or who don't trust me, or who just want

to hear Sartre's forceful basso voice, all the original reels and all the unedited transcriptions are available at the Beinecke Library of Yale University, which bought them from me the year I came back from Europe, penniless and un­ employed.

I have separated the conversations herewith under monthly headings, but that is not totally accurate because our conversations were not chrono­ logical. We would talk about a particular subject one month, then some­ times come back to it many months later. So

I have often combined and in­

cluded them under the month in which the most important part took place. The researcher who wants to hear the original must do as

I did: listen to all

the tapes (or read all the transcripts), jot down the subject and attribute to it a number, and then piece them together. I t means a lot of work; it did to me . But the result is worth it: a more or less chronological document of a great literary figure's life and interpretation of his times.

xiv

Talking with Sartre

November 1 970

G E RA S S I: How young were you when you first realized that you were different from your friends , your peers and classmates? Your father was dead. Your maternal grandfather-who was the master of the house, the bearded titan who played god in the local school production, the benevolent tyrant who treated your mother as your sister, even made you share a room

with her in his house-must have colored your vision of the world very early. S A R TR E : Yes and no. His care, his appreciation of my literary fan­

tasies-I spent all my free time at home reading and writing adventure "nov­ els," which he assiduously read-his devotion to "his children," me a nd my mother, certainly made me feel important. But not different. At school,

I

was

no more of a standout than any of my mates. At eleven-thirty, when we broke for lunch, my mother came to fetch me just like the other mothers, but after the afternoon session, at three-thirty, I dallied in the streets like the others. We played football in the streets and became sort of a gang, which often got us into fights with the kids from the other schools.

You told me those other kids were poor, from bad neighborhoods. Did that inj ect a notion of class war in your battles? No. It's true, as y o u know, that rich kids live i n rich neighborhoods, which means that their local school will be fancier. That's not because the

N OV E M B E R 1 9 7 0

govern ment wi l l give them more money. I n Fra nce, where education i s cen · tralized, eve ry school is allocated a n equal amou nt p e r student, unlike your schools i n America where, you tel l me, schools depend o n property taxes, hence have a bu i lt·in class structu re. Still, in Fra nce as everywhere, rich kids l ive in rich n eigh borhoods. M others often don't work, and they devote some of their time, and money, to making the school more attractive, better deco­ rated, sponsori n g plays and concerts and whatnot. In poor neighborhoods, mothers work, a n d fath ers don't have time or the incl i n ation to ask their kids how they're doi ng, or to scold them if the head master reports that their chil­ d ren misbeh aved . So in that sense there was a very marked class distin ction between our street gangs. But when you fight a n opponent over turf, turf that neither cou ld clai m anyway, the opponents are sort of equal-enemies, yes, but equal fighters, so to s peak. So while I went to school in Paris, despite my background and family situation, I n ever felt different or class con sciou s.

Despite the fact that your lycee then, Henri IV, was one of the best. True, b ut we all roamed Paris as we wished . (Streets were safe then.) The others m ight have felt class antagonisms, but we didn't, and they d i d n 't i n s u lt us by yel l i n g H ey Rich ies! or wh atever.

But when your mother got remarried to an engineer and you moved to La Rochelle, that must have changed things. And how. But not because of class. First of a l i i was a Parisian, and they hated Parisians. The n ifty kids from the capital. Sure, that was a class disti nc­ tion, but neither they nor I felt it that way. I was an outsider. And don't forget, I

switched i n the middle ofthe school year. My classmates s i m ply did not like

me. But they were bou rgeois kids too. What made thi ngs worse is that I soon beca me a very good student because I had read more than they did. That was mai n ly because Ch a rles [Schweitzer], my gra ndfather, had constantly s ug­ gested that I read s u ch-and-such a book, and when he read my " novels" he'd make com parisons to some other m ajor author. While always praising me, m i n d you . The result at La Rochelle was that I became the teacher's pet in l it­ erature class. Boy, did my classmates tease me for that. But we were all the same class. N ot rich-rich. Those went to private schools, religious schools. We never fought them si nce we never saw them. I say "we" because when it cam e to fighting, I was part of the ga ng. Only for fighting.

With sticks or just fists ? N ot even. J ust a lot of pushing and slappi ng. No one got really h u rt. But when the fights were over, I was ostracized by my classmates for a long time,

2

N O V E M B E R 1 9 70

maybe a whole year. O u r battles were with the kids from the other schools, and they were mostly bourgeois, too. Not like i n America, I guess, where you had both classes in the same school, yes? By and large. The very rich also go to private schools. But growing up in my neighborhood, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was

a

mixture.

I was obviously a bourgeois kid. Yet I ended up roaming around with the poor kids, especially the foreigners, in part because, like them, I was con· stantly attacked as a dirty foreigner with

a

funny accent. I used to come

home in tears with my clothes tom, but Fernando always reacted by asking me if I had fought back and how. One day, I 'll never forget it, I came home in tatters, bleeding, and hurting, but laughing, and Fernando, before asking me what happened, immediately congratulated me.

That's a very i m portant difference. You grew u p a rebel . You had the subjective experience of the class struggle, even if at the ti me you r enemies were racial, sort of, anti-foreigners, and when you went home, you r father put it in a n objective perspective. I had none of that. Both at H enri IV in Paris, where most of us were children of bureaucrats o r fu n ctionaries-Charles af­ ter all was a teacher, of German-and in La Rochelle, where most fa m i l ies had someth i n g to do with the sea and the port, but not as fishermen, as some ki nd of ad m i n istrators, there was no class a ntagonism. I was n ever a rebel. You said so you rself when you insisted that you wou l d try to answer, in you r biography of m e , how a solid bou rgeois w h o n ever rebelled agai n st his class could end up a revolutionary. And that's true. Whatever contradictions in so­ ciety I discerned, I got from noting the difference between what people said and what they did. But I have never fought or actually even been with prole­ tarians, and my l ife has always been fundamentally bourgeois. Yet your reading and writing were acts of rebellion, weren't they?

Not quite. It's complicated. You see, my mother and gra ndmother wanted me to read childish books, you know, the kind of books normal ten ­ year-olds read, and they tried t o get Charles t o i m pose better habits for me. And Charles knew that the " novels" I wrote were all derivative, inspired by what I read, and m i n d you, rarely u nderstood. Certain ly when I read Madame

Savary at ten-or was it eight?- I understood noth i ng. But I took out of it some thread, w h ich I then composed i nto one of my tales. Theoretically my whole family disapproved. But I knew that my mother took the n otebooks­ each "novel" was one school notebook-and gave them to Charles, s u ppos­ edly as proof of my wei rd ness. Charles read them carefu lly and even cor-

N OV E M B E R 1970

rected my grammatical a nd spel ling mistakes. And i ndeed , I guess, to some extent, I wrote them for h i m , knowing of cou rse that he d i sapproved. In sum, my whole fa mily d i sapproved of my read i ng- not everythi ng, mind you, since I also read everything that [M ichel] Zevaco and [Pierre] Ponson d u Ter­ rai l wrote, and these pop ular writers, though basically a n archists, appeared weekly i n the local p ress, with gari s h illustrations. Nor did they like my "nov­ els," but I k new that they actually ad m i red me for writi ng them. That's your childhood at home , but it clashes severely with your life outside . Complicated. Charles convinced me that I was special, a prodigy, with­ out ever sayi ng so of cou rse. That meant I was special. But out in the world, only gods like Charles would be able to see what I was. To everyone else, I was, well, like everyone else.

You said that as a child you were convinced that the world was perfectly balanced, that everything was in order, stable, established. I sn't that contra­ dicted by the fact that when you wanted to play with the other kids in the park at Luxembourg Gardens , you were unceremoniously told to beat it, so much that your mother intervened and asked the other parents to help ? Not so well ordered after all. H old on. I objectified the situation. These kids were used to each other an d were in the h abit of p layi ng together. Without me. So the order of thi ngs meant that I was not ofthat group. At Henri IV it was different. They knew me an d I knew them , so I was part of their group. Those kids in the Luxembourg d i d n 't turn me down because I was small or ugly, but because I was not of their group.

But in The Words [Sartre' s autobiography] you admit to feeling frus­ trated, rej ected. Why didn't that make you understand that you were dif­ ferent? It did, in a way. It reaffirmed the fact that I was a prod igy. That, Charles had firmly established . At home I was the center. My grandfather was ex­ tremely a uthoritarian, but not with me. Why? Because I was a prodigal boy. I n th e Luxembou rg, I was n othi ng, and that was normal. And i n school too, at th e begi n n ing. When I e ntered h igh school i n La Rochelle (I was twelve or th ir­ teen ) , I was a very bad student because my classmates didn't real ize that I was bri l liant. So bad, i n fact that my mother had to have a chat with both my French and Lati n teachers, aski ng them to pay a bit of extra attention to me, which they did. T h at made everything normal, i n order again. B ut Charles was

4

NOVEM

B ER '970

not around at La Rochelle. Sti l l , I had the same reaction as when I tried to joi n the group in the park. They were a u n it, I was an outsider. That was normal.

Really? On the one hand you spend your time reading books and writ· ing stories of which Charles and the two women in your house d isapprove. That's an act of rebellion, yet you want Charles's approval and admiration. On the other hand, you get rej ected by your peers, which you admit is hurt­ ful, but you think that's normal. It doesn't j ibe. Did n 't you do the same? Castor told me of a session you and Fernando and she had i n N ew York where you argued with her for two hours, pus h i ng you r M arxist view on her, while your father, who was always anti-, or at least non- M arxist, s i m ply listened, n ot saying a word-very rare for Fernando­ whose approval you wanted.

Oh yes, I remember that well, but I was older, fifteen. It was at the Menemsha Bar on Fifty-seventh Street. I had problems dealing with Fer­ nando , the man of action. So I had taken the opposite stance: read, study, talk, argue, but no action. That was my rebellion. I wanted his approval at the same time that I was taking a point of view opposed to his. And when he told me later that evening that I had not argued it very well, it hurt. So there you h ave it. You rebelled and wanted h i s a p prova l . A contra­ diction? N ot at all. But you're claiming that you never rebelled against Charles . That's right, I didn't h ave to. U n l i ke Fernando with you, Charles had convi nced me I was special.

Yet you then became fascinated by what he was not, a man of action. So you focused on the only friend you had who was one, Fernando. That's why, of all your friends, Fernando was the only one you went way out of your way to see. Like when you traveled to the South of France whenever he came across the border, and that fascinating conversation you, represented by Mathieu [in The Roads to Freedom], had with Gomez, who is Fernando. W hy

,

Mathieu asks Gomez, are you going back to fight when you know the war is lost? That was a question of logic. Not quite, since you have Gomez answering Mathieu so politically on

the button that one fights fascism not because one is going to win but be­ cause fascism is the ideology of fascists. That's what you r father did say. I

But you chose to repeat it because you knew it was what a committed

N O V E M B E R ' 9 70

man of action would say, and because you, as Mathieu, was guilty of not hav­ ing been a man of action. But M athieu does become a man of action. Not quite . He ends up in the army and goes through the routine of being a soldier, eventually a prisoner, like you, but uncommitted, simply be­ cause France is at war and you , Mathieu, are French. That' s not the same as volunteering to fight in another country and-as you asked me when I was going to North Vietnam, proving that such an act still troubles you, "Why are you abandoning wife and child ?" Hold on. Fi rst of all, you r father was Spa n i s h , even if he was born in Consta nti nople and was twenty-seven when he fi rst went to Spain to copy Velazquez at the Prado. Spanis h , or Ladino, was his n ative tongue, and he cer­ tainly h a d the cha racter of a Spanish an arch ist. Second, Mathieu may not have been a com mitted revolutionary before the war, but he certainly had a social con science, a n d he gai n s com mitment when he discovers the collec­ tive in the stalag.

Come on, that's not the same thing. Neither you, nor Mathieu, had to face the reality of having to kill a human being, no matter how terrible that being may be. And when Mathieu gets discharged from the stalag he reverts to his usual habits, writin g at the cafe, like you. You ' re approach ing the dilem ma of com m itment from the wrong angle. The point I was raising in that conversation between M athieu and Gomez was abandoning the real com mitment of an artist-in other words, how can a w riter or a painter give up his or her cal l i ng, even for a j u st war?

You're referring to Fernando's letter to Stepha [Fernando'S wife, my mother], whom he left behind to go to fight in Spain ? That was crucial, absol utely crucial. H e had sent her a letter saying, " I a m not a n a rtist. A n a rtist does not k i l l . I have j u st kil led a m a n . Forget me." H e was right. That's why Picasso told you in 1 954 that you r father would be as fa mous as he if h e had not gone to Spain.

Did you know that Fernando had written such a letter to Stepha when you wrote The Roads to Freedom? She showed it to me before she went to Spain h erself to work in the propaganda b urea u .

But you didn't u s e i t i n the novel . It was too melod ramatic, typical of Fernando. But you remained fascinated with my father.

6

NOV E MB E R '970

He was the only friend I had who was l i ke me, or so I had ass u m ed. I once heard h i m say, "First I paint, then my fam ily. I don't care if Stepha and Tito starve, first I paint." [Tito i s my n ickname.] That was h ow I felt then too , even though I h a d no fam i ly: fi rst I write. Castor felt t h e s a m e way. That's probably why neither of us ever even thought of h avi ng a fam ily. And then here comes one of our closest friends, who always clai med to have the s a m e comm itment to h i s a rt that w e h a d t o ours, w h o goes o ffj ust like that, with no su itcase, no change of clothes, to war. Do you know that when I brought you home to Stepha and explai ned, she became hysterical and started repeating, "But he was wearing si l k socks," s i l k socks, over and over. Was there a connection in your mind, do you think now l o okin g b ack, between Gomez and Pardaillan, Zevaco's swashbuckling hero, whom you had so admired-more, revered-as a child? And you put Charles in there too, the towering man of action, although he was not one, was he ?

Correct I really am not s u re what he was. That's why I d i d not d efine him i n The Words. To this day, I wonder. I know he was afraid of death. I thi n k that's why h e played that comedy of loving m e so much. H e wa nted to accept everythi ng, natu re, l ife, death, but he needed someth ing else to make h i m ac­ cept death as normal, and that was me, so he played it out, a role, to convin ce himselfthat I would be h i s extens ion, his su rvival so to speak, or his conti n u ­ ation after h e died. So i n fa ct he w a s t h e very opposite ofthe m a n of action. Was he that tormented, that riddled with anxiety about death that he hoped to turn you into his extension in life?

I don't thi n k he ever u nderstood or came to terms with h i s monsters. But I m ust have picked up the vibes, and i n trying to be l i ke h i m , rejected the act of rebel lion, d iscarded the notion of the man of action, although as you correctly said, I made h i m out to be one in The Words. That was wrong. He was a voyeur. And so were you, no? Despite your battles with other kids in the streets of Paris. For all your denials, you too were afraid of death. Which is why you said that one writes for god or for others but not to be read. In other words, you wrote to cheat death because you were afraid too. Or better put: you wrote to avoid death. You wrote to gain eternity. And that's

why I was fasci nated by you r father, who beca m e the very op­

posite, not the least bit afraid of death. You're wrong . There's a wonderful passage in [lIya] Ehrenburg's mem­ oirs where he visits Fernando at the siege of the Alcazar of Toledo. Fernando

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N OV E M B E R '970

guides him to the top of a building with a very slippery tile roof, from which they could indeed see the children playing inside, behind the walls, which is why Fernando had refused to bombard the fortress. Then Ehrenburg no­ tices that Fernando is white as a sheet and shaking. "It's one thing to die in battle," Fernando explains; "it's an incredible stupidity to die falling off a roof." Ah yes, Ferna n d o the macho anarchist.

No, that absurd Spanish sense of honor, of pride, if you wish, but also a wonderful notion that death must make sense. But fear of death nonethe­ les s . Fear o fdeath perhaps, b u t not fear o f bei ng forgotten .

Quite. And that's what Charles feared, and passed on to you. B ut let's not scoff at that. Such a fear is what makes u s become creative, or d o-gooders, or m e n of actio n . It's all a way of ending up as more than the few years we roam this planet. And you certainly said exactly that in that wonderful story "Erostrate,"

where your hero, noting that no one remembers who built the temple of Ephese that he burnt down, decides to murder six people at random to cre­ ate such an absurd event that no one will ever forget him. But your examples are not equal. Of the s ixty thousand non-Spanish anti-fascists , volunteers of the I nternational Brigades , who went to Spain to fight Franco , Hitler. and Mussolini, at least half were under fake names with no traceable I D . The world would never know who they were. and those volunteers knew that they would never be identified. They went to Spain. they fought, and they died because that's what a genuine humanist does . Period. "One fights fasci s m because they are fascists." Exactly. That's why you went to N orth Vietnam, and sacrificed a happy mar· riage.

That's why you agreed to become the tribunal' s president. And that' s why you loved Zevaco's stories. His heroes always fought for the poor, the downtrodden, the exploited. And at formidable odds , twenty to one, thirty to one. But that's not Charles . Yet you admired him because, why? Because he was an atheist who played the role of god. And why didn't you love your mother? Mothers don't have to achieve greatness to be loved by their chil­ dren; they simply have to be present. She let h erself be bu l l i ed by Ch arles. He would scold her, in front of me.

8

N O V EMB E R 1 9 7 0

Don't do that. No that's wrong. Be quiet. A n d s h e wou ld take it. But eventu­ ally, at La Rochelle, that changed. My mother had caught me steali n g a bit of money from her purse. I was sti l l trying to get my classmates to like m el an d I stupidly thought that by buyi ng candy and givi ng it to them, they would begi n to l ike me. My mother not only caught me but, when Charles came to spend some time with us, told him about it. H e would u nderstand, I thought. He wou ld be on my side. He said nothing then. But the next day, we went to the

store together and he d ropped a coin, which I rapi � ly bent down to fetch for h i m . With a great grandiloquent movement of h i s cape and cane he stopped me. You cannot touch honest money, h e said, si nce you have become a t h i ef.

With his bones cracking, he then slowly, pai nfu l ly I thought, bent down to pick up the coi n . That was the ruptu re. He no longer was my defender. I n ever ad mi red or m i m icked h i m again. But that d i d not make me closer to my mother. She had betrayed me. She had married a man I did n't l i ke. A grad u ate of [th e Ecole] Polytech n ique. She had taken me to a town I despised. And s h e had put m e in a school where they hated me. Yet I could never tell her t h at I was u n h appy. Why? Perhaps because u ntil that day i n the store-it was a pharmacy, I see it clearly sti l l today-I had a solid rock behi nd me to make m e understand that life was a s i t s hou ld be, a n d a mother that did n 't count. T h e n , after being betrayed b y god, b y t h e rock, I w a s left with noth i n g. My m other ended u p part and parcel ofthat package.

Was your stepfather that bad? Objectively, not at all. He was the son of a rai lway station attendant, studious, determi ned. A man of duty. He d rove hi mself to the top of h i s classes and got i nto o n e of t h e most prestigio us i nstitutions i n Fra nce. Th e epitome of bou rgeois ach ievement. An d he wa s proud o f it. S u bjectively, h e was a stuffed s h i rt. A bore who stole my sister (that is, m y mother) and never considered me a prodigy. But h e was not my father, so he did n't really cou nt and I never rebel led aga i nst h i m . My grandfather was a pose u r, a fraud i fy o u wish, but he made me t h i n k he ad m i red m e . D o you know that w e com m u n i cated - u ntill1is betrayal , that is-by verse? Yes, verse. I wis h I had all that to show you. J ust i m agi ne h i s pa­ tience and indulgence. To read my terri ble poems, fu ll of mistakes and c h eat­ ing rhymes, and then bother to answer them in correct iambic pentameter!

At eight, ten, twelve? How did you get to that point? No, no, much younger. I guess I decided very early that since my god, and the two women i n the house, read i n their free time, readi ng m ust h ave a

9

N O V E M B E R 1970

great value, so I started by maki n g believe that I was readi ng. I wou ld sit on a box or someth i n g i m posi n g in front ofthe fam i ly and make like I was reading, tu r n ing pages, stuff l i ke that. To save me from boredom, I wou ld often i nvent stories in my head a s I "read," which I derived from the illustrations that had accompanied Zevaco's or Ponson du Terrail's stories in the papers. That, too, I began by faking it, seeing th at Charles always read all the newspapers, tho u gll not the stories m i n d you . Actually, I th i n k h e did n 't really like or even approve of fiction, but he read the classics because "one should." So after a while of making bel ieve, I began to decipher what I was not really reading, and in effect taught myself how to read. It was a case of having his values. Even­ tually I began to write my own stories, with heroes l ike Zevaco's Pardaillan, who ofcou rse was very m uch l i ke C h a rles. My first " novel" was called The Ba­

nana Merchant, a n d the h ero had a beard just l i ke Charles. But there was one book th at Charles adored and gave m e with such fanfare that I knew h e wanted m e to l ik e it. And I d i d , skippi n g pages o fcou rse, t h e pages that would bore a ny child. Victor H u go's Les Miserables. And ofcou rse it has its Pardail­ lan, right? N a mely, Jean Valjea n . 1 wonder why I d i d n 't i nclude Les Miserables i n the list I gave you ofwhat I read then. Stra nge. Fu nny that I would forget the most im porta nt book, yes?

Take it up with [ Jacques] Lacan when you see him nexV Are you kiddi ng? H e'd love it, but I ' ll never give h i m that satisfaction. By making you read Les Miserables, was your grandfather trying to begin to edge you into some kind of political consciousness ? O h , no-well , m aybe somewhat. It never occu rred to me, but now that I th i n k a bout it, h e never objected to Zevaco, even if he didn't read the weekly i nstall ments. He knew very wel l who he was, and that he was an anarchist. Pardaillan - meaning of cou rse Zevaco-used to say, "I am superior to no o ne." B ut of cou rse he was. Yet I accepted that notion , which was i m medi­ ately confronted, i n effect, when my cousins showed up. Charles treated them d ifferently. He was not pleasant with them. I did n 't like them m uch ei· ther, b u t I felt it was u nj ust for C h arles to d iscri m i nate, s i nce we were all equal. They were part of large fam i lies. So it didn't matter what Charles thought about them, or the way h e tal ked to them. But it made me conscious that I did not h ave such a fam ily. I th i n k it is very i mportant for a child to have a father, good o r bad. I didn't have one. Charles may have been a god, but h e certa i n ly was n o t m y father. S o I l ived basically i n solitude. Yet I was happy be­ cause I was spoi led. I would say to myself what luck to be born in France with

10

N O V E M B E R 1970

such grandparents and a mother. Of cou rse, it didn't qu ite cl ick. I knew I was being judged by others, fol ks outside my family, and they j u dged m e accord­ ing to w h at I did. No Exit? "Hell is other people"? Exactly. And Charles is really an extension of yourself in your eyes .

Precisely, a n d since I know that I ' m a fraud, he's a fraud, a n d I don't re­ spect h i m for that. Yet I admire h i m . Some contradiction, e h ? I s that the root o fyour insecurity?

Com plicated. I th i n k I am i nsecu re precisely because Charles treats me differently than he treats my cousins, other childre n . S u re I want to be s pecial, s u re I revel i n the fact that Charles a n d my im m ed i ate family thi n k I'm s pecial, s u re no o n e, including me , understands that Charles treats me that way be­ cause he's afraid of death, and wants me to be h i m by extens i o n after his death. But someth i ng's wrong. I s it because I a m alone, I mea n a child i n a family of adults? I s it because my sense of equality, derived from Zevaco, j ars my rea lity? Ca n one become enamored with the concept of liberty, eq u a l ity, fratern ity, j u st from read i ng? Tough question, because the idea of solidarity that is the basis of lib­ erty, equality, fraternity, is

a

gut feeling-it's what made us s o cialists with­

out ever knowing what the word meant. It's what disturbed you when you saw that Charles did not treat your cousins as he treated you. No capitalist­ in-the-making would think that strange. If he was on the up side of that difference he'd be pleased. On the down side, j ealous .

Absol utely. Yet at the same time that I thought I should be equal to my cousin s, I also knew that they h ad a more i ntegrated family struct u re a nd, on the other hand, that I was s uperior. That said, I was aware that there were stu­ dents in my class who said things m uch more i nteresti n g th a n anything I could say. But that did n ot affect my profound conviction that there was n o origi nal difference between people. That's an emotional conviction. Li ke you said in you r article in Les Temps Modernes [a monthly m agazi ne started by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and others in 1 945 and edited by Sartre; it is still being published], ifyou have a n IQ oho and I have a n IQ Of1 20, o u r ex­ periences are nevertheless equivalent. [The article Sartre is referring to was called " Revolution by Lifestyle," or "Vivre la revol ution " in French, and was published i n the J une-J u ly 1 969 issue of Les Temps Modernes.) Without that understanding, no one can be a gen u i ne socialist. Do you know that in 1955

"

NO V E M B E R 1970

when I was i n C h i na, Chou En-Iai said that the notion of equality is a petit bourgeois notion . That really s h ocked me. I guess party com m u n ists must believe that, so as to j u stify their central committees ru n nin g everyone's lives. It's very hard for people to u nderstand that equality does not mean that we a re all as i ntelligent; it means that our joy, our pain, our need to be releva nt, a re eq ual.

So where did we get this notion of equality? Was Charles political ? Charles voted Radical-Socialist. That was a centrist but a nticlerical party that was the m ai nstay ofthe bou rgeoisie.

You say that in The Words, namely that he voted for a conservative party thinking it was for progress. But that didn't influence you, did it? First of all , you remained totally apolitical before the war. And second, when you began to get interested in politics, you were not a real leftist- I mean you were an armchair leftist. True. Despite Fer na ndo's p ressu re, I never joi ned the Writers and Artists Com m ittee Agai n st Fascis m, or aga i n st the war. Wh atever its title. And I was never very active.

Was that because those committees were run by communists ? Perhaps. Although [And re] Malraux was the p resident of one of them, and you r father was a mem ber. He had come back from Spa i n violently anti­ com m u n ist, did n 't he? And that's why you were pro-co m m u n i st at fourteen, yes?

I don't think so. Maybe. I knew that communists from all over the world had smuggled themselves to Spain to fight fascism. Unknown and unheralded heroes, in my mind. But by the time you had a d i scussion about that with Castor in N ew York, you h ad witnessed that terrifying d i n ner with Eh ren b urg, h ad n 't you ? That should have made you anti-co m m u n i st, o r at least aga i n st t h e party. But no-why? Was that you r rebellion against Fernando?

Perhaps. Yet I will never forget when Ilya Ehrenburg visited the United States as a correspondent for Pravda, in 1945, and spent all his time when he was in Manhattan with my parents . At one of the dinners, my mother asked him whatever happened to [Marcel] Rosenberg, the Soviet ambassador to the Spanish Republic, whom both my parents adored. Ehrenburg lowered his face and mumbled one word: " S talin." Then my father asked about a Rus sian general who fought with the International Brigades . " S talin." Then another. " S talin." For at least an hour, name after name, the explanation was

12

N O V E M B E R 1 970

" Stalin." M y mother was crying. My father fighting tears. The dinner was, and is, so ingrained in my mind that I described it to every political friend I had. But also true I had been impressed by all those who had fought for the Republic and were communists, friends of my father since at one time he commanded the I nternational Brigades. People like [Ales] B ebler, later Mar­ shal [ Josip Broz] Tito's foreign minister; [Henri] Tanguy, whose tank was the first into Paris in 1 944; the Italian communists Luigi Longo and Palmiro Togliatti, and the pro-communist s ocialists Pietro Nenni, and especially

Kantor and . You mean [Alfred] Kantorowicz, the political com missar of the Thal­ .

.

man n Battalion, who wrote that great novel, Chapayev? But h e defected.

Later, much later, and you know what Fernando said when an immi­ gration agent, who was s e c retly C I A , a s ked him why Kanto r would not talk

to the West? Kantor had been vice minister of culture in the East German Co m mun i st government before defecting to Bonn. The CIA tri ed to grill hi m, but he w o ul d not say a word. So they asked Fernando, and he said: Be­ cause he is a real communist. That got Fernando harassed by the C IA for twenty years , despite the fact that he was a veteran of the OS S . He had been submarined into Spain to set up an underground to blow up bridges , roads,

et cetera, should Franco allow the Germans to cross Spain to a ttack the Allies when they landed in Africa. When the war ended, the United States refused to legalize his status (he had arranged for us to come to the United States on fake diplomatic passports) , so he could not legally work. Carmelita Hinton, the founder of Vermont's famed Putney School and a co-founder of Wom­ en's Strike for Peace, hired my parents and at first paid them on an honorar­ ium basis, which was legal, but my parents had to report every month to a so-called immigration officer, but really CIA agent, until their friend the sculptor Alexander Calder asked his pal Abe Fortas, then a close aide to President [Lyndon B . ] Johnson, to intervene. Fortas got B obby Kennedy, then attorney general, to demand the files from I N S , which turned out to be at C IA because they were blackmailing him, trying to get him to work for them, which he would not do. Apologizing "in the name of America," Bobby got my parents citizenship by executive order in 1 9 64.

Still, to stay pro-commu nist after that d i n ner with Ehrenbu rg can only be explai ned as a way of rejecting you r father'S convictions. Maybe. But then your praise, in effect, of Zevaco's anarchism was a re· jection of Charles's "humanism."

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N OV E M B E R ' 970

H old on. Fi rst, there's t h e age difference. As brilliant as I may have been , h a-ha, I certai n ly did not u nderstand i n ' political terms the d ifference between collective action l ed by a party a n d the work of a s i ngle i n d ividual agai nst the bad guys i n society. C harles was ki ng, e m peror, d ictator, true, but like every respectable bou rgeois, i n awe and praise of Fran ce's revol ution, ex­ emplifi ed by l i berty, equal ity, fraternity. N either he nor most bou rgeois ad her­ ents to h u m a n i s m u nderstood that there ca n never be li berty, equal ity, or fra­ tern ity without soci alism. That a l lowed h i m to t h i n k that Pardaillan was a good guy fighti ng for h is own brand of h u m a ni sm . Don't forget, he n ever read Zevaco. Stil l , he cou l d n 't object si nce my stories always ended with society bei n g better off, l i ke i n Zevaco, with less poverty, the good guys i n power, the bad ones in jail. So I certai n ly was not rebelling aga i nst h i m or his notion of democracy, and he d i d n 't take it as such.

S o where or what began your understanding that bourgeois human­ ism was a cover-up for domination by one class over another? Very hard to say. I h ave to try to figure out-j ust when did I realize that not only was my life at home a series of com edies, i n the sense of play-acti ng, but also that I d i d n 't like them? When did I real ize that I wanted to be with my peers, my class mates, m y com rades? Because to be with com rades is to be equal. The trouble is that the reverse side of the coi n of that realization was that I felt lonely at home, or rather that I was conscious that I was alone, since loneli ness is a state of m i nd whereas alone is a fact, and if l was lonely, I got out of it by writing. Charles didn't care that I was alone. I don't th i n k he ever thought of it. But the women, my mother and gra nd m other, kept sayi ng "that boy is alone too m u c h , he needs friends." And friends, of cou rse, meant com rades, and there can be no su perior or i nferior a m o n g com rades. Com rades mean equals. That's all in Paris . But at thirteen you move to La Rochelle, where you

have no comrades, and your peers ostracize you. So then what? What hap­ pens to your notion of equality ? Everyt h i n g c h a n ges there. Fi rst there's m y mother's betrayal , her re­ marriage, w hic h is why we move to that city in the first place. Then there's Charles's betrayal over the coi n. Then there's my grand mother's death. That triggers a n i m portant revelation, because I was very fond of h er. We used to play piano together. Stuff l i ke that. But when she died I was totally neutral. She was eighty-two. But that's not the explanation. I s i m ply d o not put death i nto a livi ng context. I n other words, I disassociate death fro m life. I 've done

'4

N O V E M B E R 1970

that all my l ife. I have been seriously criticized for that too, like when [Claude] Lanzma n n's sister died. [Evelyne Lanzmann, an actress who went by the stage name Evelyne Rey, became one of Sartre's mistresses in 1 953. Sartre wrote the role of Joh a n na in his play The Condemned of Altona for her. Sh e com mitted su icide i n 1 966, shortly after Sartre broke off thei r affair.] Wh en I was told she had killed herself, I had a s hort asthma attack, but then noth ing. Si nce I am absol utely certain that after one's death t here's nothi ng, I can not grieve. Now, is that because I have identified my su rvival with my l iterature, even though i ntellectually I know t hat's all meani ngless? Let the sh r in ks de· bate that. For me, it's simple: death is nothingness, hence not part of l ife, so I do not th ink of death. But you did, when you wrote in The Words about your father's death. In fact I have i t here, I underlined it: " H e loved, h e wanted t o live, h e s aw him· self die. That's enough to make a man total. " Aren't you making a value judgment there on how one dies?

But the way one d ies means one i s still existi ng. So why did you take dying-not death, dying-out of Being and Noth· ingness? That was a mistake. I was writi n g against [Marti n] H eidegger then, be· cause he clai med that life is a mere delay, a reprieve, i n one's own death. I was trying to explain that life is a series of projects, and projects do not en com­ pass death, so why mention it? Think of death, and the project is d estroyed. Philosophy is the im itation of life, as [Baruch] Spinoza said, not the other way arou nd. So, as you wrote, since books don't die, to read is to be a n optimist? Exactly. So, since you write books, you won't die. Precisely. So, loneliness , or solitude rather, depression. being ostracized, all that disappears when one writes . Correct. And the product is a rarity. That's why i n its s u rvival it i s l ife it­ self. Everythi n g is rare. Air, land, water, prod uction, cons u m ption , matter, space, all rare. The book then personifi es life, as im mortal as m atte r or air. So, if that is what we do when we write, copy life in effect, then life is absurd. Of cou rse life is absurd, si nce it is made up of rarities. The more absurd, then , the more death is intolerable.

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N O V E M B E R 1 9 70

So ignore it. M ake a n other project, wh ich by defi n ition excl udes death.

B esides volume four of Flaubert, what are the proj ects that will exclude your thinking of d eath ? [ Sartre published a three· volume biographical study

of the French novelist. titled The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1 82 1 - 1 857, in I 9 7 1 . He was

wo r king on a fourth volume. which he never finished.] H a ! Projects don't excl ude d eath -projects a re the a ntithesis of death.

That's an i m portan t difference. The project is a n act. Writi n g is a n act. My p ro· jects right now: the next part of the Critique of Dialectical Reason. Then I th i n k I want to w rite my political testament.

But to come back to my question about your consciousness of equality, wh ere is it in your proj ects ? And in La Rochelle , where your comrades hate you and ostracize you. And in any case, writing as an act is solitary; where does your notion of soli darity fit in? Don 't mix d ifferent stages. Fi rst of all, whether my classmates h ate me or not does not c h ange the fact t h at i n La Rochel le, after bei ng betrayed by Cha rles a n d my mother, I am aware very qu ickly that my enem ies are my eq uals because they j udge me by w h at I do. Writi ng may be a solitary act, but it posits solidarity becau se it responds to the society we l ive in. Good or bad, the book is i n play, so to s peak. And whether the author wrote it out of a m bi· tion, vengeance, fea r, whatever, determi nes the author, not the book. And writi n g it is l i ke a n y other project-bu i l d i n g a hou se, m u rderi ng one's neigh. bor, stea l i n g a best friend's wife, w hatever. Th ere's noth i n g special about that act i n itself; its val ue is determ i ned by others . People tal k of talent after the fact. But talent is d rawi ng the cha ir to the table.

I f it's an act like any other. w hy did you choose writing? To feel s u perior. S u periority el i m i n ates culpabil ity. You felt guilty that you were human? N ot gui lty, which i s defi ned after the fact, but culpable, which i mplies con sciou s res ponsibil ity. Every h u man is c u l pable. That's why he fears death . To avoid that fear one m u st be su perior. And s u periority comes onl y i n total co m m it ment to the act. Or, better put, to be one's project. I smell the original sin. Is the "proj ect" faith ? N ot bad. N ow you see why Ch risti a n ity is so powerfu l . Everyone i s a sin· nero How to l ive with that? By total com m itment to god . Right? No. Ifthat was the escape, the churc h would lose all its faithfu l . So it i ntrod uces the m ystery, the dog m a that no one can be su re of salvation, no m atter how good a n d hon·

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N OV E M B E R 1 970

orably o n e lives. That solves the question o fwhy d i d that i n n ocent c h i l d n ext to me get h it by the stray bullet while I went u n scathed. If o n e can n ot pred ict god's ways, one can never be saved , or com mitted, hence we all stay s i n ners. And as sinners we d read what will happen after we die. We rem ain frightened. Very n i cely done. But it doesn 't work with those who do not fear death. And they don't fear death beca u se they are totally com m itted to their act, their project.

O K, so why did you choose writing instead of being a gangster? Upbri nging. Fam ily. Class. Ed u cation. I f only those who are totally their project do not fear death because that totality makes them superior, why don't I fear death? You're a writer. Not your kind. I write to battle, to change the world, not to gain im­ mortality. I see writing like you define your love life: some are necessary, some are contingent. My n ovel, which I wrote when I was seventeen and was never published, thank god, was necessary. The Great Fear [a book I wrote about Latin America] was contingent. Very good. I l i ke that. But you r Great Fear was total com m itment to bat­ tle, l i ke you r father going to fight in Spain. H e was n't afraid of death then, j u st as before, painti n g away i n his studio, he was n 't afraid then either. The co m­ mitment is what makes each of us i n our way immortal, then and there, n ow and here, with each project. And that's just as true for the gangster as it is for the p h i losopher. The value? That is d ecided by others, by society_ It has noth­ ing to do with death, or i m mortality.

What about the writer who writes for god ? Like [Claude] Mauriac ? When Mauriac writes, he i s i m mortal and, bel i eve me, does not even th i n k of his death, n o matter how m uch he writes about it. He may tel l you af­ terward that he wrote god's will, but that's afterward, when h e i s searc h i n g for salvation instead o f livi n g it.

So the totally committed who commit suicide, who obviously are not afraid of death, reflect a failed proj ect? It's more complicated. First of all, there's the gesture. A gesture is done for others. A statem ent. I don't t h i n k most su icides really expect to d i e. [ The comm u ni st author M ichel] Lei ris, for example. H e was absol utely decided, supposedly, si nce h e had saved a barbitu rate from each prescri ption his doc­ tor gave him, for years, and then, ten years ago, he decided the ti m e had come. He took all that he had saved. Then he laid down n ext to his wife, wh o

17

N O V E M B E R ' 9 70

was waiti n g for him to go to sleep. But he said, " I thi n k I took a bit too many barbitu rates." She called a neighbor and rushed h i m to the hos p ital, where they p u m ped h i m out. Why did he tell h i s wife? He gave h i mself one last chance. They had both d ru n k a lot that n i ght, so he could have fallen asleep perfectly normally, a nd s he would not have been suspicious. But even the ones who kill themselves alone. They're cal l i ng out. U n less of course they're sufferi ng terribly. Like from ca ncer. But that's a different issue completely.

In the case of [Catherine] Von Bulow, who tried to commit suicide "be· cause she had no way out" of the relationship she was having with an older but very rich and powerful man, Claude Gallimard, your publisher. After I got her to the hospital and she was O K, the doctor asked me if she had tried before. "You know, " he said, "it's a myth that those who talk about wanting to commit suicide don't really try it. Eventually, they talk themselves into it. "3 Suicides are people who j udge life, who th i nk it has a value or message or pu rpose, and for some reason they are not i n the sou p [a n expression of Sartre's that means fu lly engaged, down i n the trenches, getti ng one's h ands d i rty]. Life is a fact. It has no value in itself. It's not even a question of accept· i n g or not accepti ng it. It is, period. Those who are not thei r project seem un· able to u nderstand that. They expect this or that. And when it does n 't come out as they expect it, they judge it. Good or bad or whatever. I was once very close to someone who always expected someth i ng from life, as if l ife did or did not do, as if l ife was an active somet h i ng. You know about her, yes ? La nz· m a n n ' s sister. Were you with Von Bu low when she came to?

Yes . What did s h e say? " I 'm sorry. " Perfect: a reaffirmation of life. I thought life is, period. So what's this mystical. sounding " reaffirma·

tion" bit? H a·ha·ha . . . just an expression. You ' re absol utely right: life has no val u e in itself, only to people. And that's relative to each ci rcu m stance. Like de Gaulle . You hated him, we kinda liked him. That's baffling to me. H ow ca n you have any respect for that antiquar. i a n monarch ist who thought he was a king? A nyway, h i s death seems to me totally u n i m portant, except that I l i ke the fact that he died alone, playi n g soli· taire.

,8

N OV E M B E R ' 9 70

For those o fu s who worry that the United States is trying t o dominate the world, who know that the United States has a first-strike policy against Russia, which in turn did not, hence for us who worry that the United States is willing and is perfectly capable of starting World War I I I , which would de­ stroy the planet, the fact that de Gaulle had similar worries and kicked NATO out of France was very significant. He did that as a gestu re, meani ngless, propaganda. When 1 was an editor at Newsweek, we had lunch one day with General [Pierre-Marie] Gallois , de Gaulle's chief of nuclear defense, what was called La Force de Frappe, and 1 asked him in French, which way were his missiles pointing? After asking me if anyone else at the table understood my ques­ tion and 1 said no-actually 1 lied, since Kermit Lansner, the managing edi­ tor, spoke French fluently and in fact was a secret correspondent for Le Nou­ vel Observateur [a leftist weekly newsmagazine] -he made a gesture with his two hands showing that the missiles were pointing both ways-that is, at Russia and at the U nited S tates . Hey, I don't want to accuse you of naIvete, but you ca n be s u re that Ie Gallois knew that Newsweek was then li beral-left and wanted to i m p ress you . D e Gaul le's pol icy was always to appear nationalistic a n d i ndependent. But it was baloney, pure p ropaganda, to get his reactionary party elected. France u nder de G a u l le gai n ed a tremendous amount of American in vestm e nts, so much that de Gaulle's economy depended o n them. Forget the word , l ook at the facts, you know-li ke we say, it's what we do that matters.

Well, [ Jean] Ripert once told me that de Gaulle had ordered him to pre­ pare a plan for the total nationalization of the electrical industry, which was an American monopoly in France.4 And nothing happened. So when Ripert asked de Gaulle why not, the old boy replied, because the left is not demand­ ing it. "I was ready," he said, "but the left was not making it an issue . " That's true. O u r left sti nks. Always h a s _ J ust think back, h ow the soci al­ ists and com m u n i sts s u p ported the war in Algeria, even when the Algeria n Com munist Party was for Algerian independence and its leaders were bei n g tortured b y [General Jacques] Massu's goons.5 But don't blame the left, as de Gaulle and, I guess, Ripert do. De Gaulle would n ever have nationalized the electrical industry. American pressure was too strong. Still, remember when [British prime minister Harold] Macmillan

stopped in Paris in February 1963 on his way to meet Kennedy in B arbados

19

N O V E M B E R 1 970

and asked de Gaulle, "What can I do to stop the United States from treating England as an obedient pawn?" De Gaulle answered: "Too late, England is an aircraft carrier for American goods . " J ust words, no i mportance. Politicians are like people; it's what they d o that matters.

You don't think that it was important that de Gaulle closed the U . S . bases i n France, that he stopped the United States from being in charge o f NATO i n Europe, that h e said: " N o nation is free ifit has some other nation's base on its soil ! " B u l l s h it! D e G a u l l e was a n i n eteenth-century royal i st w h o thought he was the ki ng. How cou ld you stomach that " la G randeur de la Fra nce" crap he s pewed all the time? You really s u rprise me, Gerass i , fal l in g for that s h it. 6 You don't think he understood the danger of America , th at America wanted to dominate the wh ole world ? D a m n it! M aybe. So what! He certa i n l y d i d n 't u nderstan d that America wa nted to d o mi n ate it through trade, that it was all about money. You didn't have to put u p with that pompo u s ass every day, si nce you were living i n lon­ don then. But you did keep com i n g to Paris, s i nce we had lu nch once a week. Pa ris really i s you r city, i s n 't it?

I

Absolutely. Like you. You too were born here , right? Yes , but I left at eighteen month s when my father died. My mother and went to l ive with my grandparents i n M e u lon, where he taught Germa n ,

t h e n back t o Paris, on r u e le Goff, as I descri bed i n The Words. My mother re­ married when I was eleven. I remember s h e came with h i m to school to i ntro­ duce h i m as "a m a n of great qualities." I did n 't u ndersta nd what she wanted , and h e l eft the next day. She sat me on her knees and asked me ifJ had any ob­ jecti o n to the th ree of us maki ng a home together. I said no, but didn't mean it. In fact, I thought it was a betrayal right then and there. She had met him in Cherbourg, where my father, a naval officer, was stationed, and he was a naval engineer. I gather he was taken with my m other already then, and when he heard that s h e was a widow with a ten -year-old child, he s howed up. She was obvi o usly not i n love with h i m , but s h e felt tremendou s pres s u re to becom e independent from h e r parents. Charles had reached the age of reti rem ent, but cou l d n 't take care of us all materially. And this M aney guy [Joseph Maney, Sartre's stepfather] was now q u ite solvent. But my life changed drastical ly, and I resented my mother, not h i m . I d i d n 't l i ke h i m ; he was big, very big, with

20

N O V E M B E R 1 970

a black mustache a n d a big nose. H e tried to make me good at m ath , which

I

hated , and once, because I had a nswered h i m curtly, and s h e h ad heard me, she came rushing out of the kitchen and slapped me. He didn 't u n derstand why. And I never forgot it.

Seems even today, your recollection is flavored with jealousy . . .

You have to u nderstand. For ten years my mother belonged to me. My grandparents did n 't have a big apartment, so we slept in the s a m e room . I never saw her naked-she was a lways carefu l-but I did see t h e h a ir u nder her arms, and com bi ned with d rawings I saw, I ended u p tel l i n g my class· mates about pubic hair, without cal l i n g it that ofcourse. She wou ld ta ke m e to the Lu x embo u rg, s hopping, movies, you know, s h e was all m i ne . Then all t h at sto pped . Maney was n ice with m e and I d i d n 't hold it aga i n st hi m , b ut s h e b e· trayed me, or at l east betrayed the unwritten com pact we had between u s. And I changed . I beca me what school authorities call a "troublemaker." When Maney was transferred to L a Roc helle , she went with h i m and I stayed to finish that school semester in Paris. He had been . . . [At this

point a nurse

showed up, in terrupting our talk. Although he was only sixty-five , S artre was already suffering from all the amphetamines he had taken his whole adult life and needed to receive special inj ections once a month. After the nurse left, he conti nued . ] She's a real petit bou rgeois. I gave her this book to read , The Trial of

Geismar, with my p reface, and I told her it was a book about the M ay '68 stu ­ dent rebell ion, but she was shocked.

Why the shots ? I had dizzy spells d u ring the vacation, and the doctors conclu ded th at my vein s had hardened somewhat , so the shots a re to enlarge them . The consequence of speed? I guess. But even ifit kills m e tomorrow, it was worth it. I m ean, I n ever slept more than four h o u rs a day for the past forty years. If you add t hat up, it means I'm already n i n ety, consciously at least. Anyway, as I was saying, M a ney had been a director of a joi n t that built ships, and then he was m ade boss of the outfit's operatio n s in La Rochelle. I was badly received i n that town. It's a hard place. Very Protestant an d closed. I was seen as a stranger, and as a Parisian, as a ruffian. I tried to i ntegrate myself, but without success. I tried to gai n acceptance by yelli n g louder and more often than my class mates, and the professor would th row m e out of class, which made my m other cry. You know the worst, when I tried to j o i n a

21

N OV E M B E R 1 97 0

g roup that a lways played a round the port. I went u p t o a group of four guys a nd one girl who was gorgeous. She was not i n my class but I had seen her with some of my classmates many ti mes and I was very attracted to her. So I s aid somet h i ng to try an openi ng. Dead silence. They all stared at me, then s he as ked the oth ers: "Who's this guy with one eye that says s h it to the other?" As I turned and wal ked away, I heard them laugh l i ke crazy.

Is that when you decided that you would have to seduce women by your intellectual brilliance and never by your looks ? H a h a . Perhaps. But I reacted by beco m i n g a thief. I stole money from my mother to buy candy, as a bribe to be accepted by my class mates. And I fought hard in the local battles.

School battles? M y Iycee, w h ich was a pu blic schoo l , against kids from the other schools. And to become part of the warriors I had to fight hard . But my m a i n tactic was the bribes. And t h e n came that d isastrous theft o ffifty francs, a lot of money then. Disastro u s because I was caught. I was sure that Charles, who cam e to visit about then, would u nderstand. That was my second be­ traya l . I now had two enemies, my mother and my gra ndfather, the only two people I had loved as a child. But you didn't break with them? Oh no. I pretended that noth ing had h appened, and my mother did the same. I needed some normalcy at home to offset my disgust and hatred of La Rochel le.

And you continued to write and read a great deal, right? M ostly I read or reread my oid favorites, Ponson du Terrail and M i chel Zevaco . . . The great swashbucklers, solitary heroes against the world, heh? Yea h , but all kids like that stuff. You ' re trying to i m ply that my an archis­ tic traits date back to those books. I don't th i n k so.

Well, not j ust the books , but also your social life. A stranger in the streets and school, unles s you fought the enemy, which by the way was a class enemy, since you were with the rich , and those you fought were the poor. I t h i n k you're p u s h i ng. First of a ll, I also read traditional books­ mediocre, gra nted, like Pierre Loti-but considered "l iteratu re," in q u otes and . . .

22

NOVEM B E R 1 970

But you liked Zevaco, who was a confirmed anarchist, o n e against all . . . I did n't know that. I just liked the adventu res. Which you carried over in the "novels" you kept writing, yes ? True. A l l m y novels were about cape e t epee� you know, sw a s h b u ck­

lers. My hero was n amed G oetz, based on a history that I read when I had the m u m ps, about a G oetz von Berlichi ngen, a popular crusader who was im­ prisoned i n a big clock with his head sticki ng out through the dials; the h a nd s were sabers meant to cut off his head, but he escaped . He always escaped, alone, to carry on the good fi gh t for the poor. Sounds like both class consciousness and the beginning of an alone­ against-all anarchism . . . If you want. B ut remem ber, if these kinds of stories ran i n the reg u l a r press-and Zevaco's novels were serialized too-then you have to say that all kids were class conscious and anarchistic. O K, I 'll give in here. But the point could be made that most kids were, indeed, and

I

think still are, instinctively class conscious and fantasize

a

hero who would crush all the bastards of the world and make things right. Except for the snobs of your private school. the rich who show disdain for the poor, most kids are on the side of the downtrodden. And then they adapt to society and enter the system. Actually, I think you're right. Kids are selfish, egocentric and egot i stica l , but th ey side with t h e poor u ntil the system's propaganda, which incl u des

their parents, mind you, m a kes them conformists and then cogs i n the sys· tern. And in your case, that self-centeredness made you survive La Rochelle. Actually, I u sed to show my " novels" to my classmates. Th ey wou l d laugh, especially a t t h e subtitle, which was always "the true story o f a hero."

They would say "but it isn't true" a n d l a u gh their heads off, an d never rea d them. Your mother did, though. Yes, and always offered some changes, usually of words, like don't say strong, s ay st u rdy or whatever. Since you started writing to impress Charles and he was no longer with you in La Rochelle, you didn't have to continue writing and she didn't have to read what you wrote.

23

N OV E M B E R 1 9 7 0

True. For me b y then i t was an act of salvation. For m y m other, I think, it was a form of s h owi n g m e that she ca red. In both cases it hel ped make me s u rvive that horrid port, La Rochelle.

You stayed there three years, right ? Yes, through twelfth grade, sixteen, when I went back to Paris to l ive with my gra ndparents a n d conti n u e my studies there. The secon d part of pre· miere a n d philo at Lycee Henri IV, and khagne a n d hypo- k hagne at Lycee Lou is-Ie-Grand.? I passed the exa m [for adm ission to L' Ecole Normale Su­ perieu re], fi n ish i n g n u m ber seven, a n d stayed there the fou r years, up to the

agregation exam . 8 I fl u n ked the first time. Then

I

passed , as you know­

n u m be r one on the second try.9 Then I got d rafted, l i ke everyone else, and en­ joyed a year and a h a lf of boredom. Because of my eyes, I became a meteorol­ ogi st; they apparently don't have to see the weather, j ust s m e l l it. Once dis­ charged , my first job was teaching p h i losophy at a Iycee in Le H avre. I O

When did you renew your relationship with your mother? I wou ld see her occasionally in Paris, after she and M a ncy returned. N either of them approved of what I was doing or writing, especially after I gave her to read " L' enfa nce d ' u n chef," the l ast story i n The Wall [pu blished in 1 939]. C harles s i m ply sent it back to me, u n read . My mother read to page 30, and "couldn't go o n. " She was q u ite religious, although s h e often com­ plai ned, when c h i l d re n or poor people suffered or d ied, that "God was not j u st." She cou l d take my a nti-religious stuff. But sex was something else. Like her own mother's dict u m , it was n ever to be d iscussed. And M ancy, a reac­ tio n a ry fu nction a ry after a l l , was d isgusted by what I wrote. Nor woul d any­ one in my fam i ly officially m eet Castor except my mother, who would arrange for the th ree of us to m eet period ical ly i n some patisserie a n d never told her h usband. And a s you know, si nce you met her there, she moved i nto my apartment after h er h usband d ied.

Why? He died very early, no? Your grandparents were still alive; she could have moved back with them. M ancy d ied i n 1 945. She never wrote me that. I was then in America, as you remember s i nce I stayed with you a l l when I was i n N ew York. By the way, Fernando never u nderstood that I d i d that out of frien d s h i p, beca use the newspaper a l l ia n ce that h a d i nvited me and was payi ng my way wanted to put me u p in a nice h otel . I remember that you and I were on the same side of an argu ment at the M u se u m of M odern Art. Remem ber? The th ree of us went to see the big constructionist show at the museu m and you r father was not very

24

N OV E M B E R ' 970

moved , wh i le w e both l i ked

it

a lot, and y o u s a i d that Mondria n ' s Broadway

Boogie Woogie was like a dance. You were fou rteen, and that i m pressed me a lot. I n fact, I put that i nto The Roads to Freedom, when Gomez and Richi e go to see the s how.

You know, years later, when I was an art critic at Newsweek a nd I re­ viewed the huge Modern Museum show of Op Art, which credited Mon­ drian and the constructionists as their roots , I reviewed i t with t he headline "An Adventure Without Danger. " I thought ofthat discussion you and my fa­ ther had back then in � 94S, and I remembered Fernando saying "Yes, but ,

Mondrian does not ask difficult que stions . It took me a long time to under­ stand what he meant. B ut to return to your mother: her husband had died while you were in America? "

Yes, and she didn't want to ru i n my stay. I had called her after arrivi ng, or a few days after, when the press association set up the calls, and told her I loved America ( of cou rse I meant I loved N ew York, as I h adn 't gon e anywhere else yet) , so she didn't say a thing about M aney. When I got back and s h e told me, I gai n ed tremendous sympathy and respect for her again. So I decided a sacrifice was in order. After all, she h ad sacrificed herselffor us, my grand par­ ents and me, by marryi n g h i m in the fi rst place. So I gave up my h otels. As you know, I loved l iving in hotels, which I did ever s ince I came back from Berl in, and I h ated the idea of l iving i n a bou rgeois apartment. But I got u sed to it.

Ah yes, Berlin. In 1933, you an d the Nazis got to Berlin about the same time, right? That's right. I got the same fel l ows h i p to go study there that Raymond Aron had the previous year. H e helped m e get that deal and so h e also gets the cred it for introduci n g me to phenomenology, but as you know it was your father who did that. I I

But there were no phenomenologists in B erlin then, were there ? And you didn't speak German anyway, did you? Well , I could read it . . . [Edmund] Husserl and Heidegger? N ot very well, true. Some. After all, C harles had been a teacher of Ger­ man and often cu rsed in German, t h i n ki ng I would n ot u nderstand, but of course kids pick it u p. What? You picked up Hussed' s swear words from Charle s ? Ha·ha ha. You know, I always wanted to study English, but Charles in­ sisted on German, so I had a fai rly good basis. But for H usserl . . . Actually,

25

N O V E M B E R ' 9 70

you r father visited me twi ce for two weeks and translated a lot ofit. Sti ll, yeah,

I

was

j u st havi ng fu n . . .

With the Nazis ? Ah, come on, don't be m ea n , it was a boondoggle. I was supposed to feel German culture, and I d id. And I did n't like it. But it was a very h appy year.

26

December 1 970

When I went over our last session, I was struck by your very last statement, that you had a "happy" year. You were unhappy in La G E RA S S I:

Rochelle but happy in Berlin? I thought that, to you, "happiness" was a reac­ tionary concept. SA RT R E: S h it- ha-ha, I have to be carefu l with my words w ith you . As an individ ual I was m iserable in La Rochelle in public, but m i nd you, perfectly contented alone with my writi ng. La Rochelle was a bigoted , foreigner-hati ng, reactionary, Protestant, closed hole. As an individual, I was perfectly at ease in Berl i n , a musical, agitated , fu n.loving, open society, u ntil the N azis shut it down, but they didn't do it while I was there. The women were beautiful, sexy, and available. So as an i nd ivid ual it was a great year for m e. Th at I didn't u n ­ dersta nd t h e sign ificance o f t h e N azis goose-stepping down the Ku-damm, yeah, OK. But most ofthe Berl i ners I knew laughed them off, as I did. Did Fernando, when he visited you? No, to be honest, he warned me, but I did n 't take h i m seri ously. He had spent years u nder some form offascism already in Spain , a m o narchy with an extremely reactionary Catholic clergy that wanted to kill all non believers, a nd he saw parallels i n Germany. H e warned me, I remem ber, that anyone who says " I f you're n ot with me, you ' re against me" wants to execute all those against. But I thought he was a typical Span iard, always exaggerating. Sti ll,

27

D E C E M B E R 1 970

h i s two vis its were great. For o n e t h i n g h e s poke perfect Germ a n , a n d p h i l o­ s o p h ical Germ a n at t h at. And he loved wom e n as m uch as I d i d .

Stepha wasn't with him, I take it? N o , but don 't j u m p t o more con c l u s i o n s . Yo u r parents h ad a n open re­ lati o n s h i p

•

.

.

Not to my mother . . . H ey, j ust because s h e did n 't exercise her right of ope n n es s does n ' t mean t h at she h ad n 't agreed on the terms. She d id.

OK, so you weren't politically aware of what was going on in ' 3 3 . But

when you say you were happy, you're eliminating the social element of . . . OK, I said I was h a ppy. That's n ot the i s s u e we were discuss i n g at l u nch l ast S u n d ay. I s a i d t h a t t h e quest for h a p p i ness i s reactio n a ry. T h e goal of rev­ o l ution is n ot to m a ke everyo ne h a p py. It is to m ake everyo n e free a n d u n ­ a l i e n ated w h i l e dependent o n each other. That's the co ntrad i cti o n w e were d i scu s s i n g. If you want to d efi n e bei n g free as bei n g happy, fi n e, b u t what d o you do w i t h bei ng d e p e n d e nt? T h at's t h e com m u n a l aspect o f a s o c i a l revol u ­ t i o n , right? T h e difference between revolt o r rebel l i o n a n d revo l u t i o n i s its consci o u s co m m u n a l ity, w h i c h i s total l y free.

Cannot revolt or rebellion lead to revolution? Of course, but o n ly when t h at s p i rit of co m m u n a l ity d o m i n ates the re­ b el l i o n .

Do you think that happened in 1 9 G 8 ? I t bega n to. At fi rst the students rebelled aga i n st the so-cal led ed uca­

t i o n a l reforms that de G a u l le's m i n i ster wa nted to i m pose on t h e m , to force t h e m to decide w h at they wa nted to do in life at s i xteen or eighteen or w h at­ ever. They refused. They wanted to be a b l e to read G oethe as wel l as study Riem a n n ' s anti-Euclidean p hysics. But as they joi ned forces, thei r rebellion be­ came a rejection of the state, and the origi n a l motive for thei r demonstrations d is appeared i nto a class war, sort of, w here the class was you t h fac i n g u ne m ­ p l oyment. Then as t h e workers j o i n ed t h e m , it became the a l i e n ated agai nst the rulers, a l ie n ated bei n g anyone who was fea u p at havi ng to behave ac­ cord i n g to a code defi n ed by "them "-the gra ndees, the ric h , t hose w h o gradu ated fro m t h e "great schoo l s , " t h e m ed i a , the trendsetters , the ch u rch, all c h u rches - i n fact, a l l those who considered them selves "the esta b l i s h ­ m e n t . " Was n 't t h at w h at t h e h i ppie-yi p pee movement was a l l a bout, a s you wrote in o u r m agaz i n e ? Except in Fra nce- m aybe because it is a s m a l l cou n -

28

DECE M B E R 1 970

try, but I thi n k becau s e it suffered two major wars i n t h i s century, betrayals , racism, Gestapo repressions-our youth is much more political ly con scious than you rs, even if they were born after, as most were. In any case, o nce at­ tacked by the state, t hey coalesced into a si n gle com m u nal body. N o one re­ membered what the original rebellion was a bout. They were now fighting for each other, for all. You got here in M ay '68, i n time to see, no? The you n g help­ ing the old, s h ield i n g them from the cops, pissing on their handkerc h iefs to cover the faces of octogenarians to protect them from the tear gas. It was films like that which made de Gaulle ru n offto Baden-Baden to ask General Massu to invade Fra nce and M assu to refuse-the same Massu who had or­ dered his troops to tortu re Algerian rebels a few years earl ier. If the Com mu­ nist Party h adn't betrayed the revolution, we would have a com m u n a l state today. That wou ld h ave been social happiness.'

But you never sought happiness ? N o. To seek happi ness means to bel i eve that one ca n attai n the mean­ i ng of l ife. As a kid I n ever asked what is the m ea n i n g or the goal or the reason of life. It is, period. But I was aware that m y class, the bou rgeois, always sought someth ing.

What did you understand? At ten years old, I u nderstood that it was money. That's w h at defi n ed the bou rgeois.

But not you? I was a bourgeois, of course. Raised and taught by bou rgeois. But somehow I did not identify with that class. M aybe because I had n o father. Maybe because, once we moved to La Rochelle, I was an outs ider. I rem ember that I thought that life was fi ne. There were

a

lot of poor people , I could see

that. But I thought that's why there were the rich, made to save the poor, and those not-so-rich , to h elp as m uch as they cou l d . And that was fi n e.

Yet you wrote in The Words that you wanted to fight the bad guys and were upset that there weren't any. But the bad guys in your eyes were only the big ones, the dictators , the Napoleons. And since there were n't any . . . All was good . U ntil we went to La Rochelle, that is. There I lost my an­ gelic quality. I becam e a punk. I fought and I stole. I had no rem orse, mind you, because it was my way of havi ng a life. I expected my mother to u n der­ stand. I expected Charles to understand. They di d n 't.

So you were unhappy?

29

D EC E M B E R ' 970

A s a n i n d ividual, yes, but not beca use l ife was n o good.

I

d id n 't sud­

denly t h i n k that the mea n i n g of life was something else. I never changed in my being: I am what I am a nd I write.

And you were the hero of your novels . But you also understood the ab­ surdity of that, since you tried to link Pardaillan to Don Quixote ? Start i n g i n n i nth grade, the l itera ry contrad ictions began to set i n . Corn eille w a s n o problem; his heroes, H orace, Ie C i d , Rodrigue, were real he­ roes; but Raci n e m ade me hesitate. H i s heroes are rea l ly anti-heroes. And that sort of fitted with what I read about the war. It reinforced my sus picion that happiness is objective and com m u n a l - hence, in the bou rgeoi s world, nonexistent. I u n derstood the difference between happi ness and joy. Joy is su bjective. If you feel joyous, no one can tel l you you 're not. But happi ness is a state, not about this or that. Of cou rse you can th i n k you're u n happy, but concretizi n g it, l i ke I did with my first major affa i r, which began when I was at N ormale, at twenty. I fell madly in love with a wom a n , Simone Jolivet, who l ater would become the mistress of Charles Dullin, the great director who di­ rected my fi rst play. I considered it a n " u n h appy liaison" for th ree reasons: first, because she l ived in Toulouse; second, because I was at N ormale and l i mited in my d ays off; and th i rd, I cou ldn't afford to travel down for two days very often, i n fact I had to borrow money from my classmates. And when I com plai ned that she wasn't avai l abl e when I decided to go see her on the spur of the moment, she a nswered that how dare I complain when

I

come

down at the best once a month, saying, "What am I sup posed to do, sit here, stari n g at my n avel, waiti n g . . . " Aha ! You were normal then ? Jealous ! H ey, I was twenty. And it was my fi rst great love affair. It lasted three or four yea rs. I learned. But as you know, women want you to be jealous. But not society. True. But I fou n d i n a l l my affa i rs that if I was n 't jealous, the woman wou l d say, "So you weren't jealous-that

don't love me." I got

i nto the habit of m a k i n g bel ieve that I was jealous-except with Castor, of cou rse. Why did that relationship become so special and so different? It's com p l icated . You have her version i n her memoirs. And you should i nterview her and get her to be more ca ndid than in her books. For me, I th i n k o u r rel ati o n s h i p developed i ntellectu ally at fi rst. We were both studying for the agregation. She was at the Sorbon n e a n d I was at N ormale, a n d one of

30

D EC E MB E R ' 970

her classmates was Rene Maheu-you k now, the guy who is n ow head of U N ESCO . . . Yes, I interviewed him already . . .

You didl And what did he say? When I told him that I knew he had been Castor's first lover, he jumped and asked me if it was Castor who had told me. I told him no, that we had decided that I was going to spend a whole month interviewing Cas­ tor next February, and that it was my mother who had told me. "Ah yes, he n

remembered, that "lovely Stepha, the Ukrainian, her best friend. Everyone was in love with her, including Sartre," he said.

That's true. But you r mother was a puritan; she believed in bei ng faith­ ful to Fernando. The way she put it was that she and Fernando had the same kind of re­ lationship as you and Castor but that she didn't need to have "unnecessary" affairs.

Ha-ha-hal Won derful. N icely said. She was a tremendous flirt, however.

I know. Castor in her memoirs admits that it was Stepha who taught her how to dress more seductively, how to take care of her nail s , in order to pick up those gorgeous Hungarians at the library.

Did Stepha know that it was Fernando who deflowered Poupette [Helene de Beauvo i r], Castor's s ister? Sure. But let's go back. Why did your relationship with Castor become "necessary, " as you both have claimed, while all the others were "contin­ gent" ?

Wel l , not for Castor, you know-her affair with Nelson Aigren was very serious. Yeah, I asked her about it and she told me she really hoped he would come to Paris to be with her, but he said, No! Stay here in Chicago! Castor told me she then said, Look, you have nothing here except your work. I have my work and Sartre in Paris, so you come to Paris. And he said that' s the point, either me or Sartre. And she chose you. When I asked her why, since she was really in love with Algren, she said, " Because Sartre doesn't ask me to choose . "

Algren was a friend o fyou r father, wasn't h e ? Not really, j u s t a n acquaintance. I mean, they never saw each other without other people.

But Castor met Aigren at your place, no?

3'

D E C E M B E R 1970

At a sort of get-together with a bunch of leftist politicos_ I remember that Joan Miro was there, and he was a friend and not political, except anti­ Franco, of course. But the others had been brought by Meyer S hapiro, the art historian. He was a sort of Trotskyist, or so my father said, and he came with three or four writers from Partisan Review, which was somewhat Trotskyist then, and Algren was among them. Castor was there because she was stay­ ing with us . By the way, let me tell you a story about Shapiro. When my parents moved to Vermont, to teach at the Putney S choo!, and I was visit­ ing them, Fernando asked me if I would help him take a big canvas that wouldn't fit in the car off its frame, so we could roll it up and bring it to New York for Shapiro. We did, and once in my apartment Fernando had to make some calls, s o I re-stretched it and fixed it to the siding. But I miscalculated and stopped when I saw that two inches would overlap. "Oh, don't worry about it, just tuck it into the side," said Fernando. When Shapiro showed up with a student he stared at it for a while, then turned to his student and asked him: " Can you see why Fernando is a great painter ?" When the student was silent, Shapiro said, "You see those two inches which are now eliminated? That made the painting off balance. Gerassi's genius was to notice that and get rid of them. Now the balance is perfect." H a-ha ha . I love art critics! OK, so Castor was willing to push the concept of contingency a bit, but were you not in love with each other? Sure, but n ot the way the bou rgeois world d efi n es love. She was sleep­ ing with M a he u , but our m i nds were havi ng real i ntercourse. We fel l in love with each oth er's i ntuition , imagi n ation, creativity, perceptions, and eventu­ ally for a w h i l e bod ies as wel l , but j u st like one can not dom i n ate a mind (ex­ cept t h rough terror, of cou rse) , one can n ot dom i n ate taste, d reams, hopes, et cetera. Some thi ngs Castor was better at, some I was. Do you know that I wou l d never al low any writi n g of m i n e to be published, or even made public to a nyone, u ntil Castor approved ? And she was a rough critic_ She made me rewrite my p l a y Nekrassov five ti mes, for exa mple.

Can

I

ask you if it's true that you and Castor stopped having sex from

1 947 ? 1 946, '47, '48, I don't remember, but yes. How did you know?

She told me. Boy, she didn't even write that in her memoi rs.

32

D E C E M B E R ' 970

Well, she did say that you were "not a copulator but rather a mastur­ bator. "

It's true that I prefe r the game, the seduction to the act, or as you put it, "the i n put was not worth the output," correct? S peaki ng of sed uction, are thi ngs OK with Catheri ne? Yeah, just fine.

You know that Castor and I like her a lot. She's really wonderfu l . Anyway, s o Wanda [ Kosakiewicz] Olga [Kosakiewicz] , Michelle [Via n ] , ,

even Sally Shelly were all cont i n gen t affairs?

You know a bout S h elly? I know her personally; we're friends. I 've read some of your letters to her . . .

Oh my god, really? Wow, she kept them al l these years, eh? Well, I ' l l tell you, that was a rea lly wild, and I admit very deep, affair. But still contingent ? Yet you did ask her to marry you, didn't you? OK, I see you know the story. S h e wanted to go back to A merica. That

was the only way I cou l d hold her in Fra nce. But would you really have married her? Ah, who knows. You know how we met? She told me she came to France in 1948 and tried to get a j ob to stay. So she went to the International Tribune, a n d they told her, prove that you can write, go do a few obituaries of well-known people. She forgot all about it un

­

til one day she saw you sitt i n g in a cafe in St Tropez and came up to you and .

said: " Excuse me, Mr. Sartre, I have to write yo ur obituary. " You l aughe d your head off, and invited her to sit down, and off it went.

She was eighteen and stun n i ng. I was forty-something. Ultimately con­ ti ngent, perhaps. But m a rvelous, absol utely marvelous. She ended up working for the United Nations and e ven tu a ll y became head of the law of the sea, or s o mething like that. I see her now and then. I

have copies of all your letters to her. I 'm trying to persuade her to write a book about your affair. But what amazes me is that the great Sartre couldn't hold her, huh ? All men are mortal , Gerassi, you a n d me too . . . Which is why you write ? To cheat death ?

Once one decides to be a writer, one's conception of life, o ne's whole bei ng, changes. The decision i m plies one of two modes of behavior. To me it

33

D E C E M B E R 1 970

demanded both. The fi rst, I ad m it, I toyed with. Give me a small pension, a room in a convent, t h ree meals a day, and I write. That's it. J ust write. The other: travel, experie n ce as many different circumstances as possi ble. Go i nto every world. Go see h ow the pimps l ive i n Constanti n ople. Why Con stanti no­ ple? There are pimps right h ere, around the corner. Beca u se travel , experi· en ces, give a rich ness to the writing. All adventu res help, including sexual ad· ventu res, love, et cetera. They are all the meat of the writer, hence not as im portant in themselves a s the act of writing. Either way, writi ng is a total co m m itment (as is any art) . That's why now I say that I broke with my mother, when she got m a rried, not because I was jealous and fea rful of bei ng un· happy, as was the i nterpretation back then, but becaus e even the act of being jealous, of breaki ng with o n e's mother, is valid to a writer. That's what I would say now if ! wrote the sequel to The Words. Of course a writer does n 't need to actu ally do the thi ngs he d escri bes or go to the places he makes come alive. He

can be sti m u l ated by what he reads and use his im agi n ation. Bru net in

The Roads to Freedom: is h e me or is he [Pa u l] N izan , m y best friend t h en ? Ac­ tual ly, neither. It's fake, right? But I knew enough com m u n ists so that Bru net is real. It's l ike my "true story" when I was eleven. A writer has to choose the false agai n st the true. When you decided to be a writer, you cou l d n 't make that choice becau se you wanted a revol ution, you worked for a revolution. was nothi ng but what I wrote. You had a goal . I was my goa l .

I

Meaning that you were god. Reminds me ofwhen I was fifteen and my best friend asked me why I wanted to write. " Because there is no god," I said. "What does one thin g h ave to do with the other?" he pressed. Because, since there is no god, I answered, life is terribly unjust. So I want to create a world that is j ust. In books , everything ends according to a certain logic, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. So I create a perfect world. I am god. " But if you want to be god," he said, "it means you believe . " And he was right. I mean, not that I believed in god, but that I believed in something above hu­ man-namely j ustice, like a Platonic idea. You were al most there. Chan ge your Platonic idea to freedom and you h ave it. Writing i mplies belief in freedom, total freedom. All arts consist in renderi n g a world i m bued i n freedom, a world that is wanted , mediated, con­ ceived by a conscience, a free conscience.

And terminated, c omplete in itself Absol utely. That's the key. You have it perfectly. Self-contained . But

34

D E C E M B E R '970

when your friend said that it meant that you believed after all, you s hould have answered no, beca use when I write, I create the i m aginary. And the glory is for creating heroes who fight for that justice, which is freedom to you ? But the real hero is the writer, no ? [Andre de] Chenier de­ capitated. [Victor] Hugo exiled to Guernsey. [Emile] Zola. You complain that Charles was a Dreyfusard but never talked to you about it. The man of action who dies a martyr. I sn't martyrdom a religious concept?

Absolutely. There's no doubt that as a kid, seven or eight, m issing fro m m y life was rel igion. S o I created o n e for m e j that was l iteratu re. And t h e mar­ tyrdom ofthat religion was the writer who produces and suffers. All my great literary heroes were miserable, at least in part of thei r l ives, dyi n g u n h a p py, like Chateaubriand, dying i n desperati o n . But the work l ives on. You got a lot of that from Charles, but he was happy, or, let' s say, satisfied with himself, was he not?

I thought so. He had a sort of eq u i l i bri u m that projected, if not happi­ ness, at least contentment. He loved his wife, yet s h e d idn't want to s leep with h i m , except to make ch ildren, fou r of themj wel l , one died, so he slept with his stud ents. He wou ld h ave l i ked a bou rgeois l ife, with a nice bourgeois fami ly. His sons hated him. My mother loved him but suffered from his con­ tempt for all h is grandchildre n , except me. I think he real ly loved me, in his way, or at least he made bel ieve that he did, and I liked it. But u lt i mately, he cou ld not have been a happy man. He was afraid ofdying. But he didn't show it, did he? He pretended to be a sort of god.

And how. You remem ber how I described his great entrance i n the play. Where he played God ?

With h i s long beard and thu nderous voice and his allure; h e was over six feet tal l and q u ite massively b u i lt. Not quite the martyr, huh? How about your father?

Yes, I certa i n ly thought my father was a martyr. Yet in The Words you say, " He loved, he died, a man." Is that enough to define a man?

Yes. [Our weekly conversations and lunches were postponed for two weeks during December 1970 so that Sartre could serve as the "judge" at the trial of those "really responsible" for an accident that took the lives of six coal min­ ers at Lens, a northeastern mining bastion. It was a "people's trial" wherein

35

D E C E M B E R 1 9 70

anyone who had anything to say could testify and Sartre's j ob, until the end, was basically to be simply a coordinator and director, keeping order and making sure everyone had a tu r n . The "trial" took place in the ceremonial ,

hall of the local town hall, which was controlled by the Socialist Party and the socialist mayor. The hall could seat six hundred people, but seven hun­ dred actually crowded in without a problem. When he returned, Sartre ex­ plained.] Fou r workers had been accused of manslaughter as the j u stice depart­ ment tried to n arrow the case to the specific i ncident. We would have none of that. The "prosecution," which was m ade up of m i n ers, engi neers, wives, i n fact a nyone who felt i nvolved, broadened the case to the way the m i ne was ru n , to the secu rity measu res and their cost that the owners installed, to their profits, to the wages m i ners got, i n fact to the whole capitalist m i n i ng i n d us­ try. Everyone, m e i ncl uded, thought that m i ners earned a very good salary. Wrong. We fou n d out that their average pay was $20,000 a year. Doctors testified on the damage that such work caused to the m i ners. Wives testified on the side effects that the m i n ers s uffered at home. Daughters testified that u n less they ra n away fro m home they were stuck as backup labor, serva nts, or cheap labor i n the textile firms nearby. Fi l m m a kers showed up with d ocu­ mentaries. En gi n eers s howed up with blueprints, reports, plans, which were ignored by the owner's engineers. It was like Zola's Germinal all over agai n . At the e n d i t w a s u p t o me t o make a s u m m ary, or a s u m mation ifyou like, and I said what was obvious to all, that the state was gui lty of m u rder for tolerat­ i n g such conditions, and specifically the owners of M i ne N o. 6 (where the deaths occu rred ) , the general d irector, the engi n eers who obeyed the bosses by short-changi n g secu rity. The court-and me in my summation-dem an ded that the m i n ers who had been careless and were accused of manslaughter be freed and that the owners be a rrested. Because most of the press attended the "tria l " fro m begi n n i ng to end a n d gave it a lot of covera ge, the m i n ers were indeed freed. But, as you expect, the owners were not arrested. Sti l l , per­ h a ps because the left-wing press published fi rst-person life histories of the m i ners, wives, and daughters, the owners did pay com pensation to the fam i­ lies of the dead . It was the best possible result we could have hoped for i n a capitalist state, a nd it s h owed to a l l that a really fai r trial must include a l l the c i rcu mstances, the atmosphere, the h i story of a n "i ncident," and not declare it, as our courts do now, " i rrelevant."

So too in the United States , where everything seems to be irrelevant

D E C E M B E R ' 970

when a poor person is o n trial. Let me tell you about o n e case I ' m familiar with. It took place a few of years ago in New York. A black woman was living without a husband or partner in Harlem with two children, one five, one eight . On the day in question, a very hot July Monday, her five-year-old was very sick, and couldn't go to school. So she made lunch for him and asked the eight-year. old to come home during his lunch break and bri ng him some m ilk. Then she rushed off to work; she was in a secretarial pool for a Wall Street firm. The subway she was riding broke down, as they often do in New York, and she ended up thirty-five minutes late. When she explained to her boss , he quipped: " You people are always stuck in the subway. " She had rushed so much that when it came time for lunch she realized she had grabbed a token on her way out but forgot her wallet and had no money. She asked her co·workers for a loan of a couple of dollars, but none would help, one saying: " You people never pay your debts . " So she didn't have lunch. When it came time to go home she had to beg in the street for a token. Once home, she found her five-year-old crying by an open window. Her eight-year­ old had played with his classmates and fo rgotten to come home with the milk. As the five - year - old cried louder and louder, she suddenly whipped around and hit him with the back of her hand. He lost his balance and fell out the open window, on the fifth fioor, and died. She was charged with m a n slaughte r,

and whe n the court- appointed lawyer tried to tell the story of

her day and asked the judge, David

L.

B a z elon, who went on to become an

appeals court judge with a very socially minded agenda, perhaps because of this case, if he could subpoena her office mates , and the prosecutor objected as "irrelevant," Bazelon agreed. She was convicted and given five years. Her eight-year- old was put into an orphanage where he was beaten and raped by older boys and eventually escaped, became a dru g runner, and was shot by police in a raid. The woman then ripped her clothes into a noose and hanged herself.

Wow, that's some story. But that's capitalist justice: never consider the circu mstances. Of the poor. When the rich are tried for stealing, they come into court all dressed up, with their wives and children in the audience, and beg for mercy on the ground that their children will be this or that, and they promise to pay back the money. The poor, who can't afford fancy suits and ties, and whose families can't take time off from work to waste a whole day in court, get j ail time. The statistics are that for every dollar stolen by the po or without

37

D E CE M B E R 1 970

the use o f violence, the rich steal eighty-seven dollars , and for every year that the poor spend in j a il for a nonviolent crime, the rich spend seventeen minutes. Do the American people know this? Does the press say anything about it? There's a great book that I used in class called The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Prison, but no, most people don't know because the mainstream media doesn't want to tell them. They want everyone to think that the real danger in the streets is the black unemployed youth, which, as [ Jeffrey H . ] Reiman, the book's autho r, pointed out, is just not true. But to get back to your definition of what is a man, insofar as you said about your father "he

suffered, he loved, he was a man , " did you feel that when you learned about his death ? When did you learn the details of your father's life and death ? I 'm not s u re. There was a time, I guess I was seven or eight, as I wrote i n The Words, when I was terrified of dying. Was it because it was then that I learned about my father's death? N either my mother nor my grandparents ever talked about it, o r very l ittle. I learned , then or later, that he was born very far from ocean s, i n Le Perigord, in the center ofFrance, a pl ace of small moun­ tai ns and rivers, but n ot even lakes. How did he become fascinated with the sea? H e worked very ha rd to pass all the exams, Polytec h n ique and l' Ecole N avale, became a petty officer of some kind, went to sea and got the i l l ness that killed h i m when I wasn 't even one year old. I can 't tel l you how it affected me, though I often brooded about it. The fact is that he had a goal and died becau se of it. Was he a martyr? Once I becam e convi nced that the o n ly real val u e was l iteratu re, or th e arts i n general, was it because I bel ieved that all artists were m a rtyrs, and my father's death made m e seek martyrdom? Who knows ? And was that martyrdom, wh ich was defi n ed by sufferi ng, solitude, non-recognition, ostracis m , and a painfu l death, because the martyr fought /

the good fight? But Zevaco did not suffer . . . Wait! At eight a n d n i ne, when I was writing my " novels" at a ferocious speed (copyi n g a lot of it from the episodes that were serialized i n the n ews­ papers, granted ) , it wasn't Zevaco who was my martyr. Actually, I don't th i n k I had a martyrdom complex yet. I n any case, i t was Zevaco's hero, Pardaillan, that flam boya nt swas h buckler who fought the bad guys alone. And was never

recom pensed for it. Pardaillan fought cops, armies, the government, as well as muggers

and gangsters . Was that the root of your anarchistic temperament?

D E C E M B E R ' 970

Zevaco was certa i n ly a n a narchi st. But what came fi rst, m y aloneness, fighting my classmates for recognition-that was after we m oved to La Rochelle-or my aloneness of not having a father? Who knows. But I cer· tainly thought of my father; once I knew of his circum stances a nd h i s d eath, as a martyr. I know that for years my fantasies i ncluded me defend in g a poor girl sought by the nasty tutor, or the m issionary, non·religious, m ind you, who is sent to America in the 1 860s to pacify the i m perialists-of cou rse, I didn't use those words yet, but I meant the wh ites who were violent against the non· wh ites-and the good guy who keeps getti ng beaten u p h i mself. N o n e of my fantasies had an end, by the way. I always thought I wou ld have to end them in a "novel ." And gain immortality on the shelf.

Exactly. That's what made a book i m mortal: the s h elf, the book on my grandfather's shelf. That's where I saw the Chateau briands and the Victor Hugos. Chateau briand was a perfect example for me ofth e ma rtyr, disgraced, so sick he had to be tra n sported in a chair, sufferi ng, and there, on the shelf, were his books. As for H u go, he had a great i nfl uence on m e. By today's terms, a real anti.fascist, exi le, proscribed, but earn ing a lot of money in the process, adored by his wonderful J u liette with whom he stayed u ntil she died, but always u nfaithfu l , sleepi ng with the wives of others, with maids , even peeking through the keyhole at the you n g ones. Doesn't sound like much of a martyr to me.

Ha, wel l, no, right, but still, always in trou ble, saved by the revolution of '48, then by N apoleon I l l's cou p d'etat, then ignored, then u p o n the s helf. I n a way, like Charles. I was sorry for h i m that h e didn't write. But, you k now, he was handsome, big, admired by a lot of the female students at the school of Hautes Etudes, and by the men too, all of which he hid from me, and I think from him self as well, his m i serable existence, a professor, which is what I was to become, which I considered a misery, a n d when I fi n ally became o n e at Le Havre, was indeed a misery. Why? I don't get it. Charles loved teaching. He s crewed half his stu· dents, he was admired by the guys . And so were you at Le Havre. Your pen­ chant for violence got you to box with your students, and despite your size you apparently held your own quite well. And despite your eye s , you seduced the female students you wanted. Where's the misery in all that?

I wanted to be a great writer, like Hugo, on the shelf, and I thi n k that se· cretly so did Charles.

39

D E CE M B E R 1

Would you characterize it as an obsession? I think so. But n ot the k i n d of obsession that s h ri n ks tal k about. The k i nd that says s i m ply, n o matter what, I will write. Like you r father: no matter what, I will pai nt, which is why we were so close, I thi n k. We had that com­ m itme nt i n com mo n . And you had it when I ca m e to America i n tnember. You r father, h owever, wou l d n 't take it seriously, then.

' 945,

I re­

I was fourteen. So ? I remember you h ad written a cou ple of short stories you wanted me to read , a nd Fernando stopped you , sayi ng stop botheri ng him, remember? Sure. He did that when [Maurice] Merleau- Ponty visited us too. And do you rem e m ber that argu ment about ea rning money, when Fer­ ,n a n d o yelled at Stepha: " I don't care if you starve. I don't care ifTito starves,

fi rst I pai nt." Stepha claims that I made that up when I broke with my father at six-

teen. I was there. You didn't make it up. And do you rem e m ber that letter when he went to Spa i n ? of course. [This is the letter mentioned earlier in which Fernando

wrote that she should forget him because he had killed a man in battle.] Stepha kept that letter. She cherished it. I 've seen it many times. Why did that letter so upset you ? You h ave to u n derstand o u r obsession, m i ne and what was, I thought, your father's, a n d it certa i nly was when he i nsi sted that "first I paint." We ' were com m itted to o u r art. To m e that meant that it came before politics. Or, to put it i n context, politics was part of o ur art-that is, we wou ld i ncorporate it . . .

I n a painting? In wh at the painti n g could mean i n a deeper sense, freedo m . That's the d ifference between les pompiers [l iteral ly, "firemen," a French slang term for t hose in the arts who i n effect work for the establish ment by making art that i s expected) a n d the real artists. G e n u i n e a rt is an expression of freedom. W h at the bourgeois critics cal l the soul. What H eidegger cal l ed the entrails. That's certai n l y h ow I would have defi ned my writi ng and you r father's art, w h ich is certa i n l y one reason we were so close.

Indeed, you never really go out of your way to meet someone if it means interrupting your schedule, but you did for Fernando, you rushed down to Biarritz when he came across from Spain for a break in 1 937.

DECEM B E R ' 9 7 0

That's right, a s does M athieu t o s e e Gomez i n The Roads. I w a nted to show the gen u i ne bond that existed .

But you were not only writing literature then. You had finished Nau­ sea, yes , but you were polishing up your theory of emotions and working on your theory of p ercepti o n You obviously thought of yourself by then as a .

phil o s o p h er Two obsessions ? .

Yes, but i nto one. That is, I always considered my novels a n d l ater my plays as a personal ized expression of my philosophy. Or my p h i losophy as a way to work out in theory what my novels and plays establis hed i n i n d ividual situ ations. In other words, I saw no real disti nction.

And you couldn't fit the political into that? Not then, I guess. It took the war for me to understand that it's a l l one. M y captivity [i n a German prisoner-of-war camp for n i n e month s begi n ning in 1 940). As I wrote, to have to l ive cheek by jowP [with the other prisoners in the camp), I became aware that the political is personal and the personal i s pol it­ ical, as Che G u evara once said.

But in 1 9 37 you were still totally divorced from politics . What attracted you to Fernando was your old bond, not his martyrdom, in the sense that you had formulated in La Rochelle about every artist. I wasn't totally divorced, but . . . Hey, while Fernando was fighting the fascists in Spain, you and Castor went off to fascist Italy, and you wrote not about Mussolini but about the succulent mortadella that you ate. Boy, it's a good thing most jou rnalists who do i nterviews are not so prickly or else don't read. But it's true, the bond I had with you r father was ba­ sical ly through our obsession, and that letter he wrote to Stepha p roves it. He was the artist at war. No nice, pleasant pacifist farmer wou ld h ave written it. Only an arti st who felt he had sacrificed h i s freedom, that is, the freedom h e recogn izes i n everyone else, a n act t h a t breaks his solitude. Are you saying that all artists are condemned to be alone? Not alone, in sol itude. O n ly an artist u nderstands that he or s he i s con­ dem ned to be free, and understands that it means be condem n ed to live in solitude. By fi ghti ng for a ca use that is tem porary-because, l et's face it, fascism is here now, and m aybe for another two h u ndred years, but it's a phase-an artist gives up h i s solitude to join with others, and thereby vio­ lates the others' freedom, wh ich h ence violates his own, his i m mo rtality not as a human bei ng but as art, which is absolute freedom.

DEC E M B E R 1 970

Aren't we back to religion now ? Come o n . You want to accuse me of mysticism, O K. But rel igion? There's n o p rayi ng, no god , no salvation i n bei ng free, it's the state of man, hence a u n iversal.

Aha , we're going back to the fight between universals and particulars ? You want to be Occam? I 'll be Abelard. Be serious. I am s i m ply sayi n g that man is free. To deny it is bad faith.

OK. Tell me, why does being free mean being alone? Ah, sorry-to be in solitud e ? Because freedom is totalizing. So your excuse for not being political, in Berlin in I933 or when your best friend goes off to fight fascists in Spain, is because as a free entity, which is eternal, you cannot be brought down to the particular, which is tem­ porary ? That's one way of putti ng it. M ore accu rately wou ld be to say fascism, wars, are temporary i n cidents, whi l e the act of writi ng i s u niversal, i n the sense that it den ies any other power. The writer denies the existence of gods, even if he claims to write for god-or better, that h i s hand is guided by god. I n practical terms then, he who is not part of your writing world is in­ significant, correct? That must greatly limit your social world, no ? That's right. And it's true. You know that Castor and I rarely go outside o u r circle a nymore.

What Castor calls "the family" ? Act u a l ly, it's been l i ke that for a long time now. It started with [ J acques· Lau rent] Bost a n d Olga, when he was my student a n d � he was Castor's) We -"! wou l d see one, then the other, each of u s separately- well, Bost someti mes we see together. Why? B ecause they argue or talk too much to each other, what? No, no. It's j u st that, though they are excellent friends, when they're to· gether, they present a d ifferent world. We want to stick to o u r established world . And what i s that? The world of o u r writi ng. And together they impose on you their own world, which clashes with yours? Forgive me Sartre , but that sounds selfish. M aybe. But when we go out of o u r writi ng, wel l, you' l l have to ask Cas·

42

DECEMBER ' 970

tor i fs h e feels the same, but when I do, i t i s s i m ply to b e n i ce o r t o b e h e l pfu l , wh atever, it's . . .

Not the real you? It is, but not the me-writer. Anyway, in order not to lose that too m uc h , l i m it my visits, I mean

I

I see my people, my fa m i l y if you wish, sepa rately. Like

I see Wan d a once a week, the same day at the same ti m e.4 Arlette [El kaIm­ Sartre] twice a week,s M ichelle two morn i n gs a week,6 and Castor fou r eve­ n i ngs. There was a t i me when we a l l ied a cafe existence; that was beca use d u ri n g the war, none of our apartments had h eat, but the cafes did. And sometimes we sti l l m eet in cafes, but now it's political. Besi d es, all those women now own their apartments-well , Olga and Bost together, but M i­ chelle a n d Wa nda alone, and of course Castor.

I 've seen them all now, and Castor wins , by far. Yes, hers i s lovely, and very conve n ient for me.7

But the Temps Modemes staff meetings are still in cafes, no? No, usually at the office.

But I remember, when I came after the war, actually in I954, we all met at the Flagstaff, which was on rue Montparnasse, just off the boulevard. That was beca use everyon e wa nted to m eet you aga i n , "Ie p etit Tito," because everyon e remem bered you as a six-year-old.

But I remember, there was a lot of political talk. Someone would say did you see Mauriac's attack in Le Figaro or Rousset's in Ce Soir? Castor would say, We should answer it. Then you would ask [Francis] Jeanson [a l ongtime aide to Sartre and an editor at Les Temps Modemes] or whoever to do it. And so on. Of cou rse, the fa mily was there, and the fa m i ly was now a political en­ tity, assembled to our m agazi ne, but normall y we met at the office. I t was be­ cause of you th at we m et at a cafe. You r p a rents, of cou rse, were or h ad been and wou l d h ave been fa m i ly. And you got back in then. Do you k n ow w h y ?

I haven't the foggiest. Because of you r criticism of me. Yep . Yo u don't remem ber. [ J e a n] Poul­ lion or Bost or some other

Temps Modernes

ed itor, I forget who, a s ked you

what you were doing, and you said you were writing a d i ssertation for a P h . D. on my p h i losop hy, or some part ofit. Somebody asked you to exp l a i n it m o re, and it became clear that you were t h i n k i n g about Someone interru pted you and told you that

43

Being and Nothingness.

I was now tryi ng to recon ci le

D E C E M B E R ' 970

M arx i s m with Existentialis m . You asked me to expl a i n . Question after q u es­ tion.

That I remember.

I

was stunned by how carefully and fully you were

willing to explain stuff to a twenty-three-year-old punk like me. Your q u estions were exce l l e nt. I felt I had to convi n ce you . And I d i d n 't.

Wha t happened ? To the a mazement o f a l l assem bled, you ended u p sayi ng: I m possi ble, you ca n not l i n k M a rx i s m with t h e Existential ist n otion of project, a n d went o n t o exp l a i n why. You were right. I n ever did.

Yeah. I remember now. but is that how I ended up part of the family? Wel l , th at, a n d yo u r descripti o n of America, the econ o m i c reason s for the M a rs h a l l plan a n d the Cold War, which we a l l apprec i ated very m uc h , a n d w h i c h i s w h y I always asked y o u after that to fi l l m e i n o n what was happe n i n g i n Am erica. I told Castor t h at I trusted yo u r explanation- more t h a n a n yo n e else's.

Nineteen fifty-four. That was the year of all the breakups. politically I mean? Yes. I h a d written

The Communists and Peace a n d com e to the concl u ·

sion that if there were t o be a T h i rd World War i t was becau s e America wou l d start it. I d id n 't l i ke the Soviet system o n e b it, b u t I knew R u ssia wou ld n ever start World War I I I . I t cou l d n 't m i l itari ly or n uclearly or eco n o m i cal ly. So I said th at we h ave to back the com m u n ists. M erleau agreed but cou l d n ot s u p port either the U S S R or the com m u n ists i n p u b l ic, a n d he left

Les Temps Modernes.

It was h a rd ti mes for us the n , but I th i n k we were right. America was u s i n g the Cold War as a n excuse for its ru l i ng class to m a ke fort u nes off the arms race, and R u s s i a had n o c h o i ce but to go a l ong.

But it went too far. so you switched in 1 9 5 6 and wrote The Ghost of Stalin after the U S S R invaded Czechoslovakia. It was n 't a switc h . I was always more of an a n arch i st t h a n a M a rxist, but i n the context Of1 954, with the U n ited States i m posing its w i l l on E u rope with its p h o n y N ATO, w h ich was and sti l l is a way of d o m i n ati ng E u rope, and G e n ­ eral [M att h ew B.] R idgway who w as tel l i ng the Fren c h , a n d a l l European s , h o w t o b e h ave, a n d its b a s e s i n every cou ntry, w e had t o t a k e a sta nd aga i n st a l l that. But when Soviet ta n ks actually rol l ed i nto Prague a n d good lefti sts we re k i l led because they w a nted to be i n d ependent of R u ssia, and everyone else, we h a d to d enou nce the i nvas ion .

44

D EC E M B E R ' 970

But i t didn't reconcile you with Merleau ? Castor never apologized for her attack on him, did she? N o, but h e understood that it was n ot a person a l attack. We remai n ed respectful of each other u ntil the en d .

He had always been much less of an anarchist than you, right? You h ave to u nd ersta nd that my a narch is m, as you cal l it, was real l y a n expression o f freedo m , the freedom I described earlier, t h e freedo m of a writer.

And which in fact was engendered by your solitude, by your ostracism in La Rochelle. Perhaps. But when I came back to Paris to go to Henri IV and then Lou is- Ie-G ra n d , I was a lso reading bou rgeois literat u re. Wel l , all sorts. I kept read ing Zevaco and Ponson du Terrai l , both good a n a rc h i sts, but a lso Abel Hermant, w h o h ated the J acobi ns, and J u les Romains. But I a l so read and reread

Les Miserobles, a really great book, beautifu l ly written. And I also started Horotius Codes, some Rom a n d ude who defended a bridge aga i n st a whole army, a n d another was Mucius Scell% ,

writi ng operettas. One was cal l ed

about a warrior who wa nted to talk to Caesar a n d when he was tu rned down said he wou ld hold his h a n d over a fi re u ntil Caesar agreed .

Whatever you wrote, it always had a violent aspect? Did any of that early writing, or your so-called novels , survive? N o. Too bad. But it's true, I was always attracted to violence . When I was eight or n i ne, beca use I was s m a l l or wanted attention, w h o knows_ But I fought i n the streets l i k e the rest ofthe kids. At H e n ri IV or Lou i s-Ie-Grand we didn't fight i n the streets, but I wrote a bout violence. At l' Ecole N ormale, o u r violence w a s political i n the sense t h a t N izan, who was very m uc h l i ke m e though not s m a l l , a n d I wou l d g o t o t h e roof a n d fi l l con d o m s with u ri n e and drop t h e m on t h e right-wingers below, those w e knew were i n favor of France's colonial policy, especi a l l y in I ndoch i n a i n t hose days. A n d in Le Havre, I learned how to box. I had a wei rd colleague t here, a professor l i ke me, who is now teaching i n M a dagascar, w h o was so good at it t h at he h ad been chosen to be one of Fra n ce's box i n g reps at the Olympics, but he got sick j u st before. He taught me how to box, a n d I got to be pretty good .

So I heard from one of your students, a big guy too, whom you floored. Did the fact that you were ugly somehow exacerbate your sense of violence ?

A bit, I ' m sure. B u t n ot i n t h e actual u s e o f violence_ I t certai n ly m a d e

45

DECEM B E R 1 970

m e aware that i t was a h u rd l e I h a d t o overcome. And I t h i n k i t helped i n o n e w a y at least, beca use I n oticed that t h o s e who thought o f them selves a s h a n d s o m e a lways became satisfied w i t h the world. At best reformists. For m e with wome n , i t meant I h a d t o be more i nvolved, I mea n I had t o tal k well , b e a g o o d intellectual, s o t o s peak, a n d be c h a r m i ng. B u t that created good a n d bad c onsequ e n ces. The good w a s that when I s u cceeded, the en s u i n g rela­ t i o n s h i p was n ever s u perfici a l . It was s o l i d . The bad was that to break such a relatio n s h i p took m u ch m o re t i m e a n d effo rt, u n less I wanted to be j ust a selfi s h cad , w h i c h I did n 't. I rem e m ber with Si mone Jolivet, you know, the "Cam i l le" we tal ked a bo u t w h o beca me D u l l i n ' s mistress, she o n ce said, l i ke t h at, n ot to wou nd me, b u t i n passi ng, that I was ugly. I i m med i ately asked h ow that affected her, and s h e res pon ded t h at it made me tal k better and s h e l i ked that.

Do you think that the combination, your eyes , -your ugliness, your smallness, contributed to your revolts ? Hold o n ! I h ave never revolted . Aga i n st a nyone! I went from wh atever I was to a revolutionary after l o n g, d i s c i p l i ned meditations on t h e pri nci ples es­ poused by the bou rgeoisie. H u m a n i st pri nciples.

And history ? The French Revolution ? N o , h i story bored me. A n d I now k n ow why: h istory was then taught by positivists. They n ever tried to exp l a i n , to fi n d the reason s . T h ey s i m p ly de­ scri bed . And if I or anyo n e as ked why, they wou ld a nswer that n o one wou ld ever know the causes. B u t I k n ew that there were reaso n s .

Les Miserables

made that very clear. A n d then I started readi n g [Fyodor] Dostoyevsky a n d [leo] Tol stoy, a n d I began to u n derstan d the Russian Revo l ution th ro ugh their c h aracters a n d t h e conditi o n s a n d situatio n s i n which they l ived . I becam e a revo l uti o n ary because I u n derstood that it is not someone aga i n st whom we m u st rebel, but a state, a syste m , which m u st be overth row n .

January 1 971

G E RA S S I:

You told m e a t lunch last week that all your judgments

were always wrong. Why? S A R T R E : H ey, not all. I mentioned my mother. But partly becau se s h e

was s u c h a prude. S h e wou ld never ta l k a bout anything that h a d sexual co n ­ notations. So I s o rt o f dismi ssed her. Yet, y o u know,

I cou l d d i s c u s s Dos­

toyevsky with her. I did when I was twenty. Before, I thought she was l i ke my sister-remember that before s h e remarried, we shared a room . S h e wou ld even read H eidegger, or at least one th i ng, "What I s M eta p hysics?" She a l so got hold of Bifur, the review that N izan was ed iti ng when we were sti l l stu­ dents and in which

I pu blished "The Legen d ofTruth."

Was that your first publication? Actually, no.

I had written a s m a l l piece, i n significant, for s o m e l aw

journal or review about rights.

But about yo ur mother, you misjudged her because she

was

so puri­

tan, correct? What about the kids, especially at La Rochelle ? Fortunately my mother l ived long enough so that I ended u p havi n g some pretty good ta lks with her. S h e read everyt h i n g I wrote, even

Nothingness, a n d u nderstood it-wel l , more or less. What I

Being and

misjudged about

my class m ates i n La Rochelle i s more to you r poi nt, as I d etect it. Yes, true, whenever they gathered after class , I sort of roa m ed a rou nd them, a bit off,

47

JAN UARY 1 971

saying noth i n g, u nt i l fi na l ly they s a i d , Wel l , are you goi n g t o joi n u s ? I always d id that, a n d you k now, they a lways ended up sayi ng com e o n . I never felt wanted enough to j u st a p p roach t h e gro u p natural ly. I had to be as ked .

Did you feel inferior or just not liked? N ever i nferior. O n the co ntra ry, I always felt s u perior but never s h owed it beca u se, o n e m i ght say t h a n k god , I was a lways con sciou s of bei n g ugly a n d s m a l l . I wanted t o be wanted .

But so far no class consciousness ? Wel l , it bega n t h e n , i n L a Roc h e l le, because t h e re w a s always s o m e k i n d o f protest or stri ke o r j o b action at my stepfather's factory. Apparently- I d o n 't remem ber- I u sed to tel l my class m ates t h at my stepfather's workers were exploited , a n d it got back to h i m , and we did h ave some d i s c u s s i o n a bout t h at. Argu ments , I ' m tol d . B u t he n ever ra i sed h is voice. H e w a s very gentle a n d pol ite. A good bou rgeo i s . But he joki n gly said o n e day t h at I was the secretary gen eral of the Com m u n i st Pa rty, and t h at had the effect of mak­ i n g m e want to learn w h at the com m u n ists were for, w h at was their progra m . B u t t h at w a s l ater. W e got a l o n g s u perficially very wel l . H e tried to m a i n ta i n the good bou rgeoi s "fa m i ly l ife." O n S u n d ays a n d T h u rsdays w e u sed t o go to the theater in the afte r n o o n . I We saw co m i c operas. T h at was my c u l t u re. Or stro l l along Le M a i l , t h at was t h e m a i n d rag, along the sea, fu l l offlowers and merc h a nts. M a n cy's factory h a d a car a n d d river at his d i s posa l , so he wou l d p a c k u s i n i t a n d order l o n g d rives i nto the cou nJryside. I fou n d t h at bori ng, but never co m pl a i n e d . I real ized a l ready then t h �t I was a city s p i rit. Li ke you , as you told m e , n at u re n ever moved you very m u c h .

Don't forget I left home when I was sixteen, and never had enough money except to hang out with the poor kids on the stoop of our buildings. I think I became a city slicker out of political commitment. For me, I t h i n k it was the reverse. But d o n 't forget we were at war. The n ati o n co mes fi rst. So a l l u n ited . B ut after the war, i n Pari s , a lot of my class­ m ates belo n ged to the SFIO [th e Social ist Party] a n d tried to get m e to joi n . B ut y o u k now, t o tel l y o u t h e truth, I h a d a certa i n esthet i c d i s d a i n for t h e i r pa rty. T h e S F I O was t h e big party at the time. T h ere were n o com m u n i sts i n my c i rcle, at least t h at I k new. U nt i l N izan joi n ed the C P [Co m m u n i st Pa rty] a n d tried to convi n ce me to fol l ow s u it. At H e n ri I V a n d Lo u i s - Ie - G ra n d the k i d s were ro u g h a n d to u gh. T h e i r fath ers were at t h e fro nt and their mothers h a d to work, so there was no one to d i sci p l i n e t h e m , a n d t h ey n ever l i sten ed to t h e i r mother w h e n s h e got home.

J A N UARY 1 971

Maney never faeed the draft? H e was too old, a l most fifty in 1 91 4- let's see, forty-s ix. Besides , he was very u sefu l to the war effort. H e had grad uated from Polytec h n i que as a naval e n g i n eer, then went to work for Delau nay- Bellevil le, which was m a k i n g cars a n d trucks, t h e n I th i n k ta n ks . W h e n t h e o l d m a n d i ed and h i s son took over, a da ndy w h o j u st wasted the factory's reso u rces to p arty, M a n cy was sent to La Rochelle to save the boat-b u i l d i n g part of the factory, but d i d n 't, a n d after I went back to Paris, he switched to some outfit in Sai nt- Etie n n e, and eventually ended up at l' El ec­ tricite de Fran ce in Paris. He took good care of my mother, and left her e n o u g h money so she could l ive fa i rly comfortably u nti l h e r death, th ree years ago. Also he figu red that I wou l d be able to take care of her ifhe d ied early, s i n ce by then I was a professor. And I d i d , as you kn ow, for the next twenty-two years after he d ied. But in 1 91 8, I did not return to l ive with h i m and my m other. I n fact, I was n 't with my gra n dfather either; I had becom e a boarder at H e n ri I V where

I fou n d my oid buddy N iza n , a n d o u r fri endship beca m e i nt�nsely

close. H e was also a boarder, sem i -boarder. I wou ld go home Wed n esday and Saturday n ights, fi rst with my gra n dparents, then after M a n cy a nd my mother retu rned to Paris, with them. The boarders, both in premiere and in p h i lo, slept i n a l o n g dorm itory roo m . N izan and I were next to each other, way at t h e e n d . And though w e both stud i ed h a rd , w e a l s o p layed hard. I was e lected "S.O.," S atyre Officiel, w h i c h meant that I was top dog in i n s u lts , tricks, et cetera, but not enough to stop me from getti ng fi rst prize in excel l e n ce i n both classes. But I was sti l l a novice w h e n it came ti me to read good l iterat u re. N izan and some other adva n ced students were readi n g [ J ean] G i ra udoux, the Surreal i sts, even some w riters I never heard of, l i ke Valery Larba u d , w h i l e I was sti l l stuck on bou rgeoi s writers , l i ke Pierre Loti. N izan made me read G i ­ raudoux, [ J oseph] Con rad, then h e i n s i sted that w e read [ M a rcel] Pro u st to­ gether, w h i c h we d i d . He i nterpreted, I real ized m u c h l ater, the s i g n ifica n ce of Dostoyevsky, of F l a u bert, of Prou st, m u c h better than I d i d . We a l s o went o n long wal ks, o n Th ursdays a n d S u ndays , I mean fro m t h e Latin Quarter to Montma rtre, c l i m bing La Butte, d i scoveri ng every nook and cra n n y of Paris.

I

loved it and I l oved Paris. It became my city, the p l ace where I wa n ted to l ive forever-th at is u ntil the Germans rui ned it a l l . Paris u nder the occu pation changed rad ically. The Germans took over the fa ncy h otel s and h o u ses, draped the d i sgusting swastika over the scu l ptured outer wal l s , p l aced barri­ cades i n the center of our rom antic p lazas. I never com p letely recovered , i n

49

JAN UARY ' 97'

t h e sense that I then felt, after the Liberation, that I cou l d live i n any city, Paris n o longer bei ng the one.

Were you engaged politically back then, with Nizan? N o, I was n 't at his level in pol itics either. H e was very political. Fi rst on the extreme right, in Actio n Franc;:aise. I t h i n k because in the s u m mer before I retu rned he h a d been the tutor to the sons of some cou nt, and with the sons he had gone a rou n d pasti ng posters demanding a revolution of sorts. It was t h at, the revol ution, which attracted him. He was disgusted with the political state of Fra nce and wanted a rad ical overh a u l . That lasted a year. Then he con­ verted to Protestantism because his mother was very Catholic, but that didn't l a st either."

Did you two stay together all the way through Normale ? Yes and n o . When I switched to Lou is-Ie-G rand for khagne, he stayed at H enri IV as fu l l boarder. H i s father, a civi l engi neer, was named some ki nd of boss for the French N ational Railway, at Strasbou rg, so the fam i ly moved but wanted N izan to fi n ish at a good Iycee.

What did you talk about on your long walks -never politics? No. M ostly a bout Paris. When we went up to the Sacre-Coeu r and tried to figu re out al l the i m portant s pots below. We also tal ked a bout literature and p h i losophy. In l it, we tal ked as if the ch aracters i n Proust were alive. You k now, l i ke, So what happened to Verd u rai n , to �wa n n ? Stuff l i ke that. And i n p h i l osophy w e tried t o concoct a very strict rati o nalism, especially after 1 923 when Castor joined us.

But never politics, huh ? Yet Nizan must have been ruminating deeply during this time, before he joined the C P , no? Or had he already joined its youth group ? I can't rem e m ber exactly. He was very tight-lipped about his search then . Very secretive. And what was this rationalism you two concocted? We th ree, because Castor was part of our d iscussions then. So it was in 1 9 2 9 ? Let's see . . . I n 1 928, I fa i led m y agregation, yes , s o i t was in ' 929, the same year that Castor and I passed. And N izan, if I rem e m ber correctly, we started talking a bout a very strict ration alism, that is, one that said a cat is a cat, period, right, i n opposition to what was then prevalent, which was to go beyon d the given , l i ke some fash ionable author used to write " it was more th a n love," nonsense, love is love, we said, period. We rejected all idealisms.

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JAN U ARY 1 971

We were very strict Cartesians. Like he had said, " I think, therefore I a m." S i m· pie truths.

How did you and especially Nizan, who was already obsessed with the social, fail to see the idealism in [Rene] Descarte s ? What ideal ism?

The tabula rasa, that is, going from a clean slate to the cogito, because in order to say I think therefore I am, one needs to understand, to conceive what is meant by that connective "therefore , " which demands years of expe· rience. When one comes to that table capable of making that connection, one brings to the table a whole pile oflife suitcases, hence the table is never clean. Certa i n ly Descartes was no dialectician . But no one was yet. H e offered us a respectable weapon with which to com bat the idealists.

I s that when you started your little book of selected texts by Descarte s ? Yes, b u t I didn't p ublish i t u ntil ' 939. To e a r n money, t h e n w e d i d tra ns­ lations. [Karl] Jaspers ? Right. No, there was a guy at N o rmale n amed Kastler, a n Alsati a n who spoke perfect German but sort of fu ndamental French. So he tra nslated-it was Jaspers's Treatise on Psychopathology-and N iza n and I put it i nto good French.

Were you influenced by Jaspers ? Not at all. Well, I d i d retai n one thing- s peaki ng of d ialectics- h i s d is­ tinction between i ntel lection and com prehension. The former i s l i ke a m athe­ matical form u la, there, accepted. While com prehension is an act, a d i a lectical movement of thought. Yes, that came from J aspers, not H usserl or Heideg­ ger, neither of whom deal with it. It ended u p bei ng the basis of my Critique of

Dialectical Reason. And I started broodi n g about such concepts the n , i n '28_ In fact, I began to write it. You should ask Castor to show you that early work, which I never published. It was in three parts, the legend oftruth, the legen d ofthe probable, a n d t h e legend ofa m a n alone. I never fi n is hed t h e th i rd) T h e fi rst was basically t h e scientific, t h e evident, a bsol ute certitude. T h e p robable was a sort of expose oftruth accord i n g to the elites, a n attack on the ph i loso­ phy that was then cu rrently taught i n schools , that of [leon] Bru nsc hvicg [a then fashionable hack p h i losopher] especial ly. The t h ird is what i nterested me the most, the solita ry i ndividual who was n ot i nfluenced by either the fi rst or the second, who saw the scientific as work carried out in com mo n , with

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JAN UARY 1 971

others, and the probable as t h e truth oft h e com mon. T h e sol itary truth was to be that of the one who emerged fro m the mass, from the com mon, and faced a world, the give n , with no escapes, no help, a n d no expla nations. I was also worki ng out my concept of conti ngency, which then a ppeared i n Nausea.

Was your solitary man a bit like [ Friedrich] Nietzsche's Zarathustra ? N o, not i n the sense that he was a su perior m a n. He was l i ke Roquentin in Nausea, a prod u ct n ot of something mystical , but of the social contradic· tio n s of h i s world. We were all tryi ng to devise a code of con d u ct then, an eth· ical norm for th at worl d , perhaps even a n actual eth ics. And you've always stuck to that, trying to work out an existential ethics ? And I 've always failed. Back then I thi n k I was mostly i nfl uenced, or rather mes merized , by N izan and his crises. You know, he'd go off someti mes

for days at a ti me, wanderi ng the streets, befriending_strangers and talking to them l i ke he never revealed h i m self to us, terrorized by the idea of death. Then, as you k now, he went offto Aden as a tutor and spent a whole year, writ· i ng th at great l ittle book, Aden, Arabie, a nd eventually movi ng more and more i nto social engagement u ntil he fi n ally beca m e a com m u n i st. I con sidered that a form of i nfidelity to our frien d sh i p . But I conti n ued to read all the books he recom men ded, a n d then, of cou rse, as he made h i s choice, we started read i n g M a rx together. But as you know, as I said i n Questions of Method, I d i d n 't really u n dersta n d M a rx. I mean, Marx's language is easy, but

I

was

m uch too m u c h entangled in a bou rgeois esth etic to fath o m the meaning of h i s confrontations. One m u st sm a sh stuff in one's head to real ly u nderstand the depth of the class struggle. I m u st say that I really bega n to u nderstand M a rx o n ly after the war, o r in the war. Class struggle is usually j u st a term to anyone n ot i n it, i n the so u p itself, so to speak. N izan u nderstood it d u ring his tri p to A d e n . Si nce I fl u n ked th e fi rst t i m e , a nd he had taken a year offt o g o to Aden, we ended u p ta king the agregation exa m together, a n d with Castor, who was you nger. I th i n k we fi n i s hed o ne, two, th ree. No, M a heu, Castor's fi rst lover who's now head of U N ESCO, was t h i rd . I can't remember about N iza n , but he publis h ed h i s book on Aden. An amazing book, and it shows how d eeply he was in the soup. So he viewed man stuck by his con d ition, hence not free. I was then characterizing man as absol utely free. And so we argued for h o u rs d u ri n g o u r long walks through Paris. But o u r ph ilosoph ical bases were the same.

You mean your Cartesianism ? Were there any other major influences?

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JAN U A RY 1 971

Well, there was Alain [pseudonym of E mile Chartier, a poet a n d worldly th inker]. We were against, of cou rse, but i n fl uenced just the sa m e, s i n ce h e was the m a i n voice of the day. H e w a s Cartesia n , Kantian, Hegel i a n , all at t h e same time. Very eclectic. He would s a y such stupidities a s "The Tru e H egel i s the Hegel wh ich is true," a n d everyone thought that was t h e epitome o f p ro­ fu ndity. B ut he had tremendous in fl uence, and i n the sociopolitical field, he represented radical socialism, which was a very petit bou rgeois b ut atheist movement. But at least Alai n i ntrod u ced a tiny sliver of Hegel into advanced studies. You know, u ntil then, Hegel was ba n ned from the French u n iversity system. Twe nty or thirty years earlier, [ J u les] lachelier, who was h ead of the agregation program , president ofthe j ury, had said that if anyone i ntroduced a Hegelian thought or mentioned the word Hegel in a dissertation , he would be flun ked. In Bru n swick's m assive three-volume h istory of phi losophy, not one mention in the fi rst two volu mes a n d three or fou r pages i n the thi rd . Hegel was n ot i ntroduced seriously i nto French thought u ntil t h e 1 930S, when Alexandre Kojeve published his bri l l i a nt treatise on master a nd slave, and after the wa r by [ Jean] Hyppolite's tra n s lation of The Phenomenology of

Spirit. But then, we didn't know m uch of German philosophers anyway,

I

mean people like [Joha n n] Fichte a n d [Fried rich] Schelli ng-I stil l h aven 't read them wel l, j u st a smatteri ng here a nd there . . .

You mentioned [Arthur] Schopenhauer the other day . . . Ah, but that had nothi ng to d o with m y cou rses or studies. H e becam e fashionable arou nd 1 880. A poet, whom I l i ked very m uch, J ules laforgue, tal ked a lot about Schopenhauer when I was twenty, so I read h i m then . But not Nietzsche ? Oh, yes, a lot. But I hated h i m . I th i n k his crap a bout the el ite, h i s u ber­ mensch, radical ized u s a lot, especially N izan, especially si nce at Normale those snobs loved him. When we d ropped u ri ne-fil led condoms o n thei r heads, when they came back in tuxedos from some fa ncy soci a l event, we used to s hout "Th us pissed Zarathustra!" I always believed that bei ng, the in­ dividual, had to be saved whole. And to do so, one had to use violence agai n st those who stopped the process. You say always , but you considered yourself superior . . .

Not to my fel low beings. Superior as a writer because the writer is i m­ mortal through h i s writi ng, n ot as a member of society, not like a Zarathu stra who considers h i m self, and N ietzsche says categorically, s u perior to h is fel­ low beings becau se they are u nable to ach i eve his i n sights.

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J A N U A R Y 1 971

And Kierkegaard? I had heard of h i m , perhaps even read some pages by or about h i m , be­ fore the war. But it was as a prisoner that I got i nto h i m . I asked Castor to send me his book on anguish, his Fear and Trembling. How did you react to god ordering Abraham to kill his son? Not as I w a s su pposed to. To me god was the state ordering its s u bject to do as told. B u t that was my reaction before, my anti-pacifi sm d u ri ng the Spanish C ivil War.

You were in favor of nonintervention? N ot at a l l ! I was i n favor of i ntervention, absolutely. Even official in­ terventio n , mea n i ng that France should have sent a few divisions agai nst Franco. After a l l , we had a n elected popular front govern m ent in Fra nce, j ust l i ke the Spanish Repu blic. Yet while the fighting is going on you go off to Mussolini's Italy and write about eating mortadell a, and Mathieu . . . Stop! M athieu is not always me. Wel l, perhaps i n 1 93 6 , but not by 1 937. And that great conversation when Mathieu goes down to see Gomez when he comes across from the front to buy planes or whatever, and Gomez tells him that the Republic has lost. Mathieu can't understand why, in that case, is Gomez going back to fight. Gomez answers that one doesn't fight fascism because one is going to win , one fights fascism because it is fascist. A great response. Precisely. That's M athieu and Gomez, but not Sartre an d Fernando at that poi nt. I put those words in Gomez's mouth precisely because I believed them, but of cou rse i n the novel M athieu had not evolved i nto a man of action yet, as he does in the third vol u me. But that's me, as m uch as Gomez, or your father. I was-and a m today-absol utely comm itted to the p roposition that one m ust always fight the fascists, whatever the consequ ences, which is why I work with La Gauche Proh�tarienne, and why, I m ight add, you are here, blacklisted at ho me.4 O K, so you were for intervention, and you went off to see Mussolini's

fascist state ? I was total ly a n d com pletely for i ntervention , but on the condition that I didn't go. You got me. That amou nts to not being for i ntervention. Is that part of your rebellion against everything, because as Jeanson has written5 and a lot of folks mention, you have a bastard complex?

54

J A N U ARY 1 9 7 1

T h at's totally absurd. Jeanson is a good writer a n d o n o u r side, b u t he's wrong on this poi nt. Fi rst, as I told you , I w as never rebellious. Secon d , I w a s not a bastard but a n orp h a n , or h a lf orp h a n , w hich i s com pletely d ifferent. A s

I wrote i n The Words, I w as very comfortable at home, growing up w i t h a s is­ ter (my mother) and M oses (my gra ndfather) who both adored me, or at l ea st, in my grandfather's case, made me believe that he d i d , very convi n c i n gly u n ­ t i l t h e double betrayals.

Weren't you rebellious after those betrayals ? M y i m p u lse i s to say no, because

I did not rebel against either C h a rl es

or M a n ey and my m other. Yet, the more I saw and learned what bou rgeois so­ ciety did to ord i n a ry people, especi ally to the poor, the more

I beca me aware

ofthe viciou sness and greed ofwh ite colo n i a l ists and i m peri a l i sts, the m ore

I

moved to the left. The q u estion is, can one becom e a revoluti o n a ry with out bei ng rebell ious? I s n 't the rebel more determ i ned than the revol uti o n a ry, i n the sense that the revol uti onary who i s not a rebel makes h i s stan d , i s con­ vi nced politically, t h rough a n i ntel lectual process? A rebel who becom es a rev­ olutionary is in the soup. H is i n ner guts are com m itted.

And his pride is involved. Exactly. Does t h at not m e a n that t h e re�ol utionary, t h e i ntel lect u a l rev­ ol utionary, who is tortured is more a pt to give i n to tortu re, than the rebel­ revolutionary, who is not only total ly convi nced , not only total ly com m itted, but also a ngry, fu l l of h ate for his tortu rers ? Th i n k of Algeria. I was o n e h u n d red percent with the FLN [the N ational Liberation Front, the Algeria n fighters for i ndependence from Fran ce]. I gave them money,

I transported medici n e for

them, I signed Jeanson's " 1 21 " [ Declaration on the Right to I n s u bord i n ation ,, i n the War i n Algeria, known as the " M an ifesto ofthe 1 21 ].6 But wou ld I h ave been able to resist the picana [an electric cattle prod used i n tortu ring prison ­ ers, i ncluding by t h e French i n Algeria]?

Are you saying that one cannot really be a rebel-revolutionary without hate? I don't know. O n e always says more than one does. I h ave always, well, for the last twenty years, been with the revolutionaries, participati n g i n thei r demonstratio n s , i n their occupations, i n their i nflammatory state m e nts, even i n their h u n ger stri kes-well, one of them-but I never end u p o n the front l i n es anywhere. So if one is what one does, as you and I both i n s ist, the n

I a m not a real revol utio n a ry, o n l y a parlor-type one, hence a reform i st.

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J A N U A RY 1 9 71

Like your hero in The Wall? A genuine revolutionary would not have talked, I mean , would not have given false information, would just have said nothing, correct? There's a book by a Czech com m u n ist named Fuci k who was tortu red for days and d ays, then shot. I n between tortu res, he somehow managed to write an absolutely amazi ng book, and what he says basica lly is that si nce he knew he wou l d never ta l k he looked u pon h i s tortu rers not as h u m ans but as part of a cholera epidem ic or part ofthe plague-that is, a deadly virus-who are totally at a loss whenever they come up against someone whom they know will not talk.

What' s the name of that book ? A /'ombre de /0 potence.? It's i m possible to i magine how one wou l d act in s i m ilar circu m stances. C learly, Fucik was amazi ng. Was he so wel l trai ned by the party- he beca m e a com m u n ist at fifteen and was twenty-th ree when the Gestapo seized him, in 1 943-that he had becom e a sort of automaton? Or was he so convinced of his faith that, l i ke any rel igious fanatic, he could s u sta i n any a nd all pu n i s hment that the Gestapo co uld s ubject h i m to? Or was he j ust so i ncredibly proud of bei ng a j u st

m.m

that no one who was un­

j u st cou l d defeat his resolve?

Perhaps all of the above. Pride, faith , conviction, hatred of the en­ emy . . . That's very i m porta nt, hatred. Without it, one often stops too soon. It happened i n the French Revolution; I th i n k it happens in every revolution, when those who do not hate the enemy suddenly say, Enough already, and stop short of acco m p l i s h i ng the com plete restructuring ofsociety, and the re­ s u lt i s that the revol ution is betrayed .

But love of those for whom one revolts , too. Like Che Guevara said, "At the risk of sounding ridiculous, the revolutionary is motivated by love . " Hate the enemy and love the enemy's enemies . Simultaneously. If we say that he who revolts out of hatred ofthe greedy capitalist who exploits our fel low h u mans, are we then sayi ng that the love of our exploited fel low h u m a n s is motivated by pride? Or by i ntellectual u nderstanding of the reasons and conditions of the exploitatio n ? Do we become revol utionaries out of emotions or reason? I think both. When I was fifteen (but lied about my age) , I went with the Unitarian Service Committee-that's an organization that helps the poor, the disenfranchised, the rejects of capitalist society-to work with a

56

J A N U A RY 1 9 7 1

southern poet named Don West t o build a n interracial camp for needy chil­ dren in the middle of Talmadge County in Georgia, one of the most racist places in America. Don was a real militant, a Baptist minister who ran against a congressman named Wood, another genuine Southern fascist, who wanted all progressives to lose their j obs, like S enator Joe McCarthy did later. One day as Don was driving our group around the state, we were stopped by the police because a lynching was taking place. There were a score of cops around and hundreds of people watching, and we could do nothing. The hapless black youth who was lynched was about my age . The cops did nothing until the boy was dead. Then one fired his pistol in the air and shouted, "Lynching is illegal! " The crowd laughed and dispersed in a jovial mood, including scores of children. I began to really freak out, but one ofmy group, a female graduate student from Ohio, cuddled me and held me so tight until we were well away that I couldn't yell . Don's brother-in-law was a communist, in fact a member of the Central Committee of the C P U SA, and he visited us a few days later. I was so upset by what I had seen that I told him I wanted to j oin the C P o He asked me why, then told me that the party does not want recruits based on emotional conviction. "We want recruits who read, understand, and accept the tenets of the party, " he said. A couple of years later he turned and testified on his fellow c ommunists for the gov­ ernment. H atred and love.

A revolutionary is m ade by h ati ng i nj u stice and lov i n g

h i s fel low sufferers, l i ke C h e s a i d , l i ke N izan.

I agree. O n e revolts o u t of ha­

tred, one becom es a revol utionary out of reason. Both s i m u lta n e o u sly.

57

March I 97I

G E RA S

S I : We h a d s o rt of concluded last time that revolutionaries

must also be rebels, the difference being that one rebels out of hatred and one becomes a revolutionary, as Che claimed, out of love. Questions: When one is influenced by a novel, is it emotion or reason ? S A RT R E :

Are you talking a bout the novels that influenced you , Dos­

toyevsky and Tolstoy? Well, as we discussed at lunch last Sunday, I was influenced especially by Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy I read as history, at least War and Peace. Anna Kare­

nina bored me. One ofyour colleagues at Vi ncen nes [the U niversity of Paris VI I I , where I was teach i n g] once said to Castor that the d ifference i n o u r novels was very reveal i ng, because Castor's characters made their decisions very slowly, very conte m platively, while those of S artre's were very brusque, tempestuous even . That's the d ifference between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky as wel l. But I was n 't bored by Tolstoy, n ot by Anna Karenina or anything else he wrote, and I was especially moved by that short novel, ah . . . The Death of Ivan Illich, a real gem. Right. A real masterpiece. But it was Dostoyevsky's heroes who dug i nto me. You mean like Ivan and Mishkin and Raskolnikov?

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M A R C H ' 97'

The fi rst two for s u re. Raskol n i kov is not really a hero, is h e- more a n anti·hero? But that guy w a s right. A s you can see i n The Age of Reason, Ma­ thieu makes all his m ajor decisions as a reaction to a crisis, u ntil the t h i rd vol­ ume, right, when he realizes that the war is over and he doesn't cou nt a ny­ more.

Even when he makes the decision to sleep with the prostitute , it's she that sort of drags him off, right? It's like the first volume of The Roads to Free­ dom is Dostoyevskian in imagination while the third is Tolstoyian in con­ templation.

Let's not push this analysi s too far; after all, there are all sorts of earth­ shatteri n g decisions bei ng made in War and Peace. Sure, in the war, but in human terms, the decisions are really made by Pierre, who is not really alive. He's a construct. The flesh-and-blood char­ acter, the existential character, as I once wrote in a paper at Columbia, is

Andre. So in The Brothers Karamazov you must consider Alyos h a a construct too. Absolutely. But there are two existential characters in The Brothers:

Ivan, of course, as every one says, but also Dmitri, who acts with his gut , but always true to himself.

So Shatov is the construct i n The Possessed? And who's the existe ntial character? There are three , in my view, which no one agrees with. S tavrogin, of course. And Kirilov, who commits suicide to prove that he is free. But also the communist. What was his

name? I remember S hatov and

Kirilov and

Stavrogin, but for the life of me, I can't remember the communist, who fas­ cinated me more than all the others.

Because he is the man of action, right? You judge novels politica l ly. I was seventeen and not very political when I read The Possessed, and it possessed me.

You were a pol itical creatu re from day one. With a father who ran ged from bei ng [the first president of I srael, Chaim] Weizman n ' s bodyguard, a subm i n i ster of cultu re i n the two-day M u n ich Soviet, a general and the last defender of Barcelona i n Spai n , to an ass spy d u ring World War I I -h ow could you not be political, whether you rebelled against you r father or not? Which i s why you never had the patience to read Proust. You're going to maintain that I didn't like Proust because I wa s politi-

59

MARCH ' 97'

cal ? I mean, Christ, s eventeen pages to describe les aubep ines: I don't see how that didn't bore the shit out of you. But the writi ng is s u perb, that's w h at fasci n ated me, the writi ng. Even for the aubepines, though I gra nt you that d i d n 't move me particularly. H i s de­ scri ption of the bou rgeoi s world , the salons, the feasts.

Are you going to say that about [Flaubert'sJ Salammb8 too ? Boy, you 're really after me today. No, Salammbo is a piece of sh it, agreed. B ut Madame Sovary! The way F l a u bert descri bed his crowd told me a lot about the moral ity of the times, and m i nd you , you can use h i s perspicac­ ity to d i s sect the same society today. Politically? I wasn 't very hip politica l ly then . But I learned from them [Fl a u bert's books] that a nyone can write. That writi n g is having the patience to write. The will. The sta m i na. That's the basis. The rest comes from read i ng, read i ng, and read i ng.

So if you have the stamina and the will, but read nothing but Proust and Flaubert, you too will end up in the entrails of th � bourgeois world. That's why you h ave to read everyt h i n g you can . I read the Russians, the E ngl i s h - a n d they're a hell of a lot worse, from you r poi nt of view, that is, than Proust o r Flau bert-and [Paul] Valery, whom I also read at that time. B ut, you k now, they were in the world in which I l ived . M a n ey, my stepfather, a typical bou rgeois, a d i rector but salaried, always tryi ng to get ahead. Typica l .

Your grandfather wasn't like that. Oh yes, he was part of that worl d . True, he was a Republica n , a radical· socialist, m ea n i n g a secular d efender offreedom for a l l , but bou rgeois none­ theless. To h i m , a novel s hould not take sides, so to s peak, I mean it should n ot advocate. Yet still, a good novel should evoke a h u manism, should pro· voke a sense of wa nti n g to serve.

So what did you read that made you begin to serve, to get out of that other world, in your head at least? Wel l , as I told you , the Russians and then the Americans. That was later, of cou rse, but [ J o h n] Dos Passos! Oh, Dos Passos, the power of that m a n ! Do y o u know that he i s almost unknown i n America today? My stu­ dents came out of high school never even having heard of him. It doesn't s u rprise me. The ed ucation system is a tool of the governm ent.

60

MARCH 1

Not completely. Our education system is left to the states, cities, and communities. It's not centralized as it is here.

But our m i n isters of ed u cation m u st operate withi n the context, the tra­ dition, the history, even the myths of France, and that means our social revo­ lutions, 1 848, the Paris Com m u ne. No m i n i ster would or cou ld el i m i n ate Zola, say, or [ M i khail] Baku n i n from the curricu l u m . But you h aven 't h ad you r social revol ution yet; every ed ucator th i n ks A merica has the greatest freedo m i n the world, and you r press supports you r govern m ent no m atter what it does, no? Yes, but not because of government censorship. Because of money. You see, we do not have a free press. We have afree-enterprise press . Adver­ tisers dictate the policy of our press . Oh, not on every issue.

But overall. Like

the Red-baiting laws that we got. For example, the Taft-Hartley and M cCar­ ran laws said that no communist could be in leadership positions of a union, but it never occurred to anyone to make it equally illegal for a Nazi or fascist to be head of a company.

You th ink ou r press i s better? Sure, because you have a political press . The right-wing or socialist pa­ per worries that if it doesn't report some outrage, the communist p aper will, or if Le Figaro doesn't, Le Monde will, so they tend to be much more careful about lying. So when did you fall on Dos Passos ?

During the G reat Depression, I thi n k. Anyway, m uch later-after Nor­ male. I know he had a great influence on you. But what? The styl e , the subject?

Both. Reread my story "The Youth of a C h ief " [i n The Wall]. I t h i n k it's pure Dos Passos.

The Wall was published after Nausea, but written before, correct, at least that story, yes , but it was not the first piece of fiction that you had writ­ ten? Oh no, there were the stories we published i n o u r il l-fated revi ew. La Revue Sans Titre [The Review Without a Title] , which you co-edited with Nizan, dates back to I 9 2 3 when you were still in khagne .

Actually, the d irector, the ad m i n i strator, was neither N izan nor I , b ut a , guy named Charles Fraval, who becam e a com m u n i st I th i n k, and then I don 't know what happened to h i m , but N izan and I were j u st contri butors, a n d we

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sort of wrote everythi ng, givi ng different n a mes to the stuff that was not our main contribution . But aside from my short story, I publis hed i n it the begi n­ n i ng of a novel I wrote during the vacation , i n other words, between khagne and hypo-khagne, in which I ta l k about "the old friend," which means that N i zan a nd I already had broken u p . Over politics ?

No. I never criticized h is pol itical choices, even when he was flirting with the fascist Action Fran�aise group. I mean, we discu ssed pol itics, but I was i nto trying to defi n e, or characterize, freedom, which did not yet involve po l itics i n my head. N o, I t h i n k we broke u p over the Relliew. It only had two n u m bers , Jan uary and February 1 923 . . . well, that doesn 't add u p , does it? If o n ly we cou ld fi n d them. I cou l d n 't h ave written the novel , started it, d u ri ng the vacation of '23 then, it had to be '22, and we had reconci led by '23, i n the fal l , when we went i nto Normale.

Why did you break up then ? I do th i n k it was a bout the Relliew. Somet h i n g about it. My novel after all was a bout two fa ntastically close friends w h o break up beca use of a review. B ut it cou ldn't be j u st that, beca use after a l l it was Fraval who decided what ra n i n it a nd what did n ot, and we h ad no power over h i m ; he was a real dicta­ tor, I mean, h e'd listen to our views, but he wou ld decide, and that was that. So there had to be other reasons.

Were you j ealous of Nizan ? M aybe. After h i s trip to Aden, and h i s book, which was very wel l re­ ceived , perh aps. I do know that when we were back together at N ormale I was m uch happier. Wel l , not just to be friends with h i m , but to be in a group, be­ cause there were some ten of us that ra n aro u n d together, that cau sed trouble to the s nobs . The great th i n g about group activity is that it dec u l pable-izes you . You are part of the decisions, but the decision-maki n g process is gener­ alized to the grou p. So when we d ecided to take over a bar and that led to con­ frontations, w hatever, yes, each of us was responsi ble, but it was a com mon act. Of cou rse, there were some i n d ivid u a l disasters, too. Wel l, not disaster, I ' m exaggerati ng, but l i ke when we decided to experiment with drugs. I ended u p h aving a n ervous breakdown.

You mean the crabs? Yeah, after I took the m esca l i ne I started seei ng crabs arou nd me a l l the ti me, I mean they fol lowed m e i n the streets, i nto class.

How could you study. then ?

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I got used to them. I wou ld wake u p in t h e morn in g a n d say, "Good morn i ng, my l ittle ones, h ow did you sleep?" I would talk to them all the ti me, or I wou ld say, "OK guys, we're going i nto class n ow, so we have to be stil l a n d quiet," a n d they would b e there, around my desk, absol utely sti ll, u ntil t h e bell rang. A lot of them?

Actually, no, just three or fou r.

But you knew they were imaginary? Oh yes, from the begi n n ing. As long as I was at N ormale, they d i d n't bother me. But after I fi nished school, actually a whole year l ater, I began to think I was going crazy, so I went to see a shrink, a you ng guy then with whom I have been good friends ever si nce, J acques Lacan . I n fact he became a psy­ choanalyst and once, m uch later, he tried to psychoanalyze me.

With what result? Noth ing that l or he valued very m uch, except with the crabs, we sort of concluded that it was fear of beco m i ng alone, or to put it more i n context, fear of losing the camaraderie of the group. You know, as soon as I got my ogreg my life changed radically from being one of a gro u p often or so, a grou p that i ncl uded peasants and workers as wel l as bourgeois i ntellectu als, to bei ng just me and Castor. Peasants ? Workers ? Sure. Remem ber Pierre G u ille? The son of peasants. I And the guy we called Blondie, because he was the d arkest of u s all. He was the son of a coal miner. Remember that ed ucation was free, and if one passed the tests, and had no money, the state gave you a stipend for living expenses. That was the law. Still is. Travel expenses too. If you passed well enough to be able to choose your advanced school but lived too fa r to take a M etro to it- like Frantz Fa non, remember? The govern ment had to pay his plane rides from Guadelou pe every year u ntil he was h i red by the govern ment as a psychiatrist in a government mental h ospital.

Did you all have nicknames ? What was yours ? "The Little Man." N ot very origi n al. And we kept to them. It was M a­ heu-I can 't remember h i s-who gave Castor hers, and when Stepha joined the group, she became ula baba," which led to you r father bei n g cal led "Ie boubou." You know, now as I think back, bei n g part of a group, a collective if you wish, solves a lot of psychological h a n g-ups. I always got along fine in col­ lectives. I never felt I had to rule and I never objected to bei ng told what to do

MARCH 1 971

i f a l l agreed . I 've always been somewhat a nxious, not too seriously, but with feeli ngs of an orphan, living with someone who thou ght h i m selfto be Moses, bei ng ugly, s m all, a stranger, betrayed by my mother and M oses, rejected by my first great love [Si mo n e Jolivet]. 1 adapted very well to collective life. In the a rmy. As a prisoner. The feeli n g of bei ng equal i s extremely important, but I d idn't realize it u ntil the war, u ntil I became a prisoner with other prisoners. What about women at Normale ? There were no female students then. I know that,

mean sexually? I ' m curious how the group reacted, if there were jealousies, fights , et cetera ? I

N o, not at all. We would pick some u p at a bar, bring them up. It was for­ bidden, of cou rse, but the concierge was a n ice guy, and he wou l d look the other way as we snuck them i n . The women very q u ickly adapted , or liked , the s itu ation. After a w h i le, they'd sleep arou n d , and no one felt cheated , or said so anyway. There was one guy, Larroutis was his name, who was a virgi n and i nsisted he would stay that way u ntil he got m a rried beca u se of his strict Catholicism. But h e wou l d get d r u nk with u s , and horse around, a n d he was very fu nny, so we n ever felt that he was not part of the group.

And you were all on the same wavelength, philosophically? Pol itically no, i n terms of what party or movement we favored, but we all agreed that the govern m ent sta n k, that the system was for the rich to get richer. We were all rebels. Phi losoph ically, we were all rationalists. We all said a cat i s a cat, a jerk i s a jerk. But N izan and I were the only two who were prepari ng the agregation i n p h i l osophy. Peron, the guy who died i n the resis­ ta nce, was studyi n g Engl i s h . There was a couple doing Germa n . And most of the others were i n l iteratu re. But of course we all studied everyth i ng, it seems.

Did you want to become a philosophy teacher? N ot really. At N ormale the philosopher of the moment was [Henri] Bergson , who clai med that p h i losophy begi ns from an i n itial i ntu ition of the world. It may b e a vague i ntu ition, but it was the absol ute begi n n i ng, and if one did not have that intu ition, one cou ld not philosophize. The intuition was l i ke a gift [un don]. Well, I did n 't have it. I was a rationalist; I obviou sly didn't fit. B ut, I figu red , I had to earn a livi ng, and once I got my agregation I was guara nteed a j o b teach i n g, so the best dea l , I thought, was to teach p h i loso­ p h y. I never wa nted to be a p h i losopher, but I knew that to be seriously com· m itted to write n ovels, I wou l d h ave to u nderstand as m uc h as possible, and p h i losophy wou l d serve me in that. So to write, I concl uded, the best job was

MARCH 1 97 1

to teach p h ilosophy, because i t m eant reading and learni n g what everyon e else thought a n d being able to make my o w n i ntel lectual decisions based o n an ever widening knowledge.

But Castor told me that when you two became friends, you wanted to be a philosopher and she scoffed at the idea. Scoffed is a bit strong. She si mply said that it was crazy to get bogged down in that when I coul d write. I know that you r reason for giving up phi los. ophy was because you thought it was, as you said, mental m asturbation. But Castor d i d n 't go that far.

Yet you didn't take her advice. Wel l , I did in the sense that I stopped t h i n king of myself as a philoso. pher. But remember, we were both prepari ng the agreg in p h ilosophy. And you were studying together, right? At the Cite Universitaire.2 After I fl u n ked my fi rst try, I checked i nto a n apartment there, and m et Castor, who was preparing hers at the Sorbo n n e. But we were i ntrod u ced more formally by Maheu, whom she met at the N ational Li b rary a n d who be· came her first lover. Castor then brought i nto our group her best friend, your mother, whom she also met at the l i brary. Stepha then brought in Fern ando, and I, N izan. That beca m e o u r ci rcle, although Stepha was not prepari n g a n agreg, a n d Fernando was pai nting. But sh e was adorable and he was fu n ny.

Was it true that you wanted to have an affair with Stepha but she turned you down? H a-ha hal Did you r mother tel l you that? Oh no! Stepha would never talk about such things , to me anyway. No, it was Castor who ratted on you. H a-ha-ha! Well, it's true. Stepha was an adorable bu ndle of e nergy, sex­ ual too, and incredi bly beautiful , and a tease, a n d . . .

Castor said you were in love with her . . . Yes, maybe. But she turned me down, as you said, but softly, n icely. Your father slept with every woma n i n M o ntparnasse, including Castor an d her sister, Poupette. But Stepha, nope, faithfu l t o t he end.

Do you know the story of Noiditch ? Her U krai nian boyfriend ? They had met i n Berlin. He was also a refugee and a very nice guy. I met him later in America . A charmer. But nothing happened because she came to Paris. Well, one day, when Fernando and she are living together, and he's screwing every model who poses for him, and she knows it but doesn't

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seem t o care, which makes Fernando feel guilty, Noiditch shows up i n Paris , broke, absolutely penniless. So Fernando encourages Stepha t o g o out with him, to show her a really good time, and he gives Noiditch enough money to really entertain her, and for a hotel room. They have a great time all right, but when it came time to go to the hotel, she said, No thanks . And he then spilled the beans to her, which made her laugh her head off, but decided to go along with it in the sense that she stayed with Noiditch-platonically­ that night and made him promise to keep up the pretense to Fernando. Whe n he asked why, she answered, So he can stop feeling guilty about all his one-nighters . I knew that story. I love it. I wanted you to tell it to see if it jibed with w h at Castor had told me. G reat, i s n 't it? How can one not love a woman like that. I guess that's why she's the model for your Sarah in The Age of Reason? , But why did you make her Jewish? For various reasons. Fi rst of a l l , Fernando was the most un.Jewish Jew '

I h ave ever met, even if he was o nce Weizmann's bodygu ard. He's a rea l S p a n i ard, with all t h e machismo and bravado a n d ridiculous face-savingness of a ny Spa n iard. Since he was right i n front of me, i n my head that is, when I w rote about Gomez, I cou l d n 't make Gomez J ewis h . Second, because Stepha was a typical Jewish mother. O h I know, not to you perhaps, a typical J ewis h m other would not abandon her s o n to go fight i n somebody else's civil war, but to everyone else, to all her friends, to any b u m i n the street, she was al­ ways ready to help.

You even wrote in the novel that she could kill with kindness. Right. And third, it was i m portant i n those days ofvictories by the a nti­ Semitic N azi hordes, to find a way to bring up that i ssue, and it wouldn't h ave fit in Spai n - I mean, as nasty as were Gomez's political enemies, the Sta l i n ­ i sts, I cou l d n 't possi bly i m ply that t h e Com i ntern agents or the R u s s i a n ad­ visers were anti-Sem ites, especially si nce i n real l ife they were all Jews. The Russian a m bassador, Marcel Rosen berg, whom everyone adored , was a Jew, a nd if A n d re Marty was secretly a nti-Semitic, sayi ng so would not have been believed in those days.

You said a while ago that you brought in Nizan. But he was not really part of the group, was he? Wel l, yes and no. He was often extremely depressed, about death mostly, h i s anxiety about dyi ng. I n those moments he would go out a n d get dru n k by h i mself.

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But you guys got drunk all th e time too, n o ? N o, let's not exaggerate. O nce every two weeks, b u t not o u t of depres­ sion. I mean we'd get completely d runk, rol ling on the floor, but in a kind of group pu rification, emptyi ng ou rselves of all p roblems, worldly tho u ghts, something like you r sessions with pot-except we ended u p with headaches and you did n 't. We, I ' m talking now about the N ormale group, we never got drunk out of depression. N izan did. Alone. H i s decision to teach the kids of that rich man who took him to Aden was part of that depression . He wanted to pierce through the n ormal, to go beyond it, and I mean both what i s stan­ dard and the school. A n d when h e came back, or soon after, h e got married. I was h i s best man, a n d that tightened the bond between us. Do you know that the very day he got married h e suffered a ferocious appendicitis, very bad one, which laid him up for th ree months. But he came around aga i n after he re­ couped, and we stud i ed together and we passed at the same ti m e. We cele­ brated together, with Castor a nd Rirette, his wife. She sort of stu ck i n . With Maheu and Guille, then. Merleau- Ponty? I

Merleau was a year you nger. We knew each other and l i ked each other, guess, but we didn't become close until the resistance.

Aron? He was also at N ormale with us and he was part of the group, but he was an extern. He never went on our binges with us. We kept up our friend­ ship, but not with the kind ofi nten sity that I had with N izan. When N izan was named at Bourg [-en-Bresse, a city i n central u p per Fra nce] and we did n 't see each other for two years, it was G u i lle who rep laced h i m as my closest friend. We stayed close for fifty years. He became the analytic ch ief at Parl i a ment. You know, the one who analyzes every day w h at the deputies say and what they mean and why, et cetera. Parliament keeps a transcri pt, but they pay some individual to red uce the goi n gs-on to their essentials a n d publish it every day. That's what G u i l le d i d , and he still does it, as does [ Jean] Poui llon by the way. But G u i l l e and I broke u p a few years ago.

Because of politics ? No. One of those thi ngs, you know, you see someone every day a lmost for ten, twenty years, then one day you don't call and neither does he. But not because of politics. I had other nonpolitical friends, l i ke M a he u . You inter­ viewed h i m , so you know that he can be charmi ng, gregarious, warm. Every­ one at U N ESCO con s iders h i m a scu m bag, i m perial, mean , con n ivi n g, just

MARCH ' 97'

p lai n nasty, b u t with m e he's charm i ng, and we have never broken u p over h i s ri ght-wi ng pol itics -well, h i s centrist politics. But with Camus . . . That's a whole other matter. Complicated, too. We beca me good friends d uring the res istance, when he was editi ng Combat and asked m e to write for it. Then he p u bl i s h ed The Stranger, and I reviewed it i n Les Cahiers du Sud, very favorably. It i s an excellent n ovel. B ut, you know, he's a pied-noir [slang for whites who settled i n Algeria, whom the Algerians con sider colonists], a n d he could never really come down soli d ly in favor of the F L N . As you know, after I gave u p trying t o d o my dissertation at Columbia

on your esthetics , before I switched to political science, I had planned to do it on your feud with Camus . In my project, in the page or two that we had to present to explain why we chose such a subject, I\had said that Camus him­ self was actually proud of never making up his mind about any contempo­ rary issue , that he claimed the only position he could wholeheartedly main­ tain was to have been for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. Jeanson got it right. But I could never get a doctorate in the United States by criticiz­ ing Camus. Jeanson was a good com rade, and we worked together a lot d u ring the Algerian revol ution . But when The Rebel came out, I im med iately realized I would have tro u ble if! wrote the review i n Les Temps Modernes, so at the staff meeting I asked J eanson if he had read it-he hadn't; I h ad gotten an ad­ va n ced copy-and ifhe had any bias pro or con Ca mus. I knew that they had met a few ti m es, b ut j u st su perficial ly, at social gatheri ngs. So I asked him to review it a n d did not edit a s ingle word i n h i s copy. Well, Cam u s reacted with fu ry that someone dared to criticize h i m , and wrote that bitter res ponse, an extremely disingen uous response, si nce he addressed it not to Jeanson but to " M onsieu r Ie d i recteu r des Temps Modernes [ M r. Di rector of Modern Times]." So I had to answer, and that destroyed our friend s h i p. It was a first-rate response. It made the point so well, without saying it,

that we are determined by what we do. Camus, by not taking sides on the Al­

gerian question, was therefore, in my mind, pro - French Algeria, opposed to independence. And I wrote that in what I thought was an extremely well argued preliminary paper to my dissertation, a thirty-odd-page analysis of

your feud , which of course my committee at Columbia didn't like. That was the drop in the bucket that made me quit Columbia. The Algerian q u estion broke up many friend s h i ps here. You remem ber

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Mme Morel ? Castor tells i n her memoirs how often we went to her cou ntry es­ tate, how we had picnics with her and her child, and friends. Castor a n d I u sed to take Gui lle a nd M a heu there, and N izan too, although G u i l le and M aheu didn't l i ke N izan, whom they thought was too stiff, too obsessed . A nyway, I was a very close friend with her until the day that s h e said "Je s u i s Algerie franc;ai se" [a slogan that originated i n a s peech by Fran c;ois M itterra n d when he was minister ofj ustice, and was then yelled by right-wing French, o r beeped with their car horns, meaning Algeria is a French prov i nce]. That did it.

Yet at Normale, politics never disturbed your relationships? No. My group had a ki nd of political m a keup, si nce we all hated the rich kids, but not because they were rich but because they were s nobs. Aron wasn't rich? He came from a bourgeois backgro u nd , but so did I. But he fooled arou nd with us. He didn't get drunk when we did, but he was an extern and so wasn 't around in the evening very much. You know, we h ad a very tight sched­ u le. Up fairly early, coffee, then studying u ntil l u nch. After l u nch, which was leisu rely, a cou ple of hours, back to studyi ng u ntil n i n e, except wnen we had to attend a lecture, and then at n ight, u n less we were too exhausted, we re­ laxed one way or a nother.

Sounds like you went to few lectures. Weren't there any profs that in­ spired you ? There was a historian of philosophy at the Sorbo n ne whom I l i ked, and I did go to hear h i m, es peci a l ly on the Stoics. But otherwise, I a l most never went to the Sorbonne lectures. And, at Normale, oh no, a ll the p rofs were ped ants and really i ncredibly stu pid. So, I stud ied alo ne, in my box, next to N izan in his. And when we stopped we always discussed what we h ad read, unless we went to get d ru n k.

You couldn't study the Germans and you hated B ergson. What did you

like ? The a ncient G reeks. Especially the Stoics. Descartes, of cou rse. H e never bored m e . I was a Cartesian through and through . . .

You still are. I n a way, yes, I guess. I l iked S p i n oza a lot, and the English, H ume for example, though I preferred [ I m m a n uel] Kant. But I often went offto write my "novels," or to read, l i ke Stendhal, who I thought was the greatest of all French writers. But don't forget we had all sorts of other subjects to m aster, like Greek an d Lati n , because we wou ld be gri lled i n those p h ilosophers' orig-

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inal language. I n fact, Castor al most came out fi rst when I made a terri ble er· ror in Greek, wh ich cost me six poi nts. I had a better grade than she at the written though, a n d I did better in French and Lati n .

Were you competing? No, not at all. We actually looked forward to beco m i n g professors then, and we k n ew that those who fi nis hed best wou ld get the top choices, so we wa nted to be u p there.

So you chose Le Havre, " B ouville" ? N o-wel l , yes, the choices were very l i m ited i n '29. But ferred to Paris after I was released fro m the stal ag.

I

got tran s­

thought you didn't want to be a professor? Oh, when I got my agreg, I did. You know, for fou r years I h ad my tuition , room a n d board , even spend i n g money, n ot very m uch, but stil l , all paid for by I

the state, so I felt l owed the state the ten years of the contract.

Ten years ? I th ought it was more. No, j u st ten years, a n d one cou l d always pay it off, as I did. I n part. But no, I l i ked bei n g a p rof s i n ce it did give me enough ti me to write, and fi rst of a ll, I wa nted to write. And yet you had total c on te mp t for your professors at both Normale and the Sorbonne. At N ormale, yes, though I loved the l ife there, and everything paid for, even spe n d i n g m on ey. N ot m uch, m i n d you -as I told you , I cou ldn't afford to go to Toulouse to see Simone very ofte n , but sti l l , enough to get d ru n k and have a good ti m e every other week. The Sorbo n n e was different. There were you ng teachers there, givi ng lectu res on a l l sorts of s u bjects, a n d we had the right to atten d a ny one. As I th i n k I told you , there was one guy who would give very i nteresti n g l ectu res o n the h i story of p h i l osophy. So we a l l went to hear h i m , M a h e u , N iza n , and I , our whole gro u p.

And Castor, right? Was Stepha also there? Castor yes, every session. Stepha, no. She had decided by then not to get a degree. S h e spent a lot of time at the N ational Libra ry, which is where s h e a n d Castor beca m e close, m a i n ly because sh e taught Castor, as she re­ vea ls i n her m e m o i rs, how to d ress a n d m a ke u p to pick u p boys, a l l those H u n garians, rem e m ber? But sh e stopped goi n g to class once she got in­ volved with Fernando. She too had lived at the Cite U n iversitaire, but once s h e m oved i n with h i m , she had to earn money so he cou l d pai nt. Nice guy!

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Well, it was her choice. H e was not goin g t o earn a l iving. He u s ed t o d o quick odd jobs when h e h a d no money for food a n d cou ld not exchange a painti ng for a meal. You know, that was very com mon then. The owner of La Coupole, j u st to name one, was great that way. He used to feed, maybe as of. ten as once a week, all of Fernando's pals, Mane Kats, G iacometti, Utrillo, Souti ne, M asson , Chagall, Modigl i a n i , a l l those Montparnasse arti sts, a n d eventua l ly made a fortu ne with t h e painti n gs or drawi ngs he got for t h e food. But like them, Fernando refu sed to work fu l l time, so Stepha had to work) Castor told me once that she thought Stepha was a gen u i n e sai nt, despite the fact that she never believed in sai nts. But when Stepha d ro pped out of the S orbonne did she st ay close ,

friends with Castor, was she still part of the group ?

Yes, but that was later, i n ' 927. The year before I spoke to Castor. Why not? You attended the same lectures .

She was M a heu's girl, I mean M aheu and she were a n ite m , and he wou ldn't share her. He refused to introd uce us, either to me or Nizan or a ny­ one else of our group.

But you were in the same class, listening to the same le c ture r

,

you

didn't need to be introduced? You couldn't go up to her and say, What did you think of [Gottfried] Leibniz ? I mention Leibniz because you apparently drew him "in bed with the monads" and gave it to her. Didn't she thank you? Didn't that start a conversation ? She thanked me and wal ked on. I n Fra nce in those days a man and a woman cou ldn't just start tal k i n g, u n less it was in a bar, where the wo men were different. I mea n , the class d i sti nctions were rigid, and it wasn 't money, as I was poor by then, despite my rich stepfather, and Castor's fam i ly had lost their i n vestments-it was a class thi ng. Someone i ntrod uced M aheu to Castor, and unless he i ntroduced us to her, we didn't really com mu ne. lf I re­ . member correctly, it was Stepha who did it. Castor had gotten her a job as a tutor to Zaza [Elisabeth Lacoi n], her child hood friend who was madly in l ove with Merleau-Ponty, and Stepha, who disregarded all class habits, i ntroduced she liked. What happened to the Zaza-Merleau c ouple? A real tragedy. When they fou n d out about the couple, her p arents got

;, some i nvestigator to probe i nto h i s background, and they came up with the

that his mother had been u nfaithfu l to her husband, with a l o ng affa i r some engi neer named Fran�ois, making it almost certain that t h i s

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Fra n�ois was real ly t h e father o f both M erleau a n d his sister. The parents then wrote to M erleau tel l i n g him that they would oppose their marriage, and Mer­ leau then broke with Zaza, who, as you know, we a l l assu med d ied of a broken heart-i n fact, [s he d ied] of a bad i I I ness.4 Castor hated M erleau u ntil she fou nd out the truth . So did Stepha. So d u ri n g that period, when M erleau was also at N ormale, but a year beh i n d us, we never became friends. N ot u ntil duri ng the occu pation .

In I 9 4 6 , when h e came to the United States, Stepha treated him very nicely. I showed him New York by day (my parents did by night) , took him shopping for his wife, and arranged for him to speak to my school's philoso­ phy class, which allowed me to sit in even though I was a year younger than the students. I didn't like him . He was n 't very fu n ny, was he? But he was a very good man, and a n ex­ cel lent philosopher. H i s Humanism and Terror, Sens et non-sens, and Adven­

tures of the Dialectic are all fi rst-rate works. H e was an i m portant phenome­ nologist.5

And not a rationalist, like you ? N ot q u ite. H e was too much of a M a rxist to bel ieve that we are all ab­ sol utely free. I ndeed, how could you, can you, believe that all men are free ? A s you k now, that's a p h i losophical position . I mean, I certa i n ly don 't believe that the d issenter i n jail is free, or even that he who is dependent on his boss to l ive i s free, or that anyon e who has no feel i ng ofsecurity is free. Po­ l itically, which mea n s of cou rse econom ical ly, freedom is a bou rgeois reality. The worker is not free precisely because he is i nsecu re.

But isn't the bourgeois who constantly worries about his financial fu­ ture equally insecure ? I f he's a vice president, he wants to be president. I f he's an assistant professor, he wants t o be a full professor. Let me be preci se. Phi losoph i cally, we are all free to accept what we are.

Which is what you meant when you made that statement that got you s o much criticism for saying that during the occupation, the French were ab­ solutely free. Exactly, what I meant was that we had no real choice. Or put this way: we cou ld be col laboratio ni sts or we could be resisters. If resisters, that posi­ tion enta i l ed determ i n ed actions and reactions. It i l l u strated my point that in­ d ividual freedom is to accept bei ng what one does.

I once gave this example when I tried to explain Being and Nothingness

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MARCH , 97'

to my students . I f we had every scientific data o n Joe's makeup so that we could predict exactly what he would do, and Joe knew it, he would still feel free. For example, he decides one night to go to the movies. He sees the choices: a comedy, a thriller, or a porno. Scientifically we know he will choose the porno. So does he. And he does. But when he comes out of the theater he complains: What a bore, I should have gone to the thriller. Should have! He holds himself, not science and all the data, responsible , even though he knows he was totally determined. Joe's sense of freedom, I ex­ plained, was his sense of himself as a human being. I think, therefore I am free. But that's not the way most people talk about freedom. Of cou rse not. Politically, they say freedom is bei ng able to do what they want. Econom ically, it is they are secure. That's how N izan saw it. He didn't think humans were free? Nope. To him, the concept offreedo m was a b su rd. Li ke Kirilov [i n Dos­ toyesky's The Possessed], he wou ld say we don't chose to be born and we don't chose to d ie. We can't fly and swi m at the same ti me. I ' m ugly as hell , he wou ld say, and you're not, so you get a better deal. As a good com m u n i st, he wou ld ins i st that no one who has to work for a livi ng, no one who worries if he's going to be fi red or have enough money to send his kid to N ormale, is free. And in that sense he was right, of cou rse_ Economic freedo m is l i m ited to a small sector of the bou rgeois class.

You had that, didn't you? Did he? Desp ite my theft i n order to buy the affection , or acceptance rather, of my La Rochelle classmates, I never worried about money. I a lways assu med that I wou ld have enough. If I had more, I s pent it. Castor too. When we had money i n those early days, we'd go to a decent restau ra nt. In the late ' 920S I thin k we managed to have l u nch at La Cou pole once every two weeks. N izan would accuse u s of bei ng petit bou rgeois with a rul i n g class mentality. In a way, that's true. Why do we still have l u nch at La Cou pole? For privacy. We sit, as you know, in a particular section where the waiters and h eadwaiters m a ke ,s ure no one disturbs us.

They're absolutely amazing. They have an incredible intuition about

who to let approach you and who not, like when I come to join you, they know somehow that you were expecting me . . . They'd seen you with us so often.

Yes, but when you told me to invite [Herbert] Marcuse when he came through Paris last year, remember, he had never been here before, and he

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MARCH 1 971

was late, so we were all sitting there when h e looked for us. They knew. They actually pointed where we were without him asking. Hey, don't make heroes out of our poor waiters. The maitre d ' knew we were waiti n g for someo ne and he took one look at M arcu se's lost demeanor and . . . Tell me, you and Castor never worried about money ? N ever. If we d i d n 't h ave enough to go on vacation, we'd spend it at the

OK.

l i brary. Right now I ' m close to bei ng broke. Flaubert [Sa rtre's th ree-vol u me study titled The Family Idiot) has not yet appeared, and I don't th i n k it'l l make m uch. But I ' m sti l l getting royalties fro m Nausea, thirty years l ater-weird, especially s i n ce

I

d o n 't m a ke a con nection in my m i nd . Li ke writi ng and

m o ney h ave nothi n g i n com mo n . While a worker's job a n d h i s salary are two sides of the same coi n . To the worker a nyway.

I read somewhere that you feel guilty about having money. N aw! Perhaps i n the sense that I never u n derstood why worki ng, s ay, on a novel for a year should then bring the author enough money to l ive for twenty. Doesn 't make sense. Enough m oney for h i m to spend a n other year or two or even five writi n g a n other n ovel, OK. But a fortu ne? I t said that your incredible generosity is the result of that guilt? M aybe. That's u p to the psychoan alysts. I don't con s ider myself espe­ cially generous, j u st if I h ave more money than I need, why n ot give it to those who need ?

Somehow, it all fits into the question you often asked yourself, namely what is the role of the intellectual in a revolutionary society ? Castor says that this question got you to read Trotsky intensively. She exaggerates. First ofall, I was not a revol utionary when I read h i m, so I was j u st curious. Second, I didn't think he said a nythi n g b ri l l i a nt on the s u bject. But it's true t h at it is a seri o us question. In bou rgeoi s society, the in­ tel lectual is privileged both i n terms of prestige and financially, if he makes it, that is. I mean why s h o u ld a n actor earn m i l l ions, more for one fi l m than a worker m akes h i s whole l ife? Same with a best seller. Or a n a rtist. [Ch a i m) Souti ne sold one of h i s pai ntings for a meal. The restau ra nt owner who bought it can sell it tod ay and l ive happily on the Riviera the rest of his l ife witho ut worki ng. I n a revol utionary society, Trotsky would put the artists on salary, workers for the state. Fi ne, but which artists? The ava nt-garde pai nter or scul ptor or w riter whom no one ad m i res? And who decides? It's a tough question . Why s h o u l d Fernando n ot be able to sell his painti n gs today for mil-

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lions, when Picasso thought he was as good as he was, a s a colorist at least? Every a rt dealer wants a Picasso, but they d iscou nt h i s opinion about a rt? None of that makes sense. And h istory has s hown that it is never those who are "ahead of thei r ti me" who are recom pen sed, but those who m i mic their times, who invent nothi n g new, who a re feted with fame and money. Those "ahead oftheir time" u s u a l ly h ave to die fi rst.

Did you solve the question? You mea n ofthe role ofthe i ntel lectual i n society? N o, but I did toy with the idea of creati ng collectives of i ntellectuals, someth i n g like all the writers who are obsessed with the use of power, say, getti ng together, choosi n g their peers, and dividi ng u p the money that any one gets among a l l accord i n g to their need. Someth i n g l i ke that.

My need is to get drunk every night. Otherwise I can't write in the morning. So I need more money than the one who never drinks. Fair? The collective wou l d decide. How about the writer who murders his wife and is writing in j ail; does he still get his share? Hey, it was j ust a n idea, but its mea n i n g is that the way society n ow gloats and recom penses its i ntellectuals is not fair.

Another reason to tear it down. Agreed. But there a re a lot of better reasons.

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April I 9 7I

G E R A S S I : Aha, I see

The Sun Also Rises o n your desk. Are you reading

H emingway these days ? SARTRE:

I read them all a long ti m e ago; I ' m j ust rereading this one. I

read an a rticle that said Hemingway was a n anti·Semite and fou ght with all his Jewish friends over this book, because the only J ew i n it is bad. Our i ntelli· gentsia p retends that there's an u nwritten rule that says ifthe villain is the only black man or J ew or whatever in the novel, then the author is sayi ng that all blacks or J ews or whatever a re bad. You r father h ad a fight with h i m , didn't he?

Not over that book. Over For Whom the Bell Tolls. Apparently Heming­ way changed the word " fascist" to "nationalist" in order to please the film­ version producers who did not want to insult our good ally Franco, or some­ thing like that. Fernando called him a filthy opportunist. So I was told, as I was not present for that fight. But I ' m sure their fight had much deeper causes. Maybe Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's third wife and a great reo porter. My father adored her. Probably slept with her. Wasn't the general who sends Jord a n to join the guerrillas [in For Whom

the Bell Tolls] modeled after you r father? I don't think so. I remember once during the war when Hemingway came to dinner early and Fernando had not arrived yet, he asked me if ! had read the novel. When I said no, he said, You should, it's a lot about your fa·

A PR I L 1 971

ther. But both Fernando and Stepha said baloney. I was eleven o r twelve then. Anyway, when they had that fight, I never heard anything about anti­ Semitism. Have you finished rereading The Sun? What is your conclusion? Totally trivial debate. What it shows to me is that the left can n ot j u st fight the right, it always has to fight other leftists as well, wh ich is why, I fear, we wil l never ach ieve-or you , because I ' m too old now-ever ach ieve a de­ cent revolution.

Still an optimist, hey? When did you become so depressed, I mean po­ litically? I n 1 958 when de Gaulle made his coup. I was fifty-three then, and it dawned on me that I would l ive the rest of my life u nder that ridiculous sam­ ple ofanachronism.

Your trip to Cuba didn't recharge you at all ? Yes, when we were there. O ur tal ks with Fidel and especial l y Che were great, and very inspirational. But it didn't l ast long. The repression to h ide the inefficiency became so pervasive. Revolutionaries i n evitably beco m e guilty of the same crimes as those they overth row, and that's more depressing even than de Ga u l le.

Boy, you sure hated him, didn't you ? You never gave him credit for cre­ ating Europe, did you? OK, O K, let's not get into that one again. But you never blamed the United States for the repression in Cuba? The inefficien­ cies you mentioned were caused by the enormous exodus of all the trained,

and hence rich, Cubans to Miami. Even so, until I967, there was almost no repression. The euphoria, the excitement of the revolution, especially dur­ ing OS PAAL and OLAS [large conferences of world and Latin American revolutionary leaders that took place in I966 and I967 in Havana], was mind-blowing. I It's true that there were great inefficiencies. I remember an enormous amount of boxes of oranges rotting on the docks, and Che took me to a depot full ofimported bicycles without tires ("We don't have rubber," he laughed) and another full of snowplows imported from China, in hot Cuba! But any new revolutionary country would make such mistakes. You said so yourselfin your preface to Frantz Fanon's Wretched ofthe Earth. Of cou rse. That's all very normal. B ut you don't arrest and jail those who disagree with you and charge them with bei ng responsible for such begi n n er's mistakes, as Cuba did. Or arrest its intel ligentsia because they critici ze the government, great writers and poets, l i ke [Heberto] Padi l la, for example.2

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But that's not what depressed you, o r made you a pessimist. What did ? De Gaulle? Ce rtainly de G au l le. As I told you , I j u st cou l d not stomach that charla· ta n yap ping about the greatness of France. But true, it started earlier, much earlier. I th i n k my fi rst depression started when I gradu ated from Normale. Sudden ly I real i zed I had to be a normal cog i n the system. It's not that I didn't l i ke teaching. It's that I was now determined a n d defi ned as a teacher. Pi· geon h o led, classified, situ ated. Where was the freedom I claimed we all had, the freedom to accept one's fate? Something wrong with that. I had meant it as a moral tenet, i n the sense that we m ust accept what we do insofar as we are responsible for it. I n other words , my world had become seriou s. The year in Germ a ny was a h iatu s to th at. But j u st a h iatus. Then came the prisoner. of-war camp. S uddenly everyt h i n g changed.

I

became a social bei ng, not a

writer, not a p h i losopher, n ot a teacher, even if l wrote-d uri n g my time i n the stalag. I had become j u st one of a grou p, one of a col lective, not worse or bet· ter than anyo n e else, no m atter how different we each were. It's there that I u n derstood w h at the word " h u ma n ity" really mea nt, why you r father went to Spa i n , why he was goi ng to go back even when he was s u re h is side wou ld lose. B ut, I was discharged. I became a solitary being aga i n . Yes, I joined the resistance, in a way, by writi ng, since with my eyes I cou l d n ot do otherwise. But I was sti l l a n i ndivid u al. Sitting in a cafe, writi ng. Yes, with Castor at the other table. And soon we developed what she cal led a fam i ly. But each of u s were ind ivid uals. We thought. Terrible th i n g, th i n k i ng. Hemi ngway knew that. Don't t h i n k. Go swi m m i n g, fi s h i ng, h u nti ng, anyth ing to avoid th i n king. Th i n king leads to folly.

A new Cartesianism: I think, therefore I ' m crazy. Very good . Seriously though, thinking, I mean real th i n king, what one does alone, at the table, is the opposite of passion, com mitment, bei ng a live. What you then termed "being in the soup" ? Exactly. And that's why you prefer to be with women. Exactly. Men always want to d iscuss ideas, to tell you how they interpret someth i n g. Women tel l you what they feel, what they felt. T h i n k a bout ideas at you r table a n d leave me alone. Tel l me you r experiences, how you felt about them, and I learn somet h i n g n ew, every time. Very rare for a man. Your father was l i ke that; that's why I cou ld spend hou rs ta lking with h i m . You're l i ke that too. Calder is l i ke that. But most men are a royal bore. Like M a l raux. He'll tell

A P R I L 1 971

you why two juxtaposed colors work beautifu l ly, but never what he feels when he looks at th ose two colors.

But all your work is made up of ideas. Wh ich is w h y I m u st test t h e m i n concrete situatio n s , hence m y pl ays and n ovels.

So I don't need to read Being and Nothingness in read or go see No Exit? I n a way that's true. You r Catheri ne never read the former a n d s h e claimed s h e never u nderstood my p h i losop h y, b u t s h e d i d too, because s he read

No Exit,

and

The Flies

and wh atever else you schedu led in you r class

when she was you r student.

Yeah, but I spent hours explaining them, re-creating the es sence in concrete situations . . . Ah, concrete s ituationsl That's itl You personalized m y p h ilosophy by maki ng it collective, because each concrete situ ation you created a p plied to all.

Perhaps, but why does that make you depressed? And what do the crabs have to do with your feeling of being isolated? T h e crabs really began when m y adolescence ended-that is, w h e n I graduated from N ormale to be professor, a cog in the syste m . At fi rst, at Le Havre, I avoided them by writi n g a bout them-in effect, by defi n i n g l ife as nausea, but then a s soon as I tried to o bjectify it, the crabs a ppeared . A sort of psychos i s , halluci n ations . . .

Like the woman in "The Room" ? [One of the short stories in The Wall.) Exactly. At fi rst I just imagined that

I h eard t h i ngs. I rem e m ber the fi rst

time, at the Coupole. Castor and I were hav i n g l u nch when s u dden ly I started heari ng " N apoleon, the l ittle one, the big o n e . . . " Castor d id n ot hear it, so we im mediately assu med I was h a l l uci nati ng. It tu rned out that t here were a bunch of people beh i nd the screen -the Coupole never had s u c h th i n gs­ who were talking a bout N apoleo n . Castor n ever heard it, but she remembers 'how troubled I became. And then those crabs a ppeared w h enever I wal ked someplace. N ot at home. N ot when I was writi ng, j ust w h e n

I was walki ng,

goi ng someplace. Especially, when I went strolli n g on vacation. T h e fi rst time (I discussed it with Castor, when they appeared one day as we were strol l i n g i n

:t.he Midi, is w h e n we concluded that I was goi n g through a depres s i o n , based ;on my fear that I was d oomed the rest of my life to be a p rofessor. N ot that I

!h.ated to teach. But defi n ed. Class ified. Serious. That was t h e worst part, to

(�ave to be serious a bout life. The crabs stayed with me u nti l the d ay I s i m ply

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decided that they bored me and that I j ust wouldn't pay attention to them. You k now, I used to talk to them when I walked alone and they strolled along. s ide. Then I started ignoring them, and little by little they left m e. And then the war came, the stalag, the resi stance, and the big political battles after the war.

When you tried to launch the so-called Third Force, anti-United States and anti-communist? Exactly. But it di d n't work. It attracted too many reactio naries who m ay have been aga i n st U.S. d o m i nation but for the wrong reaso n , out of some rid icu lous moral ity, or anachro n i stic monarch i s m , or religious fervor, or god. k n ows·wh at. And soon we u nderstood , we had to choose. The basic question: w ho was ready, wil l i n g even, to l a u nch a n attack on the other, to lead us i nto a new war that would devastate the planet? Obviously it was the U n ited States. So we had to abandon the T h i rd Force and ally ourselves, as rel uctantly as it was, with Russia. That cost you the support, admiration, and following of almost all

Anglo- Saxon intellectuals. Yet we now know that you were right, that the U nited States had a first-strike policy while the U S S R did not-well, until Gorbachev . . . He did? Apparently, when he heard that the United States had one, so many years later, he asked his generals to prepare one also, and make sure it leaked to the CIA, as a sort of deterrent. But Russia had the deterrent all along. In the late ' 5 0 S , I think, when the Cold War was getting really bad, the Pentagon or CIA or N S A [National Security Agency] , someone in government, or­ dered a feasibility study, and it concluded that a first strike would wipe out all but 6 percent of Russian missile silos. But that was enough to hit many U . S . cities , so they did a study o n D enver-why Denver, w e never learned-and concluded that if just one Soviet nuclear missile made a direct hit on Denver, 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 people would be killed at once and another 5 million within a year, from the radiation. So it was the Soviet deterrent that has kept us all alive, not the other way around. I wish I knew that when I had all those debates with [ David] Rou sset) So during that period, no crabs ? No depression ? N ot u nti l 1 958. We had work to do. I ntens ive. To p u s h France out of NATO, to refuse U.S. bases , to stop sel ling our resou rces to U.S. conglomer. ates. There were ral lies, demon strations, marches, al most every day. And our magazi ne had to lead the way. Then that old man seized power and suddenly

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APRI L ' 971

it dawned o n m e that m y life would be totally absurd, that m y generation was doomed to exist u nder his pathetic and ridiculous assurances of"l a gra ndeur de la Fran ce."

And yet he did s ome of those things you campaigned for, like closing bases, like keeping Britain, the U . S . puppet, out of the European Com­ munity, like telling the world that no country is free if it has foreign bases on its territory. U.s.

Yeah , yeah, but he didn't get us out of NATO, or pick a s uccessor who would contin u e to keep England out of the European U n ion ,4 or n ationalize the U.s. conglomerates that stil l run o u r lives.

Unlike your previous depression, which was personal, about the meaning of your life , that depression was social, meaning no crabs, right? I wou l d have l i ked my crabs to come back. My n ew depression was much worse. The crabs were m i ne. I had gotten used to them . They kept re­ minding me that my life was absurd, yes, nauseati ng, but without challenging my im mortal ity. Despite their mocki n g, my crabs n ever said that my books would not be on the s helf, or that if they were, so what? You h ave to realize that my psychosis was literature. I was poured i nto a world where there was certain i m mortality, a n d it took fifty years to put all that i nto question, to go not from an ivory tower, but still, from a privi leged state of the i ntel l ectual, to the contra ry, challengi n g the role, the use, the j u stification of the i n tellectual. I did that by writi n g The Words, by rereadi ng M a rx, by approach i ng the Com­ m unist Party, and by rea l izing that I had been sim ply protecting myself, tel ling me that the m iseries ofothers were not my affairs, except ofcou rse as I might write about them, but as outside me. Like Fernando had said before he went to fight

in Spain, I don't care if the world starves, I pai nt, I write. It was a way

ofeliminati ng a l l passion from my life, which meant all real fea rs, all am bigu­ ities. I was protected. Wh atever happened, my books would be on the shelf, hence I was i m morta l . For all my anti-religiousness at the ti me, I was almost like a Christian who th i n ks that if he's a n ice guy he may end u p next to god. And your social depression got rid of all that? I ndeed . It th rew me i nto the soup, the sou p of mankind, alienated, ex­ , iploited, i nsec u re, terrified- i n one word, i n nausea. But now it wasn 't Ro· uentin's [the hero of h i s novel Nausea], it was m i ne, all of us, and m ade me realize that my struggle is you rs and vice versa, that there is no escape for any

:q

of us, except that we fi n d our fulfi ll ment, so to speak, fighti ng together. With· but ever thinking that this is a meani ng, only a n act. Mea n i n g has to be cre·

81

A P R I L ' 97'

ated by each of u s , but s ince w e are m ea n i ngless, how ca n w e create mean­ ing?

Yet that was the message, so to speak of all the works you wrote when you were in the grips of your personal depression, that is, when you thought ,

of yourself as privileged but therefore alone, followed by crabs. Like No Exit, The Flies, Dirty Hands, your novels , and then your great play The Devil and the Good Lord. Yes, without my being in it. N oth i n g I wrote then contradicts what I am today-qu ite the contrary. The d ifferen ce is that, instead of descri bing, per­ haps more, activating characters who a re in the soup, I was a chef, cooki ng it, tasting it occasional ly, but servi n g it to others. With The Words and with my relationship to the Gauche Proletarien ne, I ended up i n the soup.

S o that was great. Why blame de Gaulle ? Praise him. H is a n achroni stic monarchism made me realize not only how we are all abs u rd , but also that n ecessity and absurd ity are two aspects of the same coi n. So while I becam e a n activist, I also realized that personally, as all be­ i n gs, I was neither privileged nor m ea n i n gfu l. My activism gave me a sense of pu rpose, true. But my depression, ca used by my awareness that my exis­ tence, like a l l of o u rs, was totally abs u rd, made me realize that I, we, are doomed to n a useating insignificance. My crabs had con sidered me im por­ ta nt, or else why bother me? De G a u l le, ad m i red by the French, the ridicu­ lousness of the Cold War and A merica's d rive to con q u er and control, all that m ade me real ize th at I was not, and n ever would be, sign ificant, nor would a nyone else.

That kind of depression, as you call it- I would term it enlighten

­

ment, rather-often leads to some ki nd of mystical search for salvation. Like Fernando? When I m et h i m , despite his statement that fi rst he paints no matter what, he was very active politically. He was involved in A rtists and Writers Agai nst Fasci sm , a n d was always tryi ng to d rag me i n , and he often went to fight the fascists in the streets. Then of cou rse that i ncredi­ ble com m itment to go fight in Spain. Yet, and I didn't realize it then , he always h a d that mystical trait, did he?

Like when he tells you, and you make Gomez tell Richie in The Roads, " Mondrian does not ask difficult questions . " What does that mean in art? Exactly, that's a mystical statement. But he was always search ing for s ometh i ng, which we never d iscussed. like he read the Bh agavad G ita, and [ J a kob] Bohme and [ M eister] Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, even [Ignati u s of]

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Loyola,5 stuff like that, and if l asked h i m why, he would pass i t off a s widen­ ing his knowledge or whatever. I once asked him why he stopped a particular series of his paintings.

You know, he would start a type of painting and keep doing more and m ore of them until he made one that he thought was the best of the series, and it always was, and then he stopped, and started another series. Why stop, I asked him. "Dead end," he answered. But Stepha once gave me a better ex­ planation: "Your father tries to find god through his paintings. When he re­ alizes that a particular visual concept he's pushing will not get him there, he , stops and tries a new concept." So one day I asked him ifhe believed in god, or at least did he think he could ever find god. H e answered, No, of course not, then added, I remember very clearly, "There is no god but the purpose oflife is to find him." Yes, that was Ferna ndo all right, the last time I saw h i m , wh en we went to that exhibit in New York in 1 946. It's like him, and Gomez, saying one doesn't fight fascism because one is going to win, one fights fascism because it is fascist. You know, I still h ave problems u nderstanding you r father. No one ex­ plai ned art to me better than he did. When we went to the Prado together, and ; he started explai ning h i s beloved Vel azquez, h e was a mazing. He m ade Velazquez come al ive before us. Castor and I cou l d see h i m pai nti n g before our eyes, tel l i ng his models, Tu rn that way, no that way, and feel i n g why that Was the best pose. But I see h i m also skiing with his buddy H eidegger, then

;Walking out on him and his master, the great H u sserl, never to return. But :most important, I t h i n k, and that com es through i n The Age of Reason [the

�fi rst volu m e of The Roads to Freedom tri logy] very wel l , I ' m told, the influence ;that you r father, Gomez, had on me, M athieu or at times Brunet, i n forming in , ;m e my fi rst awareness of why capitalism leads to fascism, why we must be anti·capitalists, why we m u st be revolutionaries. And yet, of course, my doi ng ;h othi ng about it for thirty years.

But in volume four of your Roads, which you never published, you make Brunet become a communist resister. Yes, but without bei ng s u re of what he wou l d do with his com m it ment after the war. "

Which is why you have him killed ? Precisely. And why you sort of drop Gomez in miserable exile in America?

APR I L 1 971

I guess I didn't know what to d o with Gomez either. N o one has had more of an effect on me t h a n you r father. I remem ber how, when his parents showed up i n Paris impoverished after [Kemal] Atatilrk [first president of the Repu b l ic ofTu rkey] expropriated thei r wealth [i n the late 1 920S], and he had to s u p port them. Castor a nd I often visited h i m i n M adrid and then Barcelona, where he worked to make a living-a good living becau se he q u ickly became boss of som e H u ngarian electrical applia nce firm-and when all Spani ards took their si esta, pai nti n g l i ke mad in his stud io. That encou raged me a lot, as I too

had to m a ke a living while ali i wanted to do was write. And that was true

about h i m w h e n I visited you all in 1 946. Fernando had just started to paint aga i n after ten years- right, the Spanish war, then his sti nt as a s py d u ring the war [World War I I], and you all had no money. You lived in a slum and your parents were not al lowed to work. 6 So Fernando spent hours tra nslating th i n gs for s o m e official he hated, while you r mother gave facial massages to her friends. But he pai nted. Fu riously. Perhaps only th ree hours i n bad light. No cafe life this ti me. N o one to exchange a rt for food. And he kept it up. He sti l l does, I gather.

Very much

SO.7

H e's no longer pol itical, I gather.

He's become a kind of pacifist, but certainly in favor of the Viet· namese. He remains full of contradictions . Like, he loves his Vermont hills, which he calls "my Pyrenees," but despises America' s conceit and especially its ultra patriotism. He still can never understand how people accept having to listen to the national anthem whenever they get together, like at every ball game , at races . . . Races ? You mean you have to listen to the anthem before you can bet on the horses ?

Oh yes , at baseball games , football , every public gathering almost, and men have to take off their hats and everyone has to place their hands on the left of their chest, signifying their heart. Do you know that every time one of our politicians makes a speech, especially presidents . he must end it with the phase "God bles s America . " N o wonder you th i n k you have a right to dominate t h e world. A n d yet you r cu ltu re, you r n ovel i sts, you r artists, you r m u sicians, especially jazz, are among the best i n the world. And you are perfectly right to herald them in France.

A PR I L 1 97 1

Boy, what contradictions. But tell me, Stepha stil l teaches a t that school? What does s h e teach?

The Putney S chool, a bo ard ing high school [in Putney, Vermont] . Very exp ensive for the rich, totally free for the poor. Very progre ss ive but very hip

too, with great music and art. And self-sufficient , m ean ing the kids take care of the farm, milk the cows, clean the shit in the stables-and that included the Kenn edy girls, since they were there when I u sed to go. I even t a ught his­ tory for a semester once when the re gula r historian got very sick. Stepha teaches a lmost anyth i ng they need. Russian, French , S pani sh, German, an­

cient history, Greek, Latin, whatever. She loves it, and they love her. But Fernando never made it as an artist, did he? Why? He's a great artist, fantastic colorist . . . Did it sou r h i m ? Is he bitter? Not at all. For a while I felt guilty about it, because I had been art critic for Time and then Newsweek magazines , and I tho ught I should do more for him. But he wouldn't come down from Vermont to ass-lick the gallery own­ ers , and a lth ough he was an abstract expressionist, at lea st by th e mid- ' 6 o s , he was not a tachiste, a spontanist. He composed his abstractions very care­

fully and hence did not fit into any vogue or school prevalent at any time. I take it he lost all interest i n philosophy? When I stayed with you a l l in New York those few d ays before my trip, 8 I did try to discuss Heidegger with him, but he woul d n 't tal k about h i m , except to pass him off as an anti-Sem ite responsible for the blackballing of their mentor H usserl. And in all the letters since, there has never been a mention of my work. I don't thi n k he read it.

I th i nk you're right. He never ta lks to me about philosophy either. As for the letters, I have them-they're between Castor a nd S t epha You two men never wrote to each other. Why? .

First of all, I never write to m e n, ever-except business, of cou rse, l i ke publishers. I write o n ly to women, love letters- ha-ha. But besides, Fernando and I got i nto some problem, I think I can't remem ber.9 In 1 9 6 4 you refused to go see him. I was writi ng. I don't i nterru pt that even for Castor.

Come on, Sartre, I 've seen you in te rrupt Flaubert for the kids of the G P [La Gauche Prol e tarienne]

.

Well, now, yes , and I would do it for Fernando and Stepha too. But n ow I'm a political animal, as you say.

And in 1964 y o u were in the thick of social depression, remember?

8S

AP R I L ' 97 '

True. I guess I was too involved , too lazy o r somet h i n g then. But, wel l, too many years had pas s e d . And I was i n the m i d st oftrying to write an eth ics. As you know, that was w h at I wanted to write most. Even when you were writing Being and Nothingness? You started that

during the war, didn't you? During the Phony War. ' O I got obsessed, writi ng as fast a s my hand could move. Then, i n prisoner-of-war cam p there were a b u nch of priests who wanted to know what H usserl and Heidegger were all about, so I gave a few lectu res, and i n the process realized that what I rea lly wanted to write was an ethics. But fi rst I had to place man in the world, u ndersta n d the human con· d ition , and so I retu rned to Being and Nothingness. In doing that- I had two thousand pages of notes by the n - I had to u nd erstan d m a n ' s emotions, his behavior. Anyway, out of a l l that came my small books o n emotion s a n d the psyc he. I lost most of th at, all the notes, some of th& d rafts. I resented the war terribly at the time. N ot later, of cou rse, when I u nderstood the political sign ifica nce of com mon n ess. B ut then , I was all in favor offighti ng the N azis -j u st not me.

Had you not been part of the Popular Front in '3 6 ? N o, n ot really. Castor a n d I d i d n 't even vote. We were all for it, in a sen se, l i ke, when they paraded d own M ontparnasse, we cheered and were happy there were so many of them, but we d i d n 't join i n.

And you weren't part of the Artists and Writers Against Fascism. N o. It was only for those who were well known, and I was sti l l

a

nobody.

You r father kept trying to get me i n . . . He wasn't well known either then, was he? Oh, yes, h e had exh i bited s i nce ' 93 ' at the Salon d e S u ri ndependants. And in ' 35 I th i n k, at a m ajor s h ow of Span i s h pai nters, with Picasso, M i ro, a n d others. Anyway, he was always trying to get me to joi n , but . . . and m i nd you I d i d n 't resent h i s pressu re. On the contrary, I kept asking him what went on at the meeti n gs, and I was seeing him all the time the n , l iterally every day. B u t he fai led . And I was sti l l apol itical, i n the true sense ofthe word , at the sta­ lag. All I wa nted was to write. And I figured if I cou ld establish m a n in the world, then I cou l d write my eth ics. But it wou ld have to wait u ntil I wrote the Critique of Dialectical Reason, w h ich places man in society. And that I wrote i n totally d ifferent con d itions.

In what way?

Being and Nothingness I wrote i n great part as a prisoner and then in

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APR I L 1 971

Paris cafes d uring t h e occu pation . T h e

Critique

I wrote mostly here [i n h i s

apartment], fu l l o fcoryd rane [an a m pheta m i n e], all t h e way t h rough.

I heard you had prepared a rigid plan. chapter by chapter. Yes, but I never stuck to it. I ' d wander off. Actually I often h ad no idea what I was goi n g to write u nti l I started writing it, so it becam e fu n , exciti ng.

M ay 1 9 7 1

G E R A S S I : 1 reread Castor's memoirs during the break [I was then teaching at the University of Paris V I I I ] and came across her statement that during the Popular Front "we were voyeurs rather than participants . " How do you justify that? S A R T R E : It's h ard . The rallies, the marches, the demonstrations were

a l l actions we agreed with , but it wasn't our thing; I mean, the Popular Front was a kind of rising by workers, and while we com pletely sympath ized with workers, we weren't workers, so if we participated in their th in g, it would be as strangers. Workers seized their factories. What was I s u pposed to do, seize my office? Which is just m y desk. Ah, come on, Sartre, you've been going to every leftist demonstration since Ridgway popped upP But that was after the war. By then I was m uch more political. I was try·

i n g to explain how I j u stified o u r i naction i n 1 936, with my political con· sciou sness of '36.

Yet Castor wrote that you were anti-Blum [Leon Blum, France's Popu· lar Front leader and prime minister when the Spanish Civil War began in 1 9 3 6] for closing the frontier,2 and that "for the next two and a half years , our lives were the S panish Civil War." Yet you did not participate in any demon­ stration supporting the [S panish] Republic.

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M AY 1 971

The other day, one of the kids from the G P told me that "since you a re so wel l known, j us t a littl e bit of participation goes a long way, becau se the press, the world pays attention to what you do. But for those ofus who are un· known, we have to go all the way." I n 1 936 I was not known at all. N either

Nausea nor The Wall had been p u blished. I would have been j u st another body, noth ing else. Like the rest of us.

I understand that now. But i n '36 . . . Yet your two best friends were in Spain, Fernando , and Nizan as a cor· respondent for the communist daily Ce Soir? And in August you travel to Scandinavia with your stepfather and mother.

Weird, h u h ? And I argued with h i m a l l the way about Spai n . But you never broke with him ?

Never. To the end. I told you I was never a rebel. But, I k now, a rguments are not acts. I f l am what I do, then at least, you cou ld rightfu l ly say that I was not political. And in your classes , you and Castor?

We were certa i n ly to the far l eft of most of our students , but we kept such opi nions mostly to ou rselves. What about Colette Audry [one of Beauvoir's students and later a well

·

known novelist and screenwriter] ? She was already by then a militant Trot·

kyo

s 1St, no.>

Not in class. You know, today, a teacher can voice his opinion, even a subversive one, in the classroom, and no one says anything or com p l a i ns. But in those days, we had to be carefu l . We had to be "objective" or the adminis· tration could bring u p sanctions against us. As militant as Audry was out of class, she had to be very carefu l i n class. Somewhat like in the United States now. We have a status called tenure, which sort of guarantees our freedom of expression, once we get it, which takes a lon g time. B ut even so, a teacher cannot criticize Israel too much, or the administrations get angry

.

Are all administrators anti- Palestinian? Generally, yes , but often because of money. Most financial gifts to col­ 'leges tend to come from wealthy Jews, and most Jews in America, like in Wrance for that matter, are so anti-Palestinian that they could be accused of ::racism, but you can't say that publicly either. Was Israel's treatment of Pales­

�ti

ns a problem in your third-way party? What was its real name?

nia

89

M AY 1 97 1

R D R, Rassemblement Democratique Revol utionnaire [Democratic Rev­ ol utionary G atheri ng]. N o-we broke up too soon. Are you still in contact with your co-organizers ?

No. As you know, I h ad p u blic debates with Rousset when we broke u p. You 've seen the little book we published, Entretiens sur /a politique [Conver­ satio ns on Politics]. You should i nterview h i m . A m i l itant Trotskyist turned G a u l list. He's not i m portant today, but he can give you an idea of what post­ war politics was like in Fran ce. He tried to m ove the R D R into the forefront by gu i d i ng it to the right, which is why I broke it up. You did , personally?

You didn't know. Yes, I schedu led a convention of all mem bers, a gen­ eral call to discuss all iss u es. The board, which Rousset a n d a mild socialist n a m ed [Gerard] Rosentha l controlled , was against it, so it refused to fu nd the convention, so I did, with my own money, and from the platform called for its d issolution, explai ning why a third force was no longer poss i ble in the i nten­ s ity of the Cold War, cal l i n g on all adherents of the RDR to join the left, with­ out s pecifyi ng which [party], but poi nting out that we m u st all be aware now that America wants to control us all, economically at least. Were Jeanson and Lanzmann with you then?3

lanzmann was already too occupied with his Jewish n ess. J eanson was extremely m i l itant, long to the left of us, u ntil the Algerian War, when he re­ cru ited us i nto h i s sedition ist network. He was an incredible man, a heavy drin ker, a great womanizer, at l east u ntil he got married to one who agreed with h i m com pletely, but always an extremely cou rageou s militant. He lives in Calon near Bordeaux now; you should go see him, interview him.4 During this period, from the end of the war until de Gaulle 's coup d' etat in I 9 5 8 , you were haunted by neither crabs nor depression?

We keep calling them crabs because of my play [ The Condemned ofA/­

tonal, but they were really lobsters.5 Even Castor occasionally refers to them as your crab s . Anyway, they were gone then ?

O h , yes, they left m e d u ri ng the war. You know, I 've never said this before, but sometimes I m iss them-when I'm lonely, or rather, when I ' m alone. W h e n I g o t o a movie that e n d s u p bori ng, or not very gripping, a n d I re­ member how they used to sit there on my l eg. Of cou rse I a lways knew that they weren't there, that they didn't exist, but they served a n im portant pur­ pose. They were a warn i n g that I wasn't thi nking correctly or focusing on

go

MAY 1 971

what was i mportant or that I w a s head ing up t h e wrong track, all t h e while telling me that my life was not right, not what it should be. Wel l , no one tells me that anymore. Castor tel ls me what's wrong with what I write. I n fact, speaking of The Condemned, she told m e that my origi nal end i n g was awfu l , and made me rewrite i t fi ve ti mes.

But during the S panish Civil War, the crabs, the lobsters , were still with you? Less and less. As I told you , I was begi n n i n g to get fed u p , so I would simply say beat it, and they did, for a while anyway. I th i n k what was h ap pen­ ing was that my depression, which was a personal depression, caused , I i n ­ sist, by t h e fact that I was dread i n g my life a s a teacher, writing i n o ff h o u rs, like sneaking to write, was suddenly bei n g put i nto a wider context, one in which I would be facing fascis m , we all would. I n 1 937 I was given a choice: Lyon or Laon. I guess everyone in their right m i n d wou ld have chosen Lyon , a great city with fantastic foods. But Laon was near Paris, and Castor had got­ ten a khagne i n Paris and I wanted to be near her, so I chose Lao n . O n ly one year! In 1 937 1 was offered Lycee Paste u r, and stayed there u ntil I got d rafted. So I should have been m uch happier. Wel l , I was, on a personal level : I was i n Paris, saw Castor every day, lived i n a charming l ittle hotel at the ave n u e d u Maine, at t h e e n d of La G aite, h a d my breakfast a t L a Liberte, and wrote there too. What more could I ask for? But Fran ce was becoming fascist. The Popu­ lar Front had fai led. When it became clear that the Spanish Republic was go­ ing to lose, at fi rst I thought, Wel l , it's a tragedy, but it is j u st Spai n , it won't come to us. Then little by l ittle I could n 't ignore my eyes and ears a n y more. There were the Croix de Feu and the Action Francraise, the N azi p u n ks ru n n i ng wild, the stu pid speeches by the politicia ns, and then of course the Sudeten­ land and M u nich. I became absolutely certain that war h ad becom e inevit­ " able. Castor and Olga were on vacation , that s u m mer of'38, taki ng long walks through the M idi. I sent them a telegram s ayi ng: War inevitable. And my de­ pression was no longer personal.

Except for your communist friends , Nizan . . . No, no! That came later, when the Soviets signed the Nonaggression Pact with the N azis. I did n't object to that i n itself-after all, at M un i c h , the

'

Western powers had aba ndoned R u ssia. There could be no doubt that H itler wou ld next go after Poland. He got Austria without firing a shot. H e got the Sudetenland without a shot. Clearly he wanted Poland n ext, and Stalin was perfectly j ustified to thi n k that the West would l et him ta ke it. So he had to

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MAY ' 97'

prepare for it. N o, what was terri ble about the French com m u n ists was that they applauded the pact. That Sta l i n had to do it, fi ne. B ut no French co m m u ­ n i st s h o u l d approve it for France. I n stead , w h e n t h e wa r started , they called it a capitalist war, and refused to back France a n d England . That's what was dis­ gu sting. French com m u n i sts were more Sta l i n ist than Stalin. But n ot N izan. He refused to adhere to the French com m u n ist pacifist li ne, joi ned the army a n d sent his party card to his party boss, M a u rice Thorez. Once Hitler attacked Russia everyth ing changed, of course. Suddenly the com m u n ists were the great resistance fighters, and we were all good a l l ies. I n my group, with the com­ m u n ists, were all sorts offormer anti-co m m u n ists l i ke Ca mu s , and the Cath­ o l i c writer Mau riac.

And that's what volume four of The Roads to Freedom was all about, the resistance. Why did you give it up ? Because of vol u me three. That's the one I liked best. Fra n kly, I did too. So did Castor and la famil/e. B ut the critics did not. The reviews were all negative, some horrendous. It seems no one l iked to read about French officers abandoning their troops an d ru n n ing l i ke mad to escape the enemy. Yet I saw that myself. My officers a ll fled. Fernando told me the same happened on h i s front. 6 So I abandoned the p roject of vol u me fou r.

October 1 97 1

S A R T R E : Welcome back. H ow's Ferna n do? G E RA S S I ;

He was operated on for cancer of the esophagus . A tough

one. He's OK now, but the doctor told me it can't last. Et la petite [Catheri ne Yel loz] ? She went with yo u ?

Yes. S h e was great. We were a t the hospital almost all the time, but she

;-ras very helpful, especially to Stepha, who can't really see or hear very well anymore. like me, h u h ?

Worse. And she can't walk without terrific pain. Do you know that she is so fond of her garden, and she knows her flowers and vegetables so well by

touch, that every day she crawls to the garden and can feel which are weeds

and which not. And mind you, her hands hurt her so much from arthritis that when she plays the piano she can't hold back the tears . But she plays anyway?

Whenever she gets depressed. S he says that only music works . Isn't s h e too deafto hear it?

She claims she hears it through her fingers. How about you, did you r Vi n ce n nes classes sta rt yet?

Yep. And how was your summer? During the s u m mer, noth i ng. I n J u ly everyone prepares for Augu st, and

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i n A u gust everyon e i s away. France comes t o a d ead stop i n the s u m m er, as you k now. But since the return, all hell has l et loose. [ [I nterior M i nister Ray­ m o nd] Marcel l i n has been goi n g apes h it s i nce the retu rn, arresti ng anyone he c a n _ So the G P has been escalati ng its occu pations, its confrontations, and it' l l get worse.

And I hear you have been participating in some of their actions , like occupations of empty buildings , with the intention of letting the homeless live there. The G P kept doing that, a n d M a rcel l i n ' s goons kept arresti ng them, and beatin g them u p, so some of us decided to join them, to see ifthey would beat us u p too-you k now, famous people like [M ichel] Foucault a n d Claude Mau­ riac a nd I , a n d of course the cops d i d n 't attack u ntil we left at night-well, I had left, feel i n g gui lty, I ad m it, but as you know I can 't see very well, and I h ave trouble wal ki n g. There were no chairs, and I have trou ble stayi ng on my feet for too long. Anyway, Foucault and M a u riac stayed , a n d the event got great coverage i n the press. A n d I m u st say, no one condem ned me for leav­ i ng, n ot even Le Figaro. Of course not, since everyone. or at least the students , and the media,

knows very well that it was your Critique which really set the stage for the in­ tellectual justification of the M ay events. In that work, you explained by us­ ing examples ranging from the French Revolution to, as I would describe it, people waiting for a bus on Third Avenue during rush hour, that revolutions spring forth out of a group united by the combination of a dream and a pur­ pose. The bus line, a long one of folks waiting after a bad day's alienating and basically meaningless office work. A bus rolls by packed to the rafters, with no more room, hence refusing to open its doors . Then another bus, equally packed, rolls by, ignoring the folks waiting bitterly. Incredibly, an empty bus with s ign reading "out of service" comes by next and is stopped in front of the line because of the traffic. Everyone stares longingly. Suddenly, one of the people in line pushes his hand through the front door's rubber door-guard and forces the doors open. The driver yells that he's off duty. Where are you going? asks the assailant. To the garage, answers the driver. Knowing that he lives on the way, the rebel says, Well , you can drop me off on the way. Then everyone else waiting in line piles in. A group-in-fusion is formed. Where do you live ? O K, stop on Forty-seventh Street. And you? OK, stop on Sixtieth. And you? On Ninety-sixth, but four blocks east; I have to get a transfe r for another bus because I cannot walk with my oid legs. Hey

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driver, o n Ninety·sixth, make a detour, go east four blocks . But I 'll get in trou· ble. No you won' t, we'll give you a statement. And someone proceeds to write on a piece of paper that they all are responsible for commandeering the bus and ordering the driver to go out of his way a bit for old folks, poor folks , needy folks. They all sign. And they all start talking to each other. Where do you work? What do you do? You have kids ? By the time the bus dropped off the illegal pas sengers, a whole new conception of life was born.

A revolution ? Yes, but very small. Spontaneous. And extremely moral. Every passenger' s life is changed. So is the driver's. By the end he too , like the rest, was laughing and singing and wishing everyone well. So, tell me, Sartre, are you merely supporting the maos [the Maoists, which is what the left dubbed the GP] or have you j oined them-are you now a Maoist? Fi rst of a l l , th anks for making my poi nts so l ucid, so clear. That was beautifu l . As for the maos, u ndersta n d , they do not advocate terror-quite on the contrary. They believe that peo p l e must m a ke all decisions that affect their lives.

Right out of the Cultural Revolution. But that means massive decen· tralization ? How is that pos sible in our modern world? Look h ow well it worked at Lens. There you saw that a constitutional govern ment's traditional "rule of law" just does not apply to the con d ition s , needs, t h e real ity o fo rd i n a ry fol ks. Laws in France, as i n a l l Western "democ­ racies," especially in America as I u nd ersta n d , are m ade to d efend t h e status quo, to defend the sacred ness of private property. H ence they ignore the feel­ i ngs, the hopes, the needs of ord i n a ry fol k. J ust l i ke you showed m e w ith that story about t h at poor wom a n who accidenta l ly k i lled her you n g son . . .

The case that eventually destroyed Judge Bazelon' s faith in the Ameri· can justice system? Exactly. O n ly popular j u stice c a n deal with s u c h cases, and pop u l ar j u s ­ tice is one w here a l l t h e people i n t h e neighborhood o r factory or m i n e, a n d their fam i lies, c a n participate. And o f cou rse t h e o n l y way s u c h trials, b u t a l s o decisions o fevery kind, l i ke where t o b u i l d a hotel, o r a road, or a m arket, o r a ch urch, can take place is by l i m it i ng the decision. m aking p rocess to those directly affected by them, to what your stud e nts call "AG "s

rales,

[assemblees gene­

general assem bl ies, where policies of the U niversity of Paris VI I I , Vi n ­

cennes, were decided].2

And that can only happen if all property is communally held? Not necessarily. That is t h e ulti m ate goal, t o b e s u re. But i n Len s , the

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mines were not expropriated. A decision o n new safety regulations was made, and the owners put them i nto effect. They were condem ned to pay s u m s to the victims, and they d id. None of which was ordered by a state court. J ust a vote by the people of that com m u n ity. How did the Lens trial get started? Fi rst came the demonstrations, protesting the arrest of some of the s u rvivi n g mi n ers for n egligence. Then the cry changed to demanding that the owners be put o n tri al . Then the mayor of Lens, a socialist, was asked to offer h is city ha l l . Then somehow it got organized a bit by the G P, who asked me to come down and be the "j udge"-that is, the sort of master of ceremon ies. Ex­ cept for the s u m m ation, all I d i d was point to someone who wanted to say someth i ng, then to the n ext one. I n a way, one can say that the whole th i ng spru ng forth spontan eously.

And that's the key, isn't it? That's what defines the G P as Maoists , their reverence, so to speak, for the spontaneous demands of ordinary folk? Th at' s part. The oth er part, perhaps as i m porta nt, is their morality. Maoism as it is now defi n ed i n Fra nce, beca use of the G P, is moral Marxism. Th i n k of the G P's recent actions. Occu pations of empty buildi ngs, givi ng them to the homeless, a nd stayi n g there to fight the cops ordered to evict the homeless. O r Fauchon [the fa nciest and most expensive gou rmet food store in Paris, right on the Cham ps- Elysees; the G P seized it one day, then distrib­ uted the food to the poor Africa n s living n earby in the 1 8th arrond issement]. Or what they did the other day at the Goutte d'Or [a neighborhood i n Paris pop u l ated mostly by poor Algerian i m m i gra nts]. They started yel l i ng at the cop d irecti n g traffic in the center of the main cross roads, tau nting h i m , Why do you work for the repressing forces ? You also belong to the working class, why d o you fight you r fellow class mem bers, et cetera? They were stationed all arou n d h i m , and as some of their com rades stopped all traffic, at the mo­ ment when there was the biggest crowd, some from each d i rection started advancing on h i m . Finally they reached h i m a n d q u ickly disarmed h im . Then they yelled to h i m and the crowd: " Now you are l i ke all of us, exploited, dom­ i n ated , a member ofthe u nderclass, demea n ed l i ke the rest of us. This thi ng," they said holding up his gun, "is part of your bosses' dom i n ation. Without it you are part of us." And before more cops cou ld arrive, they gave back his gu n ( h avi n g taken out the a m m u n ition ) and d isappeared. All moral gestures. A nd as you know, they created Secou rs Rouge [Red Aid, a free health and le­ gal -aid service offered to a l l , ru n by doctors, n u rses, and lawyers], with vans

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equipped for emergencies, wh i c h dash t o the s l u m s whenever they hear of a fire or an accident there. They end u p having to turn over their patients to reg­ ular paramedics or officials, of cou rse, but they always arrive fi rst, an d they have doctors who can administer l ifesavi ng measures im mediately. S i nce they are not sa nctioned by the government, they are illegal . But revol utionary moral ity can not but be i llegal. And do you adhere to their decisions ?

Absol utely. When Cornell i nvited me to give a series of lectu res there, I said no, not as long as America i s involved in its war of aggression o n the peo­ ple of Vietnam. So, as you know, I never went. Do you condone all their actions ?

Most. We do have a rguments. I keep i n s i sti ng that they s hould be a party that never lies. When they m ake mistakes, they should reveal the m , an­ alyze the m , and expl a i n them, openly, l i ke i n a n article i n La Cause du Peuple. [The People's Cause, a free weekly newspaper p u bl ished by the G P from 1 968 to 1 972. It q uickly gai ned a huge circu l ation among you ng people, m aking Marcel l i n livid. He ban n ed it, and ordered its " responsible editor" a rrested. So Sartre was listed as responsible ed itor, causing de Gaulle to s hout before he died, " France does not arrest its Voltai res." This may h ave sounded great to him, but it was wrong, since Voltai re had i ndeed been arrested by the French government.] You' re ending up a real romantic, Sartre.

Ha-hah. You know, when I asked Fidel why he gave up his good l ife to make the revol ution, he an swered, " Because I ' m a romantic!" A romantic! I exclaimed. "Of course. I bel ieve i n j ustice. But there is no justice in the world. So I'm a romantic." So when are you going to put it all on paper, I mean, your long-des ired ethics ? I

started many ti m es, as you know, and I real ly got it going in prepa rin g for my tal k a t Cornel l . I h a d entitled it History a nd Politics [now titled Ethics

and History]. My main point was goi ng to be that there can never be an ethi­ cal code of action u nless there's total freedom fi rst, which meant that moral­ ity is determ i ned by man's fight against those who l i m it man's freedom. H is­ tory, hence, determi nes eth ics. And, conversely, eth ics changes h istory. I n a revolution then, the ethical j ustification for killing someone changes at each stage ?

Preci sely. Every revol ution that I have studied has always stopped s hort

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of executing its worst enem ies, l i ke t h e top echelon ofthe previo u s repressive regi me, because that layer a lways adapts. Those who are executed are the tortu rers, but they were mere cogs acting u nder orders; they were also vic­ tims of the repressive apparatus and hence could have been reeducated and salvaged. They did execute the top Nazis after the war.

Yes, but th at was vengeance of the win ners. Those who com m it crimes aga in st h u manity certa i n ly deserve the death penalty. But history has s hown

that only such criminals a re executed if they lose all thei r p ower. Do you thin k

that the leaders of you r cou ntry w h o com mitted crimes against h u man ity in Vietnam, and on all levels mind you , tortu ri ng, murdering i n n ocents, poison­ i ng l ivestock and foodstuffs, all as grave and disgusti ng as any savagery by the Gesta po, will ever be charged, much less executed , for cri mes against hu­ man ity? Of course not, j ust as they weren't charged for such crimes in the Philippines, or against Native Americans , or for murdering thousands of noncombatants at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or for the millio n children un­ der the age of eleven who die every year in Latin America because American mining corporations pollute their drinking water, or the B ritish for their fire-bombing of noncombatants at Dresden. But they are the weak, who do not have the power to apply the laws of crime against humanity, justified in seeking vengeance ? I s revanchism ethically j ustifiable ?

As revolutionary j ustice, yes. Would that not lead to vigilantism?

Perha ps, if that is a com m u n a l decision, maybe. We h ave a serious problem here. Laws are enacted to protect the rich, the powerful, the elites. N o l aw exists pri marily to help the poor, except insofar as it applies also

to them, but enacted origi nally for the elites. Agreed. So the l aws defining crimes against h u m a n ity are laws meant to justify the power ofthe powerful. The culprits may very well have violated those laws, l i ke the N azis. But they were ultimately executed not for having violated them, but because their exe­ c utions reinforce the system whereby the powerfu l have the right to impose them. But, l e t me bring up a concrete example, which worries m e . Cuba,

1 9 6 0 . Fidel puts o n trial the Batista torturers . Almost a people's trial, insofar as anyone could testify, and indeed hundreds of folks who were tortured , or who saw their loved ones tortured to death , did testify. The evidence is over-

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whelming. Not even Time magazine challenged that. I ndeed, it claimed that the trials were a catharsis, saving the country from a wild bloodbath of vengeance. At the same time, the media concluded that because the tortur­ ers were executed, 365 of them, it showed that Castro was not just a bour­ geois reformer, as Time and the United S tates hoped, but a genuine revolu­ tionary, and so decided to condemn him. Now my question: should the torturers have been executed, when we all knew, and Castro knew, that the real culprits were the top echelon of Batista's government, specifically the bosses ofhis regime, namely the owners of United Fruit, IT&T, and the other Amer­ ican corporations for whom Batista and his henchmen exploited the people of Cuba? I agree that, u n der an ideal situation , the torturers could have been re­ habilitated. But I also agree with Fidel, that at that moment a blood bath had to be avoided, and these torturers were scu m , after all, so if executi ng them for thei r proven cri m es, even if the president of IT&T is u ltimately responsi­ ble, will avoid that bloodbath, then eth ically their execution was justified-as you showed so wel l in you r play [The Cell].3 But had the trials taken place a year later and with no bloodbath to avoid, then no, their executions would not have been justified.

And had Fidel caught the owner of IT&T? In 1 960, yes. In 1 965? . . . What's you r view? I am so totally opposed to capital punishment that it creates a problem.

I was, as you read, completely in accord with the executions in 1 9 6 0 . I n 1 9 6 S ? I would have rather condemned the IT&T president to twenty years of cleaning latrines with a toothbrush. So you see the problem.

How do you situate the Red Army Faction in this? You mean the Baader-Meinhof grou p ? In context, they were totally justified. Remember that context. The shah [of I ra n] comes to Berli n a nd the students protest peacefu lly. They are severely beaten by the s h a h ' s security goons and the German police who shoot and kill one student, Benno Oh ne­ sorgo The pro-U.S. p ress then yells that the real responsible one was Rudi Dutschke [leader ofthe student protesters] and he is shot i n the head. From a moral and revolutionary poi nt of view, the group's rampage and m u rders of German industrialists are absol utely j u stified. But . . . you see my problem ­ all ethics depend on circu m stan ces. I guess that' s why you haven't written yours yet . . .

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At o n e ti me, after I wrote o u t t h e notes for Cornell , I had planned to write my pol itical testament. I did d iscuss it with some of the guys from the G P. But I con c luded that it made no sense. A pol itical testament is a criticis m o f realpolitik. B u t for a revol utionary that makes no sense, s i nce all realpoliti k is rejected. Sti l l , I keep toy i n g with the idea of a revo l utionary moral ity. I tried in Italy, you know, when I was i nvited at the G ramsci I nstitute to explain my position. The m aterialists, the so-called stra ight M a rxists who refuse to con­ sider any eth ical questions i n thei r historical vision ofthe class struggle, were real ly outclassed then by a l l the partici pants from the Soviet states, especially the Czechs, who attacked the com m u n ist structu re through its bureaucracy, which was clearly the i m moral ity of bureaucracies. I decided I would write about it a l l in vol ume two of my Critique some day. Meanwhile. what happened to your trial ? It was for defamation of the police?

The one about [the n ewspaper] Tout?4 [As the " responsible editor" for the paper, Sartre had been charged with defamation ofthe police for claiming that they system atically beat u p gays whenever they caught them.] N oth ing. Dropped. The one a bout the s u itcases? [The supporters of the " M an ifesto of the

1 21 "

were d u bbed " s u itcase carriers" I)y the press for their advocacy of

carrying money, medici ne, a n d arms to the Algerian revolutionaries.] Also d ropped. No. I mean the most recent one, charging you and La Cause du Peuple with defamation for claiming that the police systematically resort to torture.

The trial itself, ifit takes place, is noth i ng. But it brought out some nice l ittle contradictions. Like, for exam ple, the G P says, Everything from the workers. OK. That mea n s they don't need i ntel l ectuals, or that i ntellectuals are workers and no better and no worse than any other worker. Fi ne, we all agree. But then, La Cause du Peuple i s seized by the authorities and an order forbiddi n g its publ icatio n is issued by the govern ment. So the G P publishes a n ew issue denou nci ng the cops, the government, the ed i ct, everyth i n g, and i n the process accuses t h e police o fwidespread corru ption. S o al l t h e violations, ignori n g a govern ment order, defamation ofthe pol ice, et cetera, are put aside so that the responsible ed itor, me, ca n be arrested. But after de G a u l le, and Pompidou, too-you k now, he said that Fra nce will not arrest Sartre-they're stuck. M eanwhi le, Castor and I and a few of our wel l-known friends are d is­ tributi n g the pa per very p u blicly. The press takes our pictu res a n d plasters them on their front pages. There's Sartre and Castor and some actresses

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hawking La Cause du Peuple. What can t h e govern ment d o now? Well, they decide to ignore the public demonstration and instead focus on the defa ma­ tion. But they don't want a trial. The cops do, the m i n ister ofthe i nterior also, but not Pompidou. So what's n ext? The GP claims that they don't use or even court famous people, right? Everyone is equal. I ntel lectuals are no better than workers. All true. But their paper is saved because they got i ntel lectuals to hawk it. If[Jean-Pierre] Le Dantec [a well-known ad herent ofthe G P] had been the res pon sible ed itor and had been distributi ng the paper in the street, he would h ave been arrested, jailed, probably beaten, and the papers, the press, all materials seized and destroyed. So as long as we live i n a bou rgeois state, we end up at times profiting from thei r l aws. Right? The people want free· dom, the bourgeoisie wants the law. Yes, but it's not that simple, at least u ntil the revol ution.

Yet when a revolution says that intellectuals must be part of the people, you object, like the Padilla case. Revolutionary Cuba does not treat its i ntellectuals as workers. They have s pecial status. Look who's Fidel's ambassador here [Alejo Carpentier, a Cuban novelist who was then a mbassador to Fra nce]. And u ntil a revol ution can change by education the h abits ofits mil ita nts, it will conti n u e to give its intellectuals special status. But to si ngle out Padilla because of "anti-revolu­ tionary attitude" is something else aga i n . J ust what is a counterrevol utionary attitude, do you know?

In the case of Padilla it was smoking pot and saying I don't care about the law. He implied that poets are exempt from such laws . I think the law is terrible. I 've smoked pot since the Korean War. But I won't smoke it in Cuba. Not because I think they're right to ban it. But because it's a young revolu­ tionary country, trying its best against massive interference and sabotage by the richest and most powerful nation on earth. But you agree that all laws i n a revolutionary cou ntry should not be laws but agreements discussed and agreed u pon by popu lar assem blies, not by a dictate from some entity sitti n g a bove the people?

Yes , theoretically. But we have to live in the situation as it is. No social­ ism can succeed without some repressive measures as long as the United States dominates the world, since it will resort to almost anything, even, eventually, I am convinced, phony causes to justify invasions and war, to crush a socialist, or even neutralist, state. You yourself warned us that Amer­ ica was willing to launch World War I I I to save laissez-faire capitalism, and

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you were right. We are alive today only because Soviet Russia had a deter­ rent. Marx warned us well, when he said that the first country to go socialist had to be the one with the most developed proletariat, hence the richest country. How can we expect Cuba to resist this terrible bully without all sorts of nonrevolutionary measures, like a strong army, an extremely aware intel­ ligence service, and, unfortunately, yes , repression. Look what the United States tried to do at the B ay of Pigs. Not just an invasion, but one done with the help of one of the worst bastard dictators in the world [Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua] . It has overthrown every decent government in Latin America it considers "neutralist" enemies. Any country that wants to sell its goods to the highest bidder and buy its needs from the lowest bidder is an "enemy of democracy, " according to the U nited S tates. Considering all that, I think the Cuban regime has been unbelievably mild in its repression. I completely agree with you in the politico-economic context. But to condemn a n "attitude"? Aren't we now back to where we started today? Morality! Isn't your

whole point that the political is moral and the moral is political? I n deed. But for that, the revolution must be waged from below, like M ay ' 68, not by a small ban d of i ron-w i lled ideologues. Sartre, if we wait for the empty bus to roll by and for a bunch of strangers to seize it, we're going to wait for one hell of a long time. And then, what happened ? The next day, everyone on that bus was back at work, serial· ized as before, with only a wonderful memory that they once j ointly were a "group-in-fusion, " as you say, that they once j ointly ran the bus . I n h istory, fifty years is nothi ng. The C u ltural Revol ution will not be for­ gotten . Forget its excesses. Focu s on what it meant, on what it said, namely t hat people decide policies, ad m i n i strators carry them o ut. The CP kids are convinced of that. They gen u i nely believe that we are all equal, that if you h ave an I Q Of1 25 and I h ave one of 25, our experiences are equal, you r s uffer­ i n g is eq ual to m i ne, you r hopes j u st as valid as m i ne, and that a h uman soci­ ety m u st treat you and me on that bas is. That message is i n grai ned some­ w here, and will s u rge aga i n someday. You' re treading on psychology there . I s that the reason for your break

with [ Bernard] Pingaud, [ Jean- Bertrand] Pontalis, and others ? It's related. I n fact there were two crucial issues. One was waged by [Andre) Corz [ch ief editor for Les Temps Modernes). He clai med that the u n i­ versities had become such im portant steppi ng-stones for the elitist system,

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such a propaganda tool of that system , that they should be boycotted , and people's universities s et up, l i ke you tried i n N ew York, I gather.5 The other is­ sue was the Temps Modernes article "The Man with the Tape Recorder." That was the piece in which a patient of a typical s h ri nk, who tape-recorded his sessions, brought in his own tape recorder. The shri n k stren uously obj ected, telling his patient that he was u n d u ly aggressive and paranoid, and eventu­ ally refused to "treat" h i m . Our magazine took the position that the patient was totally j ustified, that the on ly way to "treat" a patient is to be " i n the soup" with the patient, that ifthe former takes a chance to reveal himself, h e has the right to have his " helper" reveal himself as well, that u ltimately no one can be "cured" of anything u n less both the s h ri n k and the patient are com m itted to the task. That got Pingaud, [Henri] Lefebvre, and Pontalis to d istan ce them­ selves from our grou p. They did n't become opponents, just distant. Pi ngaud had always been more to the right than any of us. Pontalis, who was a s h rink, felt uncomfortable i n our challenge to his methodology. But wh at was at the heart of the m atter was, as we were talking, the privi leged position of the in­ tellectual.

You showed that very well in my interview with you for the New York Times.

The Times u nderstood that, didn't it? I mean, you didn't call y o u r piece "The Responsibility of l ntellectuals"-they did. And you origi n a lly d i d n 't do it for the Times, did you ? No, I was asked to d o it for Ramparts, the left-wing peacenik California

monthly for which J w a s then Paris editor. But the editorial staff I had origi­ nally signed up with had quit by then, and the new editor-in-chief was a doc­ trinaire Trotskyist named David Horowitz, whom I never liked or trusted. When he took over Ramparts, h e rejected the interview on the gr oun d s that it did not fit his ideological agenda, which was that intellectuals should pro­ duce the framework for his agenda and not, as you said in that interview, be responsible members of the group fighting oppression. So I handed it to m.y literary agent and it got reproduced in lots of places, like the London Guardian and the New York Times Magazine. Of course, Horowitz was merely an extreme o p portun ist but most American intellectuals have trouble un­ derstandin g your position on commitment. They usually assume it me an s ,

;saying I'm with you,

and not putting their body on the line. And you have a

ibit of trouble there too, with your obsession on Flaubert.

True. I can't get that family id iot out of my mind. But I com p romise. I n

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the morni ng, I ' m with t h e G P. Wh atever is decided i n t h e assemblies. M a rch. Demon strate. Picket. Write for La Cause. Distribute it in the streets. What­ ever. After l u nch, I revert to my bou rgeois existence and write about that ulti· mate bou rgeoi s writer. I h ave some excuses, though: I am too old to stay on my feet all day, or stan d on a soapbox in front of Rena ult workers, 6 and cer­ tainly too old to sit down or lie down i n u n occupied buildi ngs waiting for the homeless, who are usually too scared at fi rst, u ntil they a re told that the police are not going to charge them because some fancy i ntellectuals they never heard of, l i ke Foucault a n d M a u riac and me, are there to protect them. I can 't even get u p from the floor without help. And the contradiction continues , since the reason the cops aren't go­ ing to charge the homeless is precisely because the big names might get hurt, right? When did you understand that you weren't and should not be privileged ?

During the war. D u ri n g my captivity. It was very stran ge. It bega n be­ cau se some of the prisoners kept butteri ng up the Germans, and some priest pri soners, chaplains, as ked me to help convi nce them that they should stick with us, not the Germ a n s . They had been h u m i l i ated in defeat, and they blamed democracy, a n d a lso, now they cou ld not screw, that in thei r h u m ilia­ tion they d i d n 't even want or long for sexual contacts. So they became fas­ cists of sorts, tryi ng to m i m ic the Germ a n s , who actually d i d n 't give a damn, as long as there was no trou ble. N ot that we created trouble. It was that we created com m i ttees for everyt h i n g i m agi n able. It was a form of engagement. Yes, words, n ot actions. B ut we created a com munal entente. A com m ittee for col lecting cloth ing for th ose who lacked some. Another for getti ng writing pa per. Another for m u s ic. A couple of priests and I sta rted a lectu re series, where a nyone cou ld tal k a bout what he thought was i m portant. And then of course there was the theater. That's where I worked hardest. And I wrote Ba­

riona, wh ich we then put on. But it wasn 't l i ke, here's a play by Sartre; rather, we al l presented the play, and because it was about rel igion , that is , as far as the Germa n s were concerned , it was O K, yet the priests knew very wel l that the message was j u st because you are a prisoner doesn 't mean you are not free, which was a cal l to com m itment; weird, of cou rse, a com m itment of con­ science, s i nce our bod ies were obviously not free. I th i n k it was then that I un­ d erstood the d ifference between con science and bad fa ith.7 And I saw how worki ng together for each other's wel l-bei ng did create that well-bei ng i n oth­ ers and i n oneself. I n other words, how socialism really is a h u m a nism. The

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Germans were the elite. The fascistoid prisoners were the enforcers o f the elite. And the rest of us, the exploited who could only surpass the feel i n g of exploitation by bondi n g together.

Yet your commitment to that class struggle disappeared the day you walked out of the stalag. The walking out was a fl uke. I saw an open i ng and started walk i ng. Then I went to the army center and got myself demobilized.

But you signed a loyalty oath. That h ad no mean ing. Castor had signed it and got a job teach i ng. So I did too, and got the Iycee at Laon, then in Paris. Signing meant nothing, a piece of paper in order to earn a living. But I sought out the resistance move· .

ment and started writing according to the com mon concept of why we should resist.

It wasn't just to oppose the Germans? No. By 1 943, we knew the Germans would lose the war. And we knew that the Americans wou ld arrive. So our task, what we jointly decided in the resistance, i n my gro u p anyway, which was i n charge of propaganda, I guess, since we were publ i s h i n g newspapers and leaflets-and m i nd you, Cam u s , who ran the newspaper Combat, agreed-was t o create a n u ndersta nding among all the French that yes, we wou ld be l i berated by an America n army, but under the Germa n occu pation we had formed our own fighters, o u r own resisters, a n d that these resisters are perfectly capable of lead ing Fra n ce into a

stable democracy after our l i beratio n . I n other words, we were already con ­

scious that the U n ited States hoped t o control " l iberated France" as a sort of !satellite after t he war, that we would e n d u p w i th another series o fgau leiters.

You used the word "democracy. " The communists were the main force rfr.t your group; they used that term ? Oh yes, they knew very wel l that Stalin h ad no i ntention oftelling the C P :ito:s eize power i n France. They knew that i t wou ld lead t o a massacre a n d that States would then never leave. No, they understood perfectly that should resort to its old form ofgovern ment, parliamentary democracy, corrupt, rid icu led , but capitalist democracy nonet heless. 8

So you wanted to do what de Gaulle in effect did do , give France

:�)lough prestige to keep U. S . domination aloof.

;

{� >

You won't give u p on de Gaulle, will you, Gerassi? Everything he d id

��s for his p lace in history. O K, h e w a s a n ational ist, fi ne, and he wanted

France to be pol itica l ly i ndependent of America, agreed. But not econom i-

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cally, and as you very wel l k now, that is the way the modern world is domi­ n ated. America d oesn 't want to station troops where they are not needed. Oh, yes, it wants bases everywhere, just in case. You showed that wel l i n your book on Lati n America. It u ses its secret services to rule with money, and will overth row any govern ment that does not do what it tel ls them. It buys gov­ ern ments, police forces, local arm ies. What was the name of that CIA man you wrote about, the one who went around teaching Lati n American police forces how to torture? Dan M itrione . 9 Right. T h a t was Urugu ay. There were no U .S. troops there. They did n't need them. They send in their troops only when their stooges lose control, l i ke i n the Dom i n ican Repu blic i n 1 965. B ut it's economic dom ination that America seeks. And de Gaulle never resisted that. So please stop harassing me with that monster. O K, O K, Sartre , relax; it's just that my government so hated de Gaulle that I figured he must have done something good. In any case, during the reo sistance, you guys were trying to convince the French people that the resis·

tance leaders were perfectly capable of taking over a liberated France, be· cause, I presume, as you showed in your novels, the whole French prewar political leadership , and the army's officer corps, were corrupt cowards . Well, not all. There was [Pierre] M endes-France, and Leon Blum, and . . .

Both Jews. But you showed in the novel [ The Roads to Freedom] how the officers fled, leaving the ordinary soldiers to fend for themselves. And Fer· nando told me, the same in his outfit. He even told me he planned to shoot two of his lieutenants, but when he realized that they were all running, he just guided all the Jews to the Swiss border and told everyone else to go home. That's precisely the stories we wanted to offset. The resistance was real. I n th at, I m u st admit, de G a u lle's people were serious. Jean Moulin [an i m porta nt leader i n the French resistance] was great, no question a bout it. But our goal was not to m a ke heroes out of our resistance fighters, rather it was to tell the world, and of course, especially our people, that we were per­ fectly capable of establish ing a free and independent and honorable cou ntry after o u r l iberation. The point really bei ng, l et's not let the Americans turn us i nto a p rotectorate, as they later did all over Asia.

But in your unpublished volume four, you advocated more. You seemed to say that violence is a liberating move. That's right. When M athieu escapes and joi ns the resistance, he finds

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h i s freedom, l i ke Fanon would later write-in t h e act o fviolence for the l i ber­ ation of others one finds one's own l i beration. Now while you're writing stuff for the resistance, which is headed by the communists . . .

Cam u s was the head of Combat, not the com m u n ists. But you were cooperating with them, weren't you?

Of cou rse, they were the main force of the resistance. Even J ea n M o u l i n was working with them before h e w a s captu red [by t h e Gestapo]. IO Yet while you were with them you were writing their condemnation.

You mean the part about Sch n eider i n volu me three? Schneider is a communist an d you're talking about creating after the war a " Socialism and Liberty" movement and . . .

Hold o n . H e was a com m u n ist. H i s real story is i n vol u m e fou r, which I did not fi n i s h and has n ot been publ ished, except for the part that d eals with his friend s h i p with Brunet, who is a com m u nist. I I Captu red agai n , B r u n et is told by his fellow com m u n ists that Sch n eider l eft the party beca use of the Russo-German pact, as d i d N izan i n real l ife, and is therefore a traitor. In fact they beat h i m very severely, so Bru n et d ecides to escape with Sch n eider.

In

the attempt, a German guard fires h i s mach i ne gu n, ki lling Sch n eider, a n d stoppi ng Bru net. I was t h e n goi ng t o write that Bru net escapes aga i n a n d when he goes to confront the com m u ni st h ierarchy i n Paris a bout Sch neider, he's told, No problem, R ussia is now at war with Germany, so all is cool, we're all in the same boat now. Bru n et then becomes l i ke Sch neider in effect. The theme of your play Dirty Hands.12

Exactly. That play caused the com m u n i sts to break with me completely. From 1 945 to 1 952 they d i d everything to s m ear me. There were all sorts ofd is­ gusting articles i n Action, their newspaper. They even had someone eaves­ drop on Castor and me at Les Deux M agots [the main cafe in Sai nt-Germai n

! where the so-called existentialist crowd h u ng out] a n d report on o ur conver­

t:'Sation, maki ng up a lot of it.

And it all changed with the " Ridgway Go Home" campaign?

That and the Henri Martin affai r. The Ridgway stuff galvanized the 'whole left, n ot just the com m u n ists. Even bou rgeois l i berals. After a l l , n o one

�wanted that general, who h ad com ma nded not o n ly U .S. troops but also the ((fascist forces of the [So uth Korean] dictator Syngman Rhee, to be head of

r

and i n France to boot. N o, for the C P the Henri M artin affair was more serious. You remem ber that, don't you ? The com m u n ist sailor who refused to

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board his s h i p because it was goi ng to I ndoc h i na, as part of France's i mperi­ a l i st war there. He was arrested and a l l sorts of demonstrations and strikes e n s ued. So the CP then asked me to head a delegation to go see President [Vi ncent] Au riol. But the old politician refused-well, he said that out of cour­ tesy I will see Monsieur Sartre but n ot a delegation. So I asked the responsi­ ble com m ie, a gynecologist na med Dalsace if ! remem ber correctly, whether I s hould go. He checked with h i s bosses , then said yes, a n d when it led to noth­ i ng, the CP denounced me. Henri M a rti n was eventually freed. But for me, it was the Ridgway affa i r that made me a n ally of the C Po The fact that NATO h ad become an aggressive arm of the U n ited States agai n st Russia, one in w h ich England, Italy, et cetera, and we of cou rse, especially we, were to play an i m portant role, that the U n ited States was now clearly the aggressor, that it even perhaps wanted a war with R u ssia, c h a n ged all of our views, either ap­ provi ngly or aga i n st. The Ridgway affair convi nced me that our l ittle group, the Third Force, as we were cal led, was useless in trying to save the world. So I became a fel low traveler, so to speak. I didn't like it, but to be active politi­ cally means to l ive sch izoph renically.

Which you had done during the occupation as well, no? And how! On the one hand I was worki ng with the com m u n ists. On the other I was writi ng stufffor Combat, headed by Cam u s , who hated the com­ m u n ists. I n the t h i rd p lace I h ad to ask the Germa n censors to approve my plays, two of them, No Exit and The Flies, wh ich I hoped would com mun icate to their a u diences that honor and i ntegrity dem and resistance to the Ger­ mans, no m atter what the consequences.

Do you think that came across? The German critics certai n ly got it. The Pariser Zeitung, which was pub­ l i shed i n Paris in German for the occu pyi n g forces, said that The Flies was a good play but obviously enti rely aga i n st us. The French critics, however, were horrendo u s , a n d D u l l i n had to p u l l the play after fifty performances. They of cou rse refu sed to stress the fact that Orestes rep resents the resistance, that even if h e ends u p feeling gui lty of ki lling the ru lers, i n th is case his mother a n d her l over, b ut clearly meant to be the Germans, he m u st do it. The real is­ sue at the end, which n o one mentioned then, but the Germans did in 1 946 when they put on the play in Berli n , was why did Orestes leave? Why did he not then rule? After all, h e was now ki ng, havi ng eli m i n ated h is royal parents. The post- N azi German critics u nderstood that I was making a moral poi nt, namely that someone gui lty of m u rder ca nnot rule . . .

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Not feeling guilty, but being guilty, correct? Correct. Orestes takes the flies with h i m . It is his decision. H en ce he is not, as the German critics poi nted out, a revolutionary. When the play was put on after the war, did the French critics not make the same point? N o. The play flopped almost everywhere. How did your family react? You were then teaching in Paris, right ? First at Pasteur, then at Condorcet, so you saw your father-in-law and your mother often I take it. Did they see the play? Yes, and they liked it. M aney was a G a u llist, through and th rough. A pa­ triot. He refused to even consider a class struggle, but he was a bsol utely will­ ing to uphold the anti -N azi struggle as best he could. I'm sure h e wou ld h ave hidden our res istance fighters if asked, even at the risk of his life. But it never occu rred to me ask h i m to hide our stuff, the pamphlets, the Roneo [ m i m eo­ graph] machi ne, papers.

And Castor s ay s you were all extremely careless. And how. Bost going around Paris with the Roneo u nder his arm, the leaflets in my briefcase when I stopped at the cafe and sat there for a long time. Waiti ng for M erleau to show up, i ncredi ble mistakes l i ke that. Which someti mes cost lives, like Merleau's girlfriend who was caught with leaflets and deported. S he never came back_

You were friends with Merleau then ? No. He was p a rt o f our group, but w e were not really friend s . Castor would barely tal k to him. Don't forget, we did n't know the truth about why he broke up with Zaza yet. We discussed philosophy a lot. He was about to pub­ lish his Phenomenology of Perception, and wanted me to take out some poi nts he had made that I had i n corporated into Being and Nothingness, because it looked like mine was going to come out first.

Did you take them out? Nope. But he stayed in your group ? Yep. Though not very friendly. Was Camus in your group ? No. I met Camus at the open ing of The Flies. I had written a review of

'The Stranger that said it was a very i m po rtant book, but "of the moment. n He 'was a bit u pset by that. So we talked. What I meant was that it made a lot of

:" sense in the ci rcumstances, the war, the occupation, our incapacity of m aking

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s en se of o u r everyday s ituation. Anyway, we got along. He cou l d n 't sto mach the com m u n i sts, and although he was part ofthe writers u n io n , the C N E [Na­ tional Writers Com m ittee], as I was, and it was basically run by com m u n ists, l i ke [Lou is] Aragon a n d others, he wou l d write for their cla ndestine newspa­ per, Lettres Franfaises. That's where I was writi n g then. Not in Combat? No. Ca m u s started that a bout then, ' 943 I th i n k, but I did not write for it u ntil m uc h l ater. But we got along fi ne. I n fact, I got the idea, and Dullin agreed, that he cou l d p l ay G arci n i n No Exit, wh ich we were begi n n i n g to cast. Olga was s u p posed to play I nes, a n d her sister Wa nda, Estelle. But Olga got s ick,'3 a n d somehow everyth i n g changed . But Cam u s a nd I became pretty solid frien d s then. He l i ked No Exit, a lthough when I thought about it years later, it said, in effect, that he was very m uch l i ke Garci n, don't you th i n k?

Insofar as Garcin pretends to be against the dictator, which then meant the Germans , but j udges himself not by what he does but by what he says_ That applies to Camus during the Algerian War, but not then, during the oc­ cupation. Camus was very active then, especially after launching Combat. You ' re right. Anyway, we stayed friends a long time. Until The Rebel? N o, actual ly, we had a m i nor cooling offwhen M erlea u p u blished Hu­ manism and Terror, i n which he states that to be opposed to a revol utionary govern ment is to be a traitor, by turning the p h rase aroun d, that traitors are those who oppose revol utionary governments. There was a party at Boris Vian's, a n d a m i nor argu ment bega n.'4 First between M erleau and Vian, who was an a narch i st and a great h u ma n bei ng, really a fantastic guy, then be­ tween M erleau a n d Cam us, who i nterpreted M erleau's statement as a per­ sonal attack on h i m . It got heated, and Cam u s stom ped out of the party. I ran after h i m and tried to cool h i m down, but he wou l d n 't come back. So the fight was not with me, except i nsofar as Cam u s could p retend that my views were the same as M erleau 's, which I guess they were. Anyway, we stayed a bit offis h for a whi le, then o u r frien d s h i p resu med u ntil , as you say, The Rebel. But d u ri n g that period, we did see each other frequently. Cam u s even asked me to sign all sorts of petitions, to gra nt a m n esty to this one, to release that one, petitions u s u a l ly concocted by M a l raux, who was by then a fanatic G a u l l i st. But I signed. Yet when I asked h i m to sign the petition to free Henri M arti n , the sai lor jai led for refu s i n g to fight i n France's colonial war in In­ dochi n a , Cam u s refu sed , on the grou nds that M artin was a com m u n ist. And

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of cou rse, he wouldn't j o i n u s i n the "Ridgway Go H o me" ca mpaign, nor later

denou nce France's war in Algeria. But you're right, it was !eanson's review of The Rebel, his [Ca m us'] ridicu lous letter addressed to me as "M onsieur Ie d i ­

recteur d e s Temps Modernes," a n d my answer, w h i c h broke u s for good.

And you never wrote for Combat, only for the eNE's newspaper Lettres Franyaises after that? I think I wrote a piece here and there, maybe, but not as part ofthe Com­

bat tea m . I went to their meetings though. After the war, when Combat be­ came a legal newspaper, a n d the America ns i nvited Ca mus, or one of his peo­ ple, to go to America and travel arou nd, he asked me if I wanted to go, a n d I agreed. That's when I came a few days early so as to stay with you all, and re­ new my oid friendship with Fernando and Stepha.

And go see the exhibition of Mondrian at the Museum of Modern Art,

. now immortalized in volume three ofyour Roads t o Freedom.

N ice ofyou to put it that way, but today that conversation d oesn't really nave much meani ng.

Sure it does. The whole notion that art can ask important questions . . . . . . has no meaning for the masses. The real question is for whom d o

we produce art?

In a hierarchical class society, I guess, we write and paint to convince the bourgeois to oppose the worst measures of the ruling class. The Flies is going to be produced at La Cartoucherie. What will be its audience? The masses don't go to the theater. That's true, but the petit bourgeois, who do, have more contact with the masses than the regu lar bourgeoisie. And then there's the tracts, the leaflets . . .

The masses don't read those either. Some do. We d istribute them where they work. Also La Cause du Peu­

pie, which carries their stories, their experiences, their harassments at work. The GP kids go to the factories, to the s hops, to the bus a n d subway exits, a n d :tell them what's inside. That w a s t h e p u rpose o f the newspaper, as [Alain]

:C; eismar wanted. [Geismar was one ofthe organ izers ofthe 1968 student re­ (bellion, which soon came to be known as the 22 of March Movem ent, for the 1tatalyzing protest that took place on that date.] At the begi n n i n g of 1 969, t�hen he brought some of his 22 March people to me so we could start the pa­

��r, and I agreed then to be part ofit, the idea was to com pile all the news that the masses, so that when a worker is u pset at a new ruli ng in one fac-

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tory, he can learn that they're trying to im pose the same rule i n other facto­ ries, a n d when they decide to seq uester the boss i n one place to p ress for their demands, they can get an u p l ift knowi n g that that other boss was also se­ questered at that other joi nt. And it works. Look at what happened at Con­ trexevi l l e. The workers there had not staged a strike for th i rty yea rs when they fi nally d ecided, after hour, on

a

a

lot ofta l k with the G P, to stri ke for one hour, j u st one

particu lar d ay the fol lowi n g week. But by the time they struck, their

cause was well k nown tha n ks to a n emergency issue of La Cause. Other work­ ers came to cheer them o n . Before you know it they voted to stay on strike un­ til thei r dema n d s were met. It lasted th ree weeks, a n d they won . N ot because some u nion boss sitti n g i n Paris gave the order for such a strike, but because they learned about worker power. Rank-and-file power. The job of the G P was not to teach-i ntell ectua l s ca n not teach the work i n g class-but to i nform. To tell them what others h ave done a n d why. And that is .t he principal job of La

Cause. Widely distributed revolutionary films would do more of a j ob, no ? That i nvolves a lot of money, to make such films a n d then to d istribute them. Someti mes it works. Like with Salt of the Earth, a n d The Battle ofAl­ giers. Even with Queimada, although that was too h ighbrow, real ly ai med at the i ntellectual worl d , wasn 't it?I5

True, but it' s a fantastic tool to be used in class . A great film that makes students understand how exploitation of the Third World is achieved by ex­ ploiters preaching democracy and liberty. The Britis h then, the Americans now. I tried to give that d i mension in my adaptation of Arth u r M il ler's Crucible. In 1 9 5 3 , when Miller wrote it, he was fighting McCarthyism. When you did your adaptation four years later, you focused on the class struggle be­ tween the poor folks of Salem and their rich exploiters. But essentially it was the same struggle, since Senator ( Joseph] McCarthy was merely a pawn for that sector of the American ruling class that was trying to stop the success of the eastern establishment. The main question, however, is serious: Can art be revolutionary? You seem to say so in "What I s Literature ?" Wel l, not q u ite. I said that a good writer can n ot be a reactionary. s pecifically, a col l a borationist. That gets us back to our lunch conversation about Dos Passos.

Or

I ndeed. Did he start writi n g shit becau se he turned right-wi ng, or did his almost fascist pol itics turn him i nto a s h it writer?

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What d o w e do about [Louis-Ferdinand] Celine ? Or Saul Bellow? O r in art, Nicolas de StaeI, tha t police informer? We have to put ou r d iscussion in context. When art was a bou rgeois ex­ perience, most writers d i d not concern themselves with politics, at least unti I something exp loded . Like Dostoyevsky facing an execution squad made h i m rel igious. Tolstoy reacted t o t h e i nvasion b y N a poleo n . I n a n y case, t h ey h a d n o i l l u sion about for whom they were writi ng, si nce t h e m asses n o t o n l y didn't read but cou ld n 't read . Look at what happened t o Victor H ugo.

A great

writer, of songs, one cou l d say, a charl atan u nti l the cou p Of1 848. Then he be· comes a socialist and writes plays c h a l lengi ng the state, plays that herald ,man's freedom.

Which, nevertheless, are read or attended only by the bourgeoisie. But i n a period when only that class, the petite bou rgeoisie anyway, can stir th i n gs up, can demand and make changes. But that all has changed. To­ day, the m asses are the motors for c h a n ge, so a writer'S com m itment m u st be :in that context.

Yet who will read your Flaubert? And what changes can your Flaubert ;:generate? I ndeed , th at's my contradi ctio n . Though Flau bert did s h ow how rep u g­ nant was the u pper bou rgeoisie and . . .

':

Could you ever imagine a worker reading The Family Idiot? No, true, but my a u d i ence real ly changed in 1 968; the whole world

• changed then. U ntil then a left-wing writer wrote for the left wing of the bou r­ " geoisie, hop i n g to sti m u l ate reforms. After '68, he h ad to choose, do I j u st ad­ ',vocate reforms or do I want a total restructu ring of society? Ifl choose the l at­ :'ter, it mea n s I recogn ize that the world is in the m idst of an a l l-pervasive class )var, and though

I a m by my birth, by my ed ucation, by my skill, by my trade a

��bourgeois, I m u st joi n those fighti ng t h at class.

Like Amilcar Cabral ?, 6 Which of course is very hard , s i nce we com e to the struggle with a l l "�orts of baggage we take for gra nted. You know, w h e n m y p l ay

'Prostitute was staged ,

The Respectful

in R ussia, in a popular h a l l , the end s h ocked the work­

, ',ers who attended. They cou l d n 't u n dersta nd why the prostitute ends on t h e ofthe cops. What h a p pened to her socia l conscience, they asked . And i n when I wal ked arou n d H a rlem with Rich ard Wright, fol ks who came u p to to us, knowi ng who h e was, a lways took the attitude that I was rich be­ I was wh ite w h i l e Wright was poor beca u se he was black, when i n fact

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h is best-sell i n g n ovel Native Son had made h i m m u c h richer than I . S o one m ust n ever ignore the context. I am now a contrad iction with i n the bour­ geoisie. I write books that o n ly the bou rgeoisie reads, but I also edit a news· paper that is a i m ed at the m asses and which, to an amazi ng extent, the masses do read. But that's because you are well known. What does a new young politi.

cally hip writer do? Tough question. H e or she wou l d h ave to find a new style, which some­ how puts not o n ly the writing but also the writer i n the sou p, as we say. And the soup keeps changing. I ndeed. Look, for exa m p le, at The Flies. I wrote it to convi nce the French that, yes, to m u rder a German is to be gU ilty of m urder, but mora l ly it is the right th i ng to do, though he who does com m it the m u rder will fi n d no moral solace in the act. OK, in ' 946, it's p ut on in Berl i n by a group of German re­ s isters, or friends and fa m ily mem bers ofthose who had been executed by the N azis for distri buting tracts and stuff. Boy, was the audience critical. Why does Orestes go off alone? Why did he n ot act as the l iberati ng ki ng? What is this message of a hero m u rderi ng the tow n 's dictators then goi ng off by him· self, tel l i n g the town, O K you man age now? A ridiculous roma ntic solitary hero. Wel l , they were right. When I wrote The Flies there was no possibility of the resistance taking over, bei ng the new rulers. I n any case, it was thought by a ll during the war that th e resistance did n ot want power. That's how Ca mus saw it. So did M a u riac. Even Malraux, although I s u spect he was already con­ n iving to get i n to the G a u ll i st i n ner circle so as to be part of a future de Gaulle govern ment. And we were all wrong. As soon as the war was over, the various resistance grou ps-well , not all, but most-began jockeying for power.

I hear you wanted Malraux to join you in Les Temps Modernes? I d i d ask him. I went to see h i m i n the South i n ' 943. I showed him the plan for socialism that I had devised . . . Oh, you actually wrote out a plan ? A program? Yep. But he was n 't i nterested . H e was already then thinking of joi ning u p with de Gaul le. A n d I lost the program i n the tra i n , when I came back.

So in I943, your contradictions were already flourishing, so to speak? Wel l , no-I mea n , socialism is perfectly acceptable to the petite bour­ geoisie, no? I was sti l l a n i ndividualist. The effect of my experience of com­ monality i n the stalag had not led to a d rastic reworki ng of my views. After all, in Being and Nothingness I wrote that to be a Len i n or to get royal ly dru nk is

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all the same, a n i nd ividual act, which belongs to the i n d ivid u a l . Of cou rse, if the Germans had gotten d ru n k and left u s alone, we wou l d all be m u c h h ap. pier, but in term s of one's i n d ivid u a l act, o n e is responsible for it equally. A n ,act has no moral c h aracter. What does is t h e effect of that a ct . That's

' 943.

And Castor says that you personified that into your admiration of the 'works of [the artist Alberto] Giacometti, whom you were seeing often then.

;:!

What I saw i n his work was an essential thought, so to speak, a self·con·

'

iain ment of society i n one i n d ivid ual. But not society's contradictions. H ere

:we were, invaded by Germa n s , occupied by Germans, who told us w h at we

':could do and what we cou l d n 't. We h ated the Germans, or the N azis, a n d we

:�ondered

what was goi n g to h a ppen n ext. Like The Plague, right? That's ' Camus' n ovel. We were occu p i e d , some op posed , so m e d ied . Voi l a . I t was

;absolutely wrong, and Ca m u s was wrong. We were a l l wrong: the G er m a n s weren't t h e pl ague, and w e were occupied n ot b y t h e p l a g u e but b y h u m a n be·

ings, who did what they d i d beca use ofthe k i n d of society that h u m a n bei n gs , ,had created, th ere, here, everywh ere. But n on e of us thought t h at way i n '43 . It was these n a sty N azis w h o were tel l i n g u s what to d o , a n d s o m e o f u s who

didn't l i ke it reacting by k i l l i n g them. Ca m u s was dead wro n g: not a p l ague

:�hat no one cou l d u ndersta n d , but an i nvasion by h u m a n s who ca m e o ut ofa ;$.ociety that we m u st u ndersta n d , occu pyi ng another society that we also had u n dersta n d .

And when did you understand all that? Slowly. After the war. But we degenerated so fast, it was h a rd to balance

;'

I had worked with co m m u n ists d u ri n g the resistance, but now they at· me vehemently i n their paper, Action. M a i n ly because we tried a Third

::force. That d i d n 't work, of cou rse. So, to tel l you the truth, I stayed out of pol. after the T h i rd Force collapsed .

�e l l , we kept the jou rnal goi ng, a n d we

a lot of respect because of our I n dependence. O u r group beca m e more

more sol i d . There was Bost a n d his buddy, Jean Poui l l o n , who also had , �;:,

one of my stud ents a n d with whom I stayed friends all my l ife, sti l l am. saw a lot of Vi a n , and h i s wife, M ichelle, who as you know loved to d a n ce. I worked with D u l l i n a n d others to put on my plays. M ovies, too; I wrote scripts, l i ke

Lesjeux sontfa its, which was made. This was a period w h e n

spent a lot of time h avi n g fu n , goi n g to cl u bs , taking walki n g trips i n goi n g abroad .

.

Apparently, whenever you did so, you did with Castor, j u s t C ast o r

Not always. Someti mes Lanzm a n n would joi n u s . But it's true that i m ·

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portant tri ps-that is, trips w e considered a learn ing pol itical experience­ we did toget h e r. Like w h e n we went to Egypt to meet [G a m a l Abdel] N asser or l ater to meet Fidel [Castro] or to Russia, t h o u g h I went there alone too.

Is that s till t rue? More o r l e s s . Except when w e wen t t o I s rael with Pierre.

You mean Bloch, that is, Pierre Victor, the head of the G P ? [Pierre Vic· tor and Pierre Bloch were pseudonyms used by the political activist and philosophe r B enny Levy. ] I7 I hear from some of my students who are in the G P that he is sort of a S talinist, yes ? I guess so. I don't want to be p a rt of the G P, j u st a mem ber of their n ewspaper' s editorial staff, and I am the official res po n s i ble editor. But I don't want to get i n volved in the G P itself. If they ask me to go ta l k somew h ere or j o i n a p icket, t h i n gs l i ke that, I do. But I stay clear ofthei r i nternal d i scussions. Pierre i s u n q u estionably bri l l i a nt. H e w a nts the GP to be a party t h at l i stens to the m asses , s pecifica lly the big enterprise workers, but s m a l l ones too, and respo n d s o n l y to their needs . H e' s very dogmatic a bout that. He seems to h ave a l l owed n o seco n d a ry cad re to be created . He says that h i s goa l i s to de· velop a party offu l l·ti m e m i l itants, total l y tra n sparent, open only to workers. We' l l see.

You're also the responsible editor of Vive la Revolution, which is basi­ c ally Trotskyist, isn't it? N ot rea l l y. S i nce

'68, those labels h ave faded. But u n l i ke La Cause,

w here I actua l ly partici pate, I mea n , I go to the editoria l meetings , a n d look over each article, a n d -wel l , when I c a n . But for Rellolution I j u st gave my n a m e when the cops started a rresting its ed itor, and now I ' m i n trouble with t h at leaflet . . .

The one about the cops distributing heroin to the inmates ? Exactly, someone put t h at i n the p a per, somewhere. I never saw it, and the Iycee kids took it out of context and pri nted u p a leaflet sayi n g that, and it can cause me a lot of tro u b l e as I wou l d end u p bei ng respo n s i bl e for the l eaflet as wel l as the paper, a n d it's not true.

And Revolution is not the same kind of paper, is it ?

La Cause was - i s- m eant to

be a n orga n i z i n g tool. We expect it to be

total l y banned soo n , h opefu l ly not before a few months, ti m e to create cen· ters a l l over France based arou nd it-that' s the obj ect. The paper w i l l even· t u a l l y be an u ndergrou n d p u bl i cati o n , l i ke

Lett res Fran f=aises

and

Combat

d u ri n g the G e r m a n occu p a tion . It w o u l d ca rry n ews a bout workers and

116

OCTO B E R 1 9 71

peasa nts fro m a l l over Fra nce, b u t for t h at, t h e s e centers have t o b e set u p by the workers a n d pea s a nts themselves, operati ng clandesti nely a n d s e m i ­ independently, so that if o n e gro u p i s arrested , it d oes not stop t h e p a p e r fro m com i n g out. That's t h e p l a n , a n d they are hard a t work on it now. T h e other papers,

I presu m e you 've seen them a l l - Revolution, Tout, Vi ve

tion, La Pa ro le du Pe up le

-

La

Revolu­

j u st use my name rig ht n ow beca u s e the govern ­

ment is not arresti ng m e . But if it gets h eavy, they' l l i s s u e a n ew law t h a t wi l l make a nyone affi liated with it, n ot j u st "the res p o n s i bl e editor," liable for a r­ rest. But th i n gs are already c h a n gi n g, si nce I a m now charged with d efa ma ­ tion. It' l l cost me a fai rl y heavy fine, b u t it wi l l als o l e a d t o the ban n i n g of

Revolution.

,

Tout ha s alre idy died, though they're trying to raise money to bring it out again. They' l l all die, because t h ey are n 't tryi ng to esta b l i s h roots in factories and fa rms. They run bas ically l i ke bou rgeois pa pers. You can see t h at w h e n you compare t h e i r language. Revolution a n d Tout are n 't written l i ke

L'Huma­

nite or Ce Soir, the Com m u n i st Party dail ies, but t h ey sort of h o nor the classic composition and layout ofthe traditio n a l print media. But com p a re that to La

Cause. The language is com pletely d ifferent. It is brutal, violent even , d i rect, simple, you could say s i m p listic, deliberately. It i s in fact written in the l a n ­ guage that protesti ng workers s peak a m o n g t h emselves. J ust by t h e l a n g u age it is already i llega l .

But once illegal, all sorts of new problems arise, like where to print, distribution, et cetera . Will each group put out its own version ? No, you know, we're used to i l l egal p u bl ications in France. We d id it

;without problem d u r i n g the occupatio n ,

and even recently, d u ring the AI­

�gerian War, a l l sorts of pro- F l N papers flouri s h ed . Jeanson even put out a

:pri nted, fairly glossy, m agazi ne, totally illegal s i nce it called for active res i s ­ ;�ance t o the French gover n ment, pure seditio n . >

Yes, but the government didn't go after the magazine' s participants, as the Germans would have . Like Jeanson used his own name, not a war name, and that famous interview with you said who you were. '" True. But once b a n ned, La Cause would be l ia b l e to seizu res wherever it : was bei ng d istri buted , i n the factories, in cafes , in s u perma rkets, and o u r pea­

" pie have to be prepared for th at, and for the possibil ity that any worker seen ;.:read ing it cou l d get fi re d .

How d o you prepare for that?

1 17

OCTO B E R ' 97 '

R e m e m ber o u r Ufiestas" d u ri n g the occ u pation ? Beca u s e of the cu rfew, which l a sted u nt i l six or even seven i n the morn i n g, we often partied u ntil then so n o n e of u s wou l d get c a u ght s neaki n g home d u ri ng the n i ght. That beca m e a h a bit. Soo n we sta rted h avi n g those fiestas, as we cal l ed them, j u st to h ave fu n , not i n con j u nction with some i llegal ed itori al m eeti ng or what· ever. Wel l t h at's what we're try i n g to set up now, in factory towns, in farming centers. Bonding to p u b l i s h a n d d i stri bute

La Cause du Peuple,

a n d having

fu n i n the p rocess.

Reminds me of my meeting with Ho Chi Minh and Pham Van Dong, the North Vietnamese prime minister, in 1 9 6 6 . They already knew a lot of what we were doing in the United States against the war, but Pham asked for s ome details, and as I told them , I saw Ho sort of nodding in a way that I in· terpreted as him thinking, "Not very tough stuff. " So I started exaggerating a bit, and when he made the gesture again, I really eKaggerated. Then he in· terrupted me. "When do you have fun?" he asked, adding, "A revolutionary who doesn't have fun burns out too fast. " To which Pham s aid: "A good rev· olutionary must love life." Fa ntastic! That's w h y they're goi n g t o wi n ! I 'l l remember that. Great. A n d so true!

Wait. There' s a problem. For example, what happens to your fiesta if you hear that the other group having a fiesta all got rounded up and tortured and then executed? Can you continue to have yours ? I 'm not saying that will happen if French cops round up the group, say, in Saint· Etienne, but if the group is declared illegal, they'll certainly get beaten fairly severely-after all, there does not exist a police force in the world that doesn't enjoy beating up its prey. What happens when groups become afraid ? It act u a l ly h a p pened d u ri n g the occ u pation . N ot my gro u p , or the gro u p s I was fa m i l i a r with. But it h a ppened. And of cou rse it affected us. I re· m e m ber once w h e n we heard t h at a grou p t h at tra n sported m ed i c i n e and am· m u n ition got c a ught, we s pent o u r whole so·ca l led fiesta time ta l ki ng about them , exp l a i n i n g w h o each one was to those w h o d i d n 't know them. There was no fiesta. But t h e re's somet h i n g speci a l about i l legal ity. It estab l i s hes an eq u a l ity, a bon d i ng, a mong a l l , whether you k now them or not, t h at says for the s a ke of a l l , keep goi ng. And i n st i n ctively we felt that to keep goi ng meant to conti n u e o u r fiesta as well . We obvi o u s l y were not as i ntel ligent or experi. e nced as Ho a n d P h a m , but we m u st h ave felt what they told you . And I think the guys fro m

La Cause feel

it too. I sensed that i n our discussions. And you ,

118

O CT O B E R 1 9 7 1

know, even those who came to the fiestas b u t were not part oft h e reason why we were having them felt t h at. Li ke the writer Georges Bata i lle. H e agreed with us but d i d n 't partici pate. Or Castor, for that matter; she did n 't write or help distribute our paper, but she was with us, and came to our fiestas. So too with Picasso.

He was a regular? No, no. But when the Com m u n i st writer M ichel Lei ris staged that l ittle Picasso p lay, he was there, and we kept it u p a l l night, most of u s actu a l ly play· ing roles in it" with Cam u s the lead. But it d i d n't start l i ke that. O u r fiestas came in �, stuck in our

a bit i n

�p , but really �2 and '43. Before that we were

I n ' 939, ' 940, we were terrified of dying, sufferi ng, for a

cause that d i sgusted us. Th at i s , for a d i sgu sti ng France, corru pt, i nefficient, racist, a nti·Sem ite, ru n by the rich for the rich-no one wanted to d i e for that, until , wel l , u ntil we u nderstood that the N azis were worse.

You don't sound like you liked the French very much. N asty, selfi s h , petty, a rrogant, and m a n y stayed that way d u r i n g the oc· cupation, col laborati ng, turning in J ews i n order to get their houses or fu rni· ture, whatever. Castor has told the story of [Jean. Pierre] Bourla, t h at mar· yelous Jewis h pai nter we a l l adored, whose J ewish girlfriend was tu rned i n by another wom a n who wanted h i m , with the u n expected resu lt, for h e r, that he, not his lover, was picked up, deported, and kil led . That happened over a n d over agai n . N o , we cou ldn't possi bly defend France. B u t most o fo u r i ntel lec· tuals did, m i n d you , because N azis m was worse. True, som e col l aborated . But by and l a rge, those who did acted out of ideological conviction. Like (Pierre] Drieu la Rochelle and [Robert] Brasi l l ach -though they ca m paigned in favor of exterm i nati ng all J ews, they d id n 't do it to gain a few fra n cs fro m the dead . r 8 B u t most o f ou r i ntellect u a l s were either active resisters o r pas· sive ones. B ut we didn't become resisters because we loved Fra n ce, or its cause, only beca use we hated N azism more. In fact, I was actual ly jealous of . your father. He loved life. He was con sta ntly joyous, consta ntly celebrat i n g somethi ng. And he went t o h i s p robable death , conscious ly, believi ng i n h i s cause. Proud o f i t , n o t j u s t a nti· Fra nco, a nti.bigots , a nti·fascist. B ut pro the Republ ic, pro·socia l ist, p ro.life.

So what do you do with [Charles] Maurras, Drieu, and Brasillach in

:rour theory that a good writer cannot be reactionary?

That's now. Today. Those writers became extreme right.wi n gers be·

(cause they were totally d isappoi nted

with their cou ntry's idea of democracy.

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OCTO B E R 1 971

They saw the co rru ption , the stu pidity, a n d m i n d you , the lack offreedo m that existed anyway. Tod ay, even if the U n ited States does not allow the freedom it claims exi sts, even if every democracy is plagued by its M cCarthys, its H o u se U n-America n Com m ittees, its F B l s a n d secret polices, its Deuxieme B u rea us a n d Barbouzes, ' 9 n o one in their right mind can claim that the right i s more h umane t h a n the l eft. It is i m poss i bl e today to hide from o neself the most re­ vea l i ng facts.

You think so? Look at America! The great majority believed that its in­ vasion and systematic destruction of Vietnam was justified, to stop the com­ munist dominoes . America's propaga nda works, no dou bt about th at, with ord i n a ry folks who don't read a n d don't l iste n . But n ot with the i ntel lectuals. Or, if they let themselves be convi nced , it's beca use of money or fa me or wanti ng your dis­ gusting press to adore them. B ut, as we d i scussed the other day, they now write s h it, l i ke Stei n beck.

We have a lot of good intellectuals , good writers, who are very liberal, but not leftists, writers like [Bernard] Malamud, [ E . L.] Doctorow, [Kurt] Von­ negut, [Norman] Mailer . . . H o l d on . I 've read [ Doctorow's]

Slaughterhouse-Five.

The Book of Daniel

and [Vo n n egut's]

Those authors are with us, G eras s i , whatever they or

t h e i r critics say. Perhaps they haven 't experienced deci sion maki n g by a col · lective, a true col lective where they a re total ly eq u a l to a l l . But they' re there. You d o them an i n j ustice. Reread

The Naked and the Dead.

That' s the real

M ai ler. Yo u r friend , yo u r father's friend.20 America has not suffered an i nva­ s i o n , a foreig n occu pati o n , a bl oody dictators h i p . So it's h a rd for its i ntel lec­ t u a l s to expect and wa n t tota l struct u ral c h a nge. They're a l l stuck on reforms. T h at's norm a l. But when the revol ution comes, they' l l be on its side.

I n a hundred years . We sta rted h u nd reds of years before, remem ber, a n d we're o n ly begi n­ n i n g to u nd erstan d now. Our great revol utionaries, and

I d o n 't mea n Robes­

p i erre, but . . .

Orestes, Goetz, Hoederer

.

.

.

Exactly, were also reformers .

And subjectivists, individualists, and moralists . T h at's right. T h ey n ever u n derstood that cha nge is col l ective.

It ca n not

be do n e fro m above. It has to spri n g from below, and that means col lectively. Moral ity ca n not be i m posed from a bove.

120

I n fact, mora l ity is not pos s i ble in

a

OCTO B E R 1 971

world of i n d ividuals. Th at's why I could n ever write my eth ics. A n d th at's why

I wrote the Critique o!Dialectical Reason, to exp l a i n that man's fu lfi l l ment is collective.

Being and Nothingness was an

i nd ivid u a l exercise. The

the basis for a n ethics.

Are you still working on it? It's hard. I keep tryi ng. It's very hard . 2 1

121

Critique is

;

December 1 971

Let's get back to the war. I reread the two articles ["Paris Under the Occupation" ( 1 944) and "The Liberation of Paris" ( 1 945) , repro­ G E RA S S I:

duced in Situations, vol. 3 (1949)) in which you dealt, indirectly mind you, with fear of death and torture: the first, which everyone knows, is where you wrote that you were never as free as during the occupation; the second, which you wrote for E nglish readers , in which you claim that all the French suffered because of the resistance. S A R T R E : H o l d on. Let's put them in perspective. The fi rst i s p h i lo­

s o p h ically perfectly clear, right? Duri n g the occu pati o n , we had two c h oices: col laborate or resist. You coul d n 't be n eutral if the German s picked you up i n a raid a t a cafe j ust beca use y o u happened t o b e there a n d some G estapo in­ vestigator cla i m ed t h at a n u ndergro u n d gro u p met at that cafe-you ended up tortu red l i ke everyon e else. Did n 't matter what you did or w h o you were. U n less you were a col la borator, hence had a s pecia l l D that the Germans rec­ ognized , you went to j a i l , got tortu red a n d most probably s h ot. So every French perso n h ad t h e free choice to be part ofthe resistance, i n their heads anyway, even if they actually did not h i ng, or be an e n emy. But that kind of a free c hoice h a d i m p l ications. I n you r h ead you were a resi ster. M ea n i n g that if an actua l res i stance fighter asked you to hide h i m out, you wou ld . You were consciously a resister. N ow the secon d article I wrote to exp l a i n to t h e British

1 22

DECE M B E R 1 971

how that free choice affected o u r daily life. We were terrified, every day, what· ever we were doing, wherever we were, that sudden ly, out of nowhere, a G e r­ man detach ment wou ld i nvade our street, o u r block, our buildi ng, w hatever, seal all the exits or escapes and rou nd up everyone i nside their net. That h ap­ pened all the ti me, especially after the u ndergro u n d started shooti ng Germ a n officers systematically. Remember the Germa n policy: ten French for every officer killed, then it became fifty and finally a h u ndred. No discussion, no ex­ cuse. You were in the wrong place at the wrong ti me, too bad. Good-bye. That's a terrifyi ng way to l ive, isn't it? The arbitrari n ess of l ife u nder the N azis, like the arbitrari ness of life u nder god. Yet every o n e of us, whether we ever even knew a resister, accepted that possibil ity, insofar as we freely h ad d e­ cided not to be a collaborator, which meant i n effect to be a resister. A n d bei n g shot was not t h e worst. I t was torture that terrorized us t h e most. If it tu rned out that I knew somethi ng, perhaps ju st the name of one or two actual re­ sisters , or not even, the name of someone who had said that we wou l d even ­ tually wi n the war, how long cou ld I hold out, what w a s m y l i mit? Terrifyi ng_

Those who came to your "fiestas " were not all active resisters, were they? No, they were precisely the kind that bel ieved , l i ke de Gaulle s a id, that France had lost a battle but not the war. Li ke [Arma n d] Salacrou.' He was a resister? No, but he was a nti-German. And he was absol utely petrified of being tortu red. U ntil one is actua l ly tortu red, he wou l d say, no one can know wh at are one's l i m its.

And yet he risked his life by j oining you all in those fiestas. No, he risked h i s life by not bei ng a coll abo. H e knew it, and we k new it. That's what I tried to com m u nicate to the Britis h , who had no respect for us . ',They suffered b o m b s and V-2S a nd constant casualties. They s aw that we :lived fai rly comfortably, mostly i n th e cafes. They cou ld not understand ou r �anguish, our terror, especially when, after t h e war, jou rnals d escribed our fi es­

�tas, which were precisely the consequence of our terror. That's what I tried to �explain.

�t'

During the occupation, though, that's not what you were trying to

�chieve by those fiestas; it was to give a sens e of "France continues," so to <

no? A lot of the fighters, those who sacrificed their lives, their fam ily, wil l be

� hocked by what I wil l tell you now, but, well, it's a fact, namely that our res i s1 23

D E C E M B E R 1 971

tance was really u n i m po rta nt. I mean, when you p u t i t i n context, what did it acco m p l i s h ? Did we force Germany to keep forty d ivisions i n our cou ntry, like the Yugoslav partisa n s d i d ? OK, so we blew u p a few trains and shot a few offi­ cers. In the scheme of the war, it was nothi ng. N or, now this is the i m portant poi nt, was it mea nt to. The purpose of the resista nce was to tel l all the French that we were u nited aga i n st the Germans. That they may win the war but they will never wi n the peace, because we are all u n ited against them . That's why the fi l m The Sorrow and the Pit y -did you see it?-is dead wrong. Sure we had a lot of col la bos w h o were right-wi ng capitalist fascists afraid of creeping socialis m , or bastards w h o s i m ply wanted the N azis to win in order to steal the property and belo n gi ngs of the Jews. French society before the war was absol utely rotten , no q u estion about that. But rotten or not, it was French, run by rotten French men if you wa nt, for the benefit of rotten French capitalists. But even they, the rotten French capitalists, did not want to be s u bservient to maybe-not-so-rotten German capitalists. And our job was to tel l all the French, we wi l l n ot be ruled by Germans. That was the job of the resistance, not ju st a few more tra i n s or bridges blown u p here or there. Those acts of sabotage raised o u r m orale, and that's what their real pu rpose was. N o re­ sister real ly thought we could defeat the Third Reich by blowi n g up a few trains. And for kee p i n g the flame of France alive, rotten to the core as it may have been, the Germa n s knew we were dangero u s and had to be s h ot.

Yet, in both of those articles, you seem to be saying that when it came to who was and who was not a collabo, you did not make a class judgment. Wait, yes and no. Don't forget that one of the fi rst articles I wrote for Let­

tres Franfaises was "Socialisme et I i berte," where I mai ntained that genuine freedom , n ot one h idden i n bad faith, coul d only exist i n a collective-that is, u nder socialism. B ut, true, I did not clai m , in the two articles you are citing, that the capital ist class was necessarily collaborationist. It depended on each capitalist's self-i nterest.

But you considered the bourgeois class as a class collaborationists ? Again, yes a n d no. When I walked i nto the Deux M agots, I greeted the owner as I always did. I knew that his interest was o u r interest. The small shopkeeper, the seco n d -level cadre, no, we d i d n 't consider them collabos. We may have at the begi n n i ng, but we q u ickly realized that th ey knew they wou ld never enjoy their usual lifestyle- I ' m not talking about money, but the way they l ived their days, how they enjoyed tal k i n g with friends, whom they greeted when they wal ked their dogs, that kind of situation was u ntenable

1 24

D ECEM B E R ' 97'

with Germ a n occupiers, a n d they knew it. Add to that this ridiculou s senti· ment that we all have despite ou rselves, this emotion we cal l patriotism, which comes from our history, o u r ord i n a ry frame of reference, our l a nguage even, and we end up with resisters. Like my stepfather. He was n't a resis· tance fighter, h e was sixty.five, seventy, but he hel ped his J ewish friends hide out, things l i ke th at. H e h ated the occupiers si mply because it d i m i n i s hed h i s sense of bei ng French, a s vague a s that is. And I thi n k that's what m ade the owner of the Flore or the Deux M agots com rades-well, that's perh aps too strong a word, but with u s , without bein g tested. At Le Dome it was a bit different. It was the place for "the gray mice" to have breakfast every day.

You mean the German female soldiers ? No, n ot soldiers, but logistical workers, the secretaries, the attendants , the chauffe u rs of noncom batant officers, l i ke you r WAFs or WACs, I gather, who were d ressed in gray u n iforms, and came with their pot of jam to have coffee and bread at the cafe. Why they chose Le Dome, I don't know. We stopped goi ng there, not j u st because of them but also becau s e they had eli minated the Vavin su bway station out of economy, so we stuck to Saint· Germain.2

So no class consciousness during the resistance? True, by and large, but it came back fast during the Liberation, as [Gen. eral Ph ilippe] Leclerc's division approached. Many Germ a n soldiers had s u r· rendered then, to the resistance fighters, and as they were march ing them off to Leclerc, all those bourgeois came out to jeer them, to shout i n s u lts at them . Those who had fought guarded t he Germans; those who had n ot n o w cal led them pigs. And they were the shopkeepers, the merchants at the entrance to their establish ments. And so we said, Ha, the dirty bou rgeois col i abo. But all 'O ur judgments were wrong. The worst collaborationists were the cops, those who rou n ded u p the thousands of Jews and herded them i nto the Vel' d ' H iv [Velodrome d ' H iver, a h uge i ndoor sports and entertain ment stad i u m] to then be deported to their deaths i n the concentration camps. But even blan ket judgments on the cops a re wrong. Variou s times, rushing home past the cur· ( few, I was stopped by a cop who simply asked where I was goi n g and said hurry up. Castor had the same experience. On the other hand, we know oftwo 'friends in s i m ilar situatio n s who were told by some fa m i ly to stay in their apartment u ntil the end ofthe cu rfew, then were denounced by them to the

' � erma ns (and i n both cases it was the G ermans who said "be carefu l n ext time") .

1 25

DECE M B E R 1 971

What i t seems t o prove is that one should never j udge individuals by their class but j udge the class by its historical self-interest. Exactly, M r. Marx, exactly. I ndivid ual ly, we are what we do. As a class, we a re part of h istorical forces that determ i n e our fates. So your ethics , if you ever get to finish it, will deal exclusively with the freedom of the individual to act in good faith ? But i n the h i storical context. As you tried to show in Les jeux sont faits [his play translated into En­ glish as The Chips Are Down) , I presume. But I can well understand how your message there can be construed as a kind of mystical attempt to ignore real­ ity. Of course, it was written in 1 94 3 , in the thick of the resistance, when a lot of French were saying OK, the reality is that the Germans are going to win, we will become part of Germany, nothing I can do makes any difference, but I will resist so that, what? History? I refuse to accept .reality? And make the peace i ntolerable for the Germans. That's not in the play. In the play, Pierre knows that his friends have been betrayed and that they are going to be wiped out, yet he j oins them, knowing he too will die. Period. There's no hope, no coming salvation, noth­ ing but a moral decision that if his friends are doomed, he will be doomed with them. That' s mystical, no? In the same way as you r father told me he was goi ng back to fight Franco even though he knew Fran co had won . But you correctly sensed, o r a t least I read that in the novel, that Fer­ nando was leaving a message for history, namely that one fights fascism not because one is going to win, but because the fascists are fascists . A message for history? A moral act, but not a Kantia n i n-itself. A moral act i n h istory, because h i story is the acts of h u man bei n gs. Which means that you are proselytizing. I don't l i ke that word, it's too loaded . No, what I a m u lti mately sayi ng is that a person who fi ghts Fran co or the N azis or today the American s in Viet· nam says that it does not matter if I lose, what matters is that my action, all the actio n s of those who fight for freedom, for self-determ i n ation, and ulti· mately for col lective decision making, are part of the h i storical movement that defi n es h u m a n ity.

But that's not why Pierre does it, or Fernando, or Nizan or S chneider, or Brunet, or Mathieu or B ariona. They do it because they are faithful to their

1 26

DECE M B ER 1 971

sense o f justice o r humanity o r self-respect, none o f which is political. Their act is moral and rej ects reality. Philosophically, that would define you as an idealist. I ndeed. But, m i n d you , these works you cite were all p rewar or pre­ liberation, or before I q u ite digested my experience as a German prisoner.

When you were still anti-efficaciousnes s ? You cou ld say that. I n The Wall, cooperati ng with t h e enemy, even by telling h i m a l ie, leads to disaster. But i n [the play] Men Without Shadows [Mort sans sepu ltu re, l ater translated as The Victors], Canoris, the com m u­ nist, argues agai nst h i s men wa nti ng to be true to their self-image a n d i nsists that they must lie, that i nterior honesty does n ot save lives, that they m u st do what is efficient in their struggle, and so what if the m i l itias i nterpret their l ie as havi ng given in, bei n g afraid of torture and death. Thei r honor, Canoris says, means nothing in the overall struggle. So then what h appe n s to your ethics ? Are you back to efficiency, to realism? We're on a d ifficult cou rse here. The problem has always been , for me and for any n oncom m u nist leftists, h ow to relate to the party, and to good friends who m ight be in the party . . . Like Francis Ponge?

Exactly. A wonderfu l guy. When he edited the l iterary pages of Action and I was attacked by the party, he i nvited me to answer . . .

I s aw that. He sure gave you a lot of space . . . My h istory with the party was always confused and confusi ng. It began with my closest buddy, my classmate, N izan, with whom I shared everything for all the years at N ormale, a nd who first condemned me, correctly, mind you, as a petit bou rgeois, then quit the party over the Stalin-Hitler pact. I didn't know how to deal with the good com m u nist resisters in The Age ofRea­ son. It was n't u ntil the fou rth vol u me that I tried seriously, through the rela­

tionshi p of Sch neider who, l i ke N izan, quits over the pact, and Bru n et, a loyal but very honorable party mem ber. After Liberation, I tried to avoi d dealing . with the issue, as I l a u nched the Third Force movement, which cou ld not ' , !iucceed precisely because movements have to be for somethi n g, not just l i ke Camus, w hich is why he ended u p with no political i nfluence i n

t;the world (,

.

•

.

. . . except in the United States. But that's because he was u sed by you r cold-warriors for their own

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ends. O K , so we decide; well most of u s , b u t not David Rousset, t h e co-chair of ou r movement, who moves to the far right, to becom e conscious fellow travelers because the world is then clearly th reatened with n uclear devasta­ tion by America. So the CP tries to be n ice to me, and Ponge, who was a very good friend, u nwitti ngly-he was much too honorable to let h i m self be a paw n - h elps pave the way for a ra pprochement. N ot only was he a good guy, he wrote two good n ovels, which were ignored. Cam us, who was so anti-com­ m u n i st that he could not go out of his way to p raise Ponge's novel, asked me to do it. I did. You s h o u ld read [ Ponge's book] Le parti-pris des choses and [Raymond Quenea u's] Zazie dans Ie metro. They're really very good. Anyway, with me, Pon ge was always a straight s hooter.

What about Raymond Queneau? Same thi ng, or even worse, in the sense that he was an absolutely fi rst· rate novelist, yet was mostly ign ored because of h i s party affi liation. The whole postwar art of the novel owes its language, its structu re, to Queneau. But then, they elected him to the Academie Goncou rt, poor guy; that kil led him.

Why did h e accept? Specifically, Queneau, I don't know. B ut in general, people have a need to belong to somet h i n g that is bigger than them. It explai n s the success ofthe c h u rch, of clu bs, of movements, of political parties. The Com m u n ist Party is especially apt at this, you know, by making belongi n g both an act of charity, that is, h el p i n g others, and obedience. It el i m i n ates the a nxiety of choice. Ah yes , the choice, that's the basis of your existential psychoanalysis, and your rejection of Freud. N ot com pletely. When I was twenty, yes. I refu sed to bel ieve that in· fancy or child hood predetermined the behavior of adu lts. Remem ber, I sub· stituted Freud's n otion of the " u n conscious" with my notion of the "lived ," m ea n i n g the consta nt anxiety of choos i ng. But over the years I moderated that poi nt of view. But we were talking about the need to belong. Li ke Que· neau, a com m u n ist, accepting his adm ission to the Goncou rt. Why? The prestige a n d honor? Why joi n the Com m u n ist Party i n the fi rst place, or any strictly h ierarc h ical party or movement or cl u b or c h u rch? The need to belong, a secu rity blanket, l i ke i n one's infancy. And j u st l i ke parents, or fam ily, can be u nfa i r, vicious even , the offspri n g longs for its secu rity no matter what. So, once the fam i ly u n it is gone, where to turn for that secu rity?

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In every auto biographical essay you've written, especially i n Th e Words, it is quite clear that you had that security. And yet you s ought it at Normale, didn't you, where you rarely completely agreed with your classmates, except Nizan, and he, too, was at first sort of fascist, then communist. So obviously, Freud was right is stressing that predetermination . . . H old it. First of all, he insisted that the primary u psetti ng factor i n the need for security was the sexual. That it exists, of course. That it i s i m portant, sure. But the primary sou rce of action? N o. Castor disagreed with me on that poi nt; we often argued about it. She was m uch more Freudian than I. But 1 never negated the role ofsex . . .

And you certainly focus on your mother as your sister, the significance of sharing the same bedroom, how surprised you were when you saw her underarm hair, et cetera . . True, but I also wrote at length on the god ofthe fam ily, my bearded, tall, majestic gran dfather, and the security I derived from his presence. Until his double-cross, what you call betrayal. That's a violation ofyour security, that is, your sense of belonging, so, if you had been S alacrou, you would have j oined the CP, and then the Goncourt club. That's exactly where existential psychoanalysis tells you no, n ot neces­ sarily. A choice is in volved . And every choice is in the lived, in the context of everyth ing that is happening in the world. The harder the choice, the more the anxiety. But that does not mean that the chooser is not free to m ake the choice. Garcin wants to be known as brave, a good guy on the good side. But he can't. Why? Because he also wants security, first of all to belong to the class that his environment or his education or background, whatever, re­ spects-that is, "men with their shirtsleeves rolled up . " He craves fame. So while he wants to be loved as a resister he also collaborates to survive . Now what in existential psychoanalysis explains why he chose what he thought was the easy way out: to run, a coward? Existential psychoanalysis does not explain, like a Freudian version wou ld. N oth ing in his child hood gives u s a clue. It's the soup, right? H e's in the soup. We analyze the sou p. Every one of us in a capitalist i ndivid u al­ oriented society seeks recognition and security .

.

•

And if they are in conflict? They often are. Recognition means to feel .

relevant in an absurd world, right? And security means being nice and safe

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i n a well-ordered world. S o ? Will you not grant Freud that i f Garcin had been happy in his family life, once he transferred that to his newspaper, he had gained his family again. I guess you cou ld say that's why he did n ot want to ris k losing it. Which in practical terms, in the soup, means not to jeopardize it. But is that why he is a coward? Or i s it because despite his terrible matri monial s ituation, he l i kes his l ife as it is? But the poi nt is: he chooses. He knows the reasons for his choice. It's not becau se of l nes's attack on his j u stifications that he ends up ad m itti ng his cowardice to h i mself. Her tau nting gets him to say it out loud.

That's your "Hell is each other" bit. But that's only that side ofthe coi n . The other side, which no one seems to mention, i s also " H eaven is each other."

You mean that if those three people cared about each other instead of trying to present themselves as righteous or at least human, they would have overridden their terrible history to create a group with the psychological se­ curity we all took for granted, and needed, as children. As you would later put it in the Critique, they were serialized. Had they created a group-in­ fusion, their situation would not have changed, but by making it theirs , they would have been able to accept it. Precisely. Hell is separateness, u n com m u n icability, self-centered ness, l u st for power, for riches, for fame. H eaven, on the other hand, is very s i m ple -and very hard: cari n g about you r fellow bei ngs. And that's possible on a sustai ned basi s o n ly i n collectivity.

But Garcin would still have died too soon, as he says, and your mes­ sage remains that we all die too soon-or too late. That's part of the h u man condition , and applies to all. And the verdict, whether one did die too soon or too late, is hell or heaven on ea rth. Suppose Len i n had contin ued to l ive, would not Soviet socialism be different today? Had Cel i ne d ied right after Journev, would he not be hailed by all French to­ day? But h e l ived on to be pro-German, and has basically disappeared from the pantheon of great writers)

That's true for Dos Passos too. He should have died after 1919. And if Ma l raux had died i n S pai n he wou ld stil l be the idol ofthe world's left.

Yet we both agree with Freud at least on one thing, that there are no ac­ cidents in life. H i storically s peaki ng, correct. But i n context, i n the "l ived," Celine died

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too late, so d i d Dos Passo s a n d M a l raux, but [Fra nz] Kafka, a nd maybe Ca­ mus, died too soon_ And Hemi ngway? That awfu l book about his young mis­ tress in the trees, or somethi ng? You mean Across the River and into the Trees? Yes , that was pretty bad, but he got his true form back with his next novel, a really great o ne

,

The Old

Man and the Sea. Hemingway offers so many contradictions . He was at one point the most famous American novelist, yet he became an alcoholic; he was married to fantastic women, and viewed them as rivals so he divorced them. He won the Nobel Prize and got depressed.

And he com mitted s u icide fro m that depression? Not sure. He had all sorts ofhealth problems dating back to his wound in World War I ,

or

perhaps hereditary, plus two airplane crashes

in

Africa,

and various other accidents . Absolutely amazingly successful and miser­ able. Speaking of the absurdity oflife . . .

But don't forget that the abs u rd is an objective description of reality, and who l ives accord i ngly? Look at the occupation. U ntil Stali ngrad and the African landi ng, we were all convi nced that Germany would win the war. That meant that we wou ld be ruled by N azism. Some were gl ad, l i ke the fascist groups Action Frans;aise and Croix de Feu, or l i ke that aristocrat in The Sorrow and the Pity who joi n s the Waffen-SS to go fight aga i n st t h e Russians. And of course some said, OK, let's adapt and beca me collaborationists. But the

majority, w hatever their politics, referred to them as boches and would have nothing to do with them, if they cou l d avoid them. And then there were the M aquis, the resistance. You could a rgue that, in 1 943, with the R ussians ad­ vancing on G ermany and the Allies' i nvasion of Sicily in J u ly and their triple land ing in Italy in Septem ber, every coli abo suddenly becam e anti- N azi. I n fact, most o f the u pper class switched just l i ke that. Most, b ut not a l l , a s we discussed the other day. But in J une 1 941 , as H itler lau nched [Operation] Bar­ barossa, which swept two h u ndred m iles i nto Russia in j u st a week, the world probably thought the Third Reich would rule, as H itler had said, for the next m illenni u m . And yet, the u ndergro u n d grew. More a n d more young men were will ing to fight. Why? Totally absurd. Because subjectively, each of us refuses to live accord ing to the absurd. The majority will deny that it is absurd, just like the m ajority want to bel ieve in a god who will satisfy all. The d ifference, of course, is h uge, because to believe in god entails at the most a bit of ritual praying and spend ing a ti ny sum of cash, wh i le to bel ieve that the enemy can be crus hed is to be willing to sacrifice l ife.

D E-C E M B E R 1 9 7 1

The dichotomy between obj ective and subj ective conditions reverber­ ates throughout the discussions of the left. I remember once in Cuba, five Latin American committed j ournalists and I were invited to have lunch with Fidel. As the discussion progressed about where and how to make revolu­ tions throughout the continent, Fidel began to get irritated by such state­ ments as " But in that country, no one thinks it's possible," or "In that one, the majority are too downtrodden. " Over and over, we-because I did too­ raised the issue of the "objective conditions." Fidel finally exploded. "All it takes is seven revolutionaries willing to die to get a revolution started. Like here ! " None of us argued with him directly. But we did point out that Cuba had a long history of struggle against Spain, the United States, dictators , et cetera, and had a very conscientious student body. "That's not what made the revolution! What did are those who believed in it. " To which I risked an· swering, " But that' s what the priest is telling his floe-k, believe and you'll go to heaven." I was expecting a tirade. Instead, Fidel smiled and said: "Of course, he believes in the absurd. So does a revolutionary. The difference is that his absurdity does not help the living. Our absurdity does. And what is the absurdity of the revolutionary? That he believes in something that does not exist on this planet, just like the priest, but for humanity, not some bearded old man playing with saints . The revolutionary believes in justice." Concl usion? S i n ce "j ustice" exists nowhere, Fidel i s an idealist. He told me the same thing. But to get back to the post-liberation years, your cooperation with the communist-led journal Lettres Fran{:aises continued, didn't it? For a while, yes, b ut soon they began to attack me, not in that journal, but i n Action or L!Humanite.

Why? You hadn't written anything against them yet. I th i nk beca use the press, the media, ta lked too much about me and Castor, and "existentialism," which was a word invented by one of them, [Roger] Ga raudy, when h e was stil l a com m u n ist.4 This was before you launched Les Temps Modernes? I ndeed. Thei r criticis m s were mild at first. Purely cu ltural. I had a meet· ing with three of the m , at the apartment of a p h i losophy professor from l! Ecole Alsacien ne. G a raudy was there and some other guy I can't remem ber. Theoretically, the meeting was m ea nt to work out a com mon strategy. But it degenerated q u ickly i nto m i ld criticisms, then very antagonistic statements,

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insults a l m ost. Then the Russian writer [Alexander] Fadeyev let loose, a n d that ended it u nti l t h e Henri Martin affair i n ' 952. Fadeyev was that Russian critic who called you a hyena with a pen?

So

you then decided to form your own journal? N o, no. H i s attack was not the cause. I mentioned that so you can have a sense of our post-liberation situation. The commun ists wanted to domi­ nate, or at least set the tone, of France's cultu ral existence after the war. Many of the best writers and poets were com m u nists, to mention just Aragon an d [Paul] Eluard, as were ma n y of the best-known artists, like Picasso. Almost every Frenchman respected them for their role d u ring the resista n ce, and no one knew about the secret outrages that s urfaced later. The C P was the biggest party in France. But Stali n did n ot want them to take the govern ment, just make trouble for the U nited States, a n d one of the ways to do that was to make s u re that com m u n ist writers, singers, pai nters, et cetera, stood in the full limelight ofthe cou ntry's cu ltural activities. And we often agreed with the communists' political maneuvers, so a n alliance between the nonco m m u n ist left and us was very natu ral . But they didn't accept that we had q u ite a follow­ ing in ' 945, wh ich made them feel we were competitors for that l i melight. So they tried to ostracize us. I nstead we lau nched Les Temps Modernes, which quickly became the pri ma ry i ndependent journal on the left.

And it was at first fairly ecumenical, in the sense that founding mem­ bers included Raymond Aron, a right-wing social democrat, Merleau- Ponty, a very left philosopher, Andre Malraux, a Gaullist. How did you fit in this crowd? Badly, and as you know it did not l ast. Malraux wanted to be part of de Gaulle's government. Aron started writing for the far· right Figaro. But Mer­ leau and I saw eye-to-eye for a long ti me, and we published some extraordi­ nary articles, l i ke the fi rst complete analysis of and attack on imperialism, not just France's, but America's as well. The danger of neocolonialism. The out­ rage ofthe French war o n the Vietnamese. America's attempt to turn the Car­ ibbea n i nto an American lake . . .

Yes , very true. But as I reread the first issues, I found that there were some grave, indeed maj or, lacunae , like no class consciousness, no sense of the importance of collective decision making, not even an understanding that politics is everything . . . Very true. As you can see i n Being and Nothingness, I bel ieved then that

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pol itics was how people talked w h o wanted to get something for themselves. It too k a while for me to u nderstand that politics is everything, and I spelled that out in the Critique.

You went, it seemed to me, from one extreme to another. In the first, you rej ect the importance of the collective, to focus on the significance of the individual's authenticity in defining his or her choices. In the Critique, per­ manent revolution , that is, the creation of groups-in-fusion, you tend to push a kind of voluntarism of the individual, that is to say, that subjective force of a group is caused by an individual, like the guy who seizes the bus, and not collective action. Did you read M erleau's Adventures ofthe Dialectic? You s hould. He at­ tacks me p recisely along those li nes. He says that I am an u ltra-Bolshevi k vol­ u ntarist. 1 t h i n k you ' re both wrong. Yes, the man who seized the bus acted im­ petuously without con s u lting his fel low s ufferers. But his decision to do so was precisely becau s e they were i n the same sou p. H e represented the will, the decision ofall. Face it, had he been alone waiti ng for a bus, h e would never have dared seize it, right? H is individual act was a collective act. I ' m quoting Castor there; she answered M erleau i n Les Temps Modernes.

But that wasn't the reason for the break with Merleau, was it? N o, not at all. M erleau was in a very tough position after the war. He sym path ized with a l m ost every action waged by the com m u n ists, as I did, m i n d you , and he accepted the fact that the party represented the workers, hence cou l d not be opposed on that score, as I did. But he wa nted to i nject i nto our revolutionary attitude, hence i nside the party ideology, a fu ndamen­ tal respect for the formal aspect of bou rgeois legality. J u st because bou rgeois democracy violates its principled laws, j u st because it del iberately misinter­ p rets i n p ractice its gen u i nely democratic laws of individual rights, he said, d oes not mean we can discard the whole bou rgeois legal structure. To Mer­ leau, i n d ividual freedoms were sacred , yet he d id not want to break with the CP j u st because the party hacks ignored them.

And you did. Our Th i rd Force, as the press called our movement, that is, our RDR, brought us u n believably i ntense criticisms, I mean attacks, by those hacks.

Like from your former student Jean Kanapa? He was somet h i n g else! You k now, I had gone out of my way to hel p him as a student. I even took him to a psychiatrist when I thought he was goi ng

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D E C E M B E R 1 971

bananas. B u t he needed a church, t o believe, s o he fou n d i t i n t h e Com m u n ist Party. And when they said prove your loyalty by attacking Sartre, he did. N o t very successfully, I must say; your reply in Les Temps totally de­ stroyed him. But he wasn't the only one; there was a whole series in Action.

But as I said, I thin k they were really motivated by our domi n a n ce of the cultural field, and not our politics, si nce after all the R D R had almost no i nflu­ ence in the political arena. And they d id n 't attack Merleau very much, or when they did, with kid gloves, because he did not th reaten them i n the streets, so to speak. I mean i n p lays and novels, like both Castor and I did. Still, I reread Humanism and Terror recently. It decimates the party's lack of human rights. I don't see how they could accept it.

You're absolutely right. They did n't. But M erleau, who had basically be­ come the political editor of Les Temps Modernes, didn't affect the C P's ran k­ and-file. Workers don't have the time or leisure to read novels, go to the the· ater at n ight, or to read long philosoph ical articles. But they do read i n the popular press a bout the scandals caused by that play or the secrets revealed by that novel, they know what is being talked about in the cafes. So that's the enemy on wh ich the party focuses. So why did the party attack so vehemently the RDR, which was not an important political movement?

Because of us, of our standi ng, I mean Castor and I and ou r friends, which included some famous names, even foreign ones, like your writer Richard Wright. Then we began to suspect that Rousset, the RDR co-chair, might be getting CIA money-you know, that was the period when the CIA was spread. ing money to all a nti-co m m u n ist forces in E u rope, and even such respectable reviews as England's Encounter a nd the Congress for Cu ltural Freedom were , taking it. And denyi ng it, of cou rse. We now know that the CIA fina n ced our new workers' confederation, Force Ouvriere, and tried to bribe o ur leftist but noncom m u n ist C FDT [French Democratic Confederation of Workers]. And Rousset did turn to the ri g ht, as did his pals. It was then that the CP staged a massive rally i n Paris ofthe Movement for Peace-you know, the famous one for which Picasso pai nted that beautifu l wh ite dove. The CP tried to m a ke that movement as broad as possi ble, and i nvited me to speak, wh ich I did. But . then, two or three weeks later, Rousset and his pals tried to sponsor a nother such ral ly without the com m u n ists and, more i m portant, i nti mating that : America was a sponsor of world peace. That really got us. First we-I mean

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D E C E M B E R ' 97'

M erleau, Wright, a n d o u r group-wrote a letter denou nci n g it. Then I called for a convention ofthe R D R and paid for it with my own money, becau se while we had a vast m ajority in the ran ks, Rousset had a majority i n the orga n izing co m mittee and, of cou rse, refu sed to back the cal l . Th at's when I asked the m em bers to vote to d issolve the R D R on one basic issue: which cou ntry was wi l l i ng to start World War I I I ?

And you didn't even know o fthe U . S . 's first-strike policy the n ? No, we concl uded that si nce America had developed the H -bom b, it so wanted to dominate the world, it would risk blowi ng it u p to do it. Actually, the United States had given up the idea of dominating the world through nuclear power by then. It did [have that idea] for a while, when it thought it could do it without blowing up itself. Boy! B u t back then, while we did not know about first strikes, we cer­ tai n ly were aware ofAmerica's a mbitions. We were well aware that N ATO was an American plan to dominate E u rope, and we knew t h at the Soviet U n ion was using the Warsaw Pact to defend itself, not conquer us. So we decided, I mean the editors of Les Temps Modernes, decided that if we had to choose be­ tween America a n d R u ssia, we had to choose Russia. That was the fi rst poi nt. The secon d was that, whether we liked it or not, the CP represented the work­ i n g class. It was a reformist not revolutionary party, but it was systematically agai nst any exploitation of workers, and so were we. And the third poi nt, of cou rse, was that a l l other i m porta nt parties or movements, political or cul­ tural, were corru pt, bought by America n CIA largesse. So even from a poi nt of view of honor or pride we had to be anti-American, a n d we stil l are. But that did not make any of us l i ke the C Po But your C P friends ? Du ri n g the war, they were com rades. As comrades, I got along fi n e with them and enjoyed their company. But once that Sta l i n i st apparatu s of trying to control the m i n d s of its adherents took effect, it becam e very difficu lt to re­ late to them. Fu nda mentally, they were all mentally sick. I mean that about Aragon as m uch as G a raudy. Take this exam ple: M o rga n , one of the i ntellec­ tuals ordered to convince me to m a ke an alliance with the C P, fi nally real ized h ow bad the Soviet U nion was and reacted to the i nvasion of H u ngary by writi ng a carefu l letter to L!Humanite, which did not p u b l i s h it, but i nstead printed an answer by another of its intellectual robots denou ncing M organ's letter-w h ich no com m u n ist coul d read. And he was expel led. If they didn't do their assigned d i rty work, they were themselves d ragged i n the m ud. And

D EC E M B E R 1 971

their contempt for their allies was u n believable. That other com m i e a t that meeti ng sent to woo me, a famous gyn ecologist, told me: " Fellow travelers travel with us to a poi nt, then they always stop, and we call them traitors." O r Claude Roy, a despicable Petainist d u ri ng t h e war, then quickly converted to the CP to guarantee h i s future. The whole French CP leadership a n d its i ntel­ lectuals were made up of these sickos, from that carpet merchant ( J acques] Duclos down.5 But we had no choice. I n light of the bigger pictu re, we had to be their pats ies. If only our CP was l i ke the Italian. It obeyed Stalin j ust a s much.

Yes , but i ndividually, Italian com m u n ists were so much n icer, so m uc h more affa ble, s o m u c h more i ntelligent. I would most certai n ly have joi ned their party and quit in 1 969 with Rossana Rossanda and written for 11 Mani­

festo had I been Italian. 6

Yet in the '50S you really liked America.

M ixed. I loved N ew York. B ut I had a great guide. Dolores [Vanetti] ?7

A real ly wonderful woman, and friend, as you know, since you knew her before me. She knew every dive and jazz joi nt, and the m usicians, every opi u m den (which i ncl uded cocain e and speed and everyth i ng else except opium), every intellectual hangout, j u st everyt hing, a n d I got to kn ow a lot of America, rea lly a lot, thanks to her. What I l i ked most about you r cou ntry was its petit bourgeois world, people who lived most graphically the contra­ dictions of the cou ntry, na mely the d iscrepa n cy between life and the repre­ sentation of life. America is so fu l l of myths, it's m i n d-boggl i ng, myt h s of happi ness, progress, freedom, equality, that everyth i ng is possible, making America n s the most op�i mistic people in the world, yet livi ng u n der a total dictatorsh i p of p u blic opi nion, so n aive that they're wo nderfu l , u ntil their rul­ ing class tells them that everyone else i s in ferior, of course. Offici a l ly, they scorn Europe, except for thei r attach ment to their cou ntry of origi n , b ut it's all false: with a l l thei r wealth, thei r power, thei r form idable d rive, Americans have an i ncredibly acute i nferiority complex. Fa ntastic contradictions ! I loved it. Especially in such places as Iowa, or Kansas, or Wyomi ng, where folks had never heard of Stalin grad or Auschwitz or even C h u rchill. I fou nd an America extremely poor, another in Chicago that was fascist, still another that was open, charming, and generous. I loved its skyscrapers but also its main . streets, and I was delighted to find the America of Dos Passos, of Steinbeck, of Faulkner. Whether traveling by train or in a small plane-with a former

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fighter pilot w h o delighted i n tryi n g to scare u s by flyi ng through the G rand Canyon a cou p l e offeet from the cliffs-I rel ived the novels I had so loved.

You made three trips to the United States, right? Yes. The first I went as a correspondent, and wrote my impressions in various n ewspapers. The second was to see Dolores. We traveled then for th ree months , a l l over America and Canada, too. I made my livin g by giving conferences. The th i rd trip, I stayed one month i n N ew York, then went all over Central A merica a n d the Caribbean , i ncluding Cuba.

What did you do during that month in New York? M ostly j u st walked around. Dolores, and your m other, were worki ng, so Fern a ndo, w h o wasn 't, and I j ust walked through all the neigh borhoods dur­ ing the day, a n d the fou r of u s got together i n the eve n in g.

Did you wander through Harlem then? The fi rst time I went to Harlem was with Dolores. It was a bad experi. ence. She was frightened. S h e thought everyon e saw her as wh ite, which was n 't true. S h e wa nted to pass as wh ite, and it made thi ngs u n comfortable. The next time, I went a lone. No problem. People were very n ice, friendly, smil· i ng, and of cou rse i n credi bly poor. The third time I went with Wright and Fer· nando. Wright took u s to n ightc l u bs and restau rants and all sorts of hang. outs. That was a great trip. I

thought you had broken with Fernando by then.

No, we n ever formally broke. It was j u st, wel l , sort ofestran ged , but that was the first trip; when I arrived , the secon d day, I rushed to see h i m , but I fou nd h i m a bit bitter, l i ke he resented the fact that he had had to leave France and l ive in America, which at that time he h ated. He held it agai n st me, I thi n k, that I h a d n 't gone to Spai n , or rather that because he did, he was now stuck i n America.

I thought there was something before that, before the war, even. Well , yes, there was the business with Pou pette [who had studied paint­ ing u nder h i m] . Both Castor and I had been angry th at, in 1 931 , when he was stil l in Spai n and Stepha had come to Paris to get an a bortion , but actually, to give birth to you , Pou pette went to see him i n Barcelona and they had an affair. S h e had been a virgi n , and it was n't just an affai r, he screwed her a n ywhere, standing u p at the door when s h e wal ked i n , that kind of stuff. It wasn't that she disliked it, but that, after a l l that, he told her that her pai ntings were s h it. S h e was devastated, and both Castor and I were very a ngry. I think I even wrote him a nasty letter.

D E C E M B E R 1 97 1

But you stayed friends , since you came to La Closerie that day whe n I was born and you were the first nonhospital person to see me alive when Fernando got drunk. I

loved Steph a so much, as did Castor, that we would never thi n k of

breaki ng, but then, in America, when he u nderstood that Dolores a n d I were lovers, he talked to her very bad ly, so m uch that she did n't want to s ee h i m with me.

Jealousy? No, I don't th i n k so, j u st his bitterness. He was so u n happy then, at be­ ing in exile, not pai nting, that he cou ldn't sta nd seeing me happy, I th i n k.

During these three trips you made, did you understand U. S . politics ? No, not u ntil I went to Central America and especially M exico -no, Cuba was even worse. I n those cou ntries it i s i m possible not to see the dam­ age th at American businesses do, i m possi ble not to u n derstand that Ameri­ can capital i sts, aided by their govern ment, d efended by the Ameri c a n army, just want to exploit the people l iving there. And by the way, it is i m possi ble not to u nderstand why American busi ness men are racists; they j u stify their exploitation on the ground that the people of those cou ntries a re i nferior. That alleviates their consciences. After those tri ps, especially the t h i rd o n e, I came home loving daily life i n America and hati ng its capitalists a n d its gov­ ern ment, which did what the capitalists wanted . My l ast i m age oft h at l ast trip was Venezuela. I went to M a raca i bo to see the oil; all the American executives ofthe Creole Oil Corporatio n 8 lived i n absol ute splendor, while those who d i d the work, the Venezuelans, lived i n hovels with barely enou gh to feed th eir family. T h en I went to Caracas, where i t wa s even worse. Wh en i t c am e ti m e to have l u nch just before I left, m y American hosts said there was o n ly o n e place: t h e Tam anaco Hotel, t h e most splendid hotel I h a d ever seen a t t h e time, where no Venezuela n w a s allowed u nless invited b y Americans, or u n­ less they worked there, of cou rse. I had never seen such l uxu ry. Then I ca m e back t o France, where America was trying t o American ize m y cou ntry.

1 39

January 1 9 72

S peaking a s we were at lunch about your book What Is Lit­ erature ? you agree that you write for the bourgeois to get him or her more G E RA S S I:

committed against the very b ourgeois class's selfish self-centeredness, cor­ rect? I sn't that the same reason Aragon writes ? You don't write for the worker, and neither does he. Workers aren't going to read your Flaubert, and workers aren't going to read [Aragon's] Aure1ien or [his wife, Elsa Triolet's] Cheval Blanc. I SARTR E:

H old o n . You ' re mixing different issues there. First of all,

n ovels by com m u n ist hacks a re sold at com m u n ist ral lies, meetin gs, con­ ferences, and conventions by h awkers who i mply that buyi ng thei r books is a com m u n ist d uty. Th at's how they wage and win their so-cal led battle of t h e books. Workers buy them but don't read them. N ow, you mention my

Flaubert. N ot a novel but a th ick, d ifficult book to read, gra nted. Neither bought nor read by the working class. (Still, by the way, it sold fifteen thou­ sand copies, p res u m ably to people who wanted to and perhaps did read it. A d eta i l . ) Now, the m a i n issue. For whom do we really write?

You've said that you write for the oppressed class via the intermediary of the intellectual elite , that is, the petit bourgeois class. You've also said that the writer writes to express his freedom, which is a way of saying that he writes to escape the absurdity of life, to create a world that has meaning,

JAN UARY 1 972

which would b e with a beginning, a middle, and a n end-in other words, to

be god

.

No. Well, perhaps. That certa i n ly is why the great writers of the nine­ teenth century wrote, to give meaning to an absurd world . I n other words, to cheat death .

Correct. But the modern writer does n ot. Alien ated h i m self i n this ab­ surd world, he writes to exalt his freedom , a nd the freedom of h i s readers, precisely in this abs u rd world. How is that different from a Dostoyevsky? Forget what he claimed

were his reasons-what did his novels actually say? That the only really free individuals are those who accept the absurdity, like Stavrogin, like Prince Mishkin, even like the communist terrorist Verkhovensky in The Possessed,

and not Alyosha or Shatov, or even Kirilov, who commits suicide to prove he is free. You ' re right, as we now interpret his novels, but you ask, Why write? Today, the writer writes to change h i s society, to hel p h i s readers-and h i m ­ self-liberate themselves withi n , not without, absurd ity. A n d that means com m itment. That is, politically con scious that the ruling classes dom i n ate and want to domi n ate the poor, the helpless, and the lost. He names, and to name is

to change, yes ?

Well, I ' m not so sure. For our generation, yes. But Flaubert

•

.

.

He was

fu ll of i l l will when he wrote Madame So vary. He wrote it to demoralize. He was extremely reactionary; he believed that the bou rgeois class was a un iver­ sal class. He was stil l you ng when he wrote that, yet . . .

So what happens to your theory that only a man committed to the p o or,

the unfortunate , the exploited, can be a good writer?

I wrote that in 1 946, '47, stil l ful l of the resistance. I ' l l have to recon­ sider. There are writers with bad faith, certainly, like Hemingway, whose nov­ els are couched usu ally in the col lision of great ideas, but symbolically, li ke i n

,

To Have a n d Have Not, o r i n For Whom the Sell Tolls. A l l ofwhich is u ltimately about the bourgeois i nd ivid ualist off to make a revolution. A revol utionary

off to a safari. To fight the good cause i n Spain , but fi rst the bul lfight. Like Flaubert, Hemingway was a nasty m a n , personally, and it shows i n his writing. Flau bert was totally alienated, but he wrote for the alienated. As he sought h is freedom through his alienation, he sought ours as well , without perhaps pla n n i ng to. He was com pletely twisted, crazy eve n , but h e sought his, hence my, freedom. That u ltimately is the pu rpose of writing.

JAN UARY 1 972

Mauriac? And before him, Celine ? Celi n e real ly belongs to the n i n eteenth centu ry. I n any case, he did apply wei rd, gra nted , but particular princi ples at the begi n n i ng, in his great books, l i k eJ o urn e y to the End ofthe Night, then fl ipped out d u ring the N azi occupa­ tion . No one reads what h e wrote then. Like Dos Passos and Stei n beck; totally mea n i ngless writers once they gave u p their com m itment to thei r fel low sufferi ng h uman beings. You mention M a u riac, a very convi nced Catholic be­ liever, yes, who cla i ms to write to help h i s fellow bei ngs find god . But you l i ke what he writes, yes ? So do I . Why? Because we search for god ? For meani ng? No, of cou rse not. We l i ke M a u riac becau se he struggles with his demons to give himself, and hence all of us, peace. H e cares about h u man bei ngs. Never m i n d his god . J ust l i ke Ivan or Stavrogi n . Here on earth, in the midst of every· one's abs u rd existence. Like Keo in M alraux's Human Condition [La condi­

tion humaine, now u s u a l ly translated as Man 's Fate], one of the great novels of the twentieth centu ry.

I certainly agree with you on that. I am appalled at the fact that none of my students have read it, worse, even heard of it, before I make it required reading. Their lit teachers tend to make them read American psychological novels, not ones that reveal Hegel's great theory of literature as the collision of great ideas, not even Dos Passos's USA trilogy. What a s h a me. Manhattan Transfer [by Dos Pass os] is s u rely one ofthe great American n ovel s of all time, o n a par with American Tragedy [by Theo­ dore Dreiser], or Absalom, Absalom! [by William Fau l kner], o r t h at book on the Civil War . . . The Red Badge of Courage [by Stephen Crane] . Right. Which has that u n iversal collision seen through the psychology of that poor soldier. But some of what you cal l the typical American psycho­ logical novel s try to do l i kewise, and some are p retty good, mainly, yes, I agree, because behi n d the psychology, there is that collision of great ideas, l i ke in [ Joseph Heller's] Catch-22 and some of [Ph i l i p] Roth and M a l a m ud. But that is never stressed by you r critics, at least the ones we read here. It's as if to a d m it that we live i n an a bs u rd world with no gra nd iose mean in g would be a sacri lege.

Quite so. America is a fundamentalist state, no matter how much they pretend to have separated church and state. Even our coins read " I n God We Trust," and kids in public school have to swear allegiance to America, "and the flag for which it stands , " "under God."

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Oh yes, I remember that flag busi ness. I 've never visited a cou ntry with more displays ofits flag, not even R ussia. You h ave it everywhere, o n people's front lawns, on private buildi ngs, l ike tell i ng you , Hey, don't forget you ' re an American and all others are enemies.

Actually, that is what it says, at least to most ordinary Americans. That helps most Americans tolerate our imperialism, like the [William] Wa lke r story. What was that? He was a dentist, lawyer, nineteenth-century filibusterer, that i s , an adventurer who raised a private army, with the money of the First Boston

Group which became United Fruit Company, and conquered Ni c ar a gua turned it into a slaveholding state, and tried to get it annexed to the United States. He then tried to conquer British Honduras, but the B rits defeated ,

him, catching him alive, and handed him over to the United S tates to be tried for violating our neutrality laws. He was tried in New Orleans, and his main defense was that it is better to be a slave and p art ofAmerica than to b e a non-slave but independent. The j ury applauded him a s they shouted "Not guilty. " But to get back to the issue, your writer ultim ately writes to help cre­ ate the classless society, because only then can he live with his angst, his ab­ surd existence. Correct. A classless society means that we wou l d live in col lectivities, i n which our sense oft h e abs u rd would be tolerable because ofour identity with our fel low beings. But then there would be no need of writers ?

The classless society m ust be able to look at itself. Meaning that the writer would then be only a sp okesp ers o n for the

common, like he would write about the cane cutters for the factory workers and vice versa, so that each would understand the other? No one has yet formu lated convincingly a theory ofthe classless society that encompasses the role of the writer, the artist. B u t it would s urely specify that the writer wou l d write for all, since ideally, there would be no el ites. N ei­ ther Marx nor Len i n explai ned how, or better, who. [Antonio] Gramsci tried, of course, and came close to concocti ng a theory ofthe proletarian i ntellectual, but he set it in a transition p hase. As for Rosa Luxembourg, unquestionably the most democratic of all com munist revol utionaries, she nevertheless . writes for her com rades, to stimulate actio n . Result: the CP ignores her.

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J A N U ARY ' 972

T h e C P i s stu pid, period. Yet they didn't attack What Is Literature ? did they? No, but that was because either they d id n 't read it or they didn't u nder· sta nd it, or their bosses said, Oh don't attack Sartre right now, we need him, or somet h i n g l i ke t hat.

And [Gyorgy] Lukacs?2 A royal pose u r. But he was the first to explain, contrary to general erudite opinion, that [ Honore de] B alzac was much more of a revolutionary than Zola. True. Zola was really merely a reform ist. G ive the m i n ers more food and a bigger salary and they'l l be OK. I ' l l give Lu kacs credit for that m uch. But his attack on my work had almost noth ing to do with what I wrote (I wonder ifhe read it) . Basical ly, he w ants to m a i ntai n , in his convoluted prose, which few ca n fathom , that com m u n ist writers write for the masses, not the com m unist elites.

In fact, we all write for elites , do we not? Yes, but once removed, so to speak-that is, through the i ntermediary of the petit bou rgeois who read us. There are no intermediaries when you write for La Cause du Peuple. N o . There I am able to write, and be read by the m i l itants all over France and to some degree i n Germany and Italy as well , yet I have written, and will conti n u e to w rite, h u ndreds ofpages on Flau bert. What I do for La Cause is ex­ ercise my profession as a writer. But Fla ubert is a creative work, and its pres­ tige guarantees that when I write about the outrages at the Tou l prison, the world l istens)

But you're not going to tell me that you spent fifteen years writing Flaubert in order to be able to attract a readership for La Cause ? Of cou rse not. But i n a way I knew that such would be the consequence. After a l l , I had spent twenty years writi n g l iteratu re that gave me the opport u . n ity to write my "/'accuse."4 Besides, all my plays were com mitted plays. I did not write the plays i n order to sign [petitions and manifestos], but I can sign beca use I wrote the plays. And which act is more valuable? To society? Sign i ng. To me, the plays. But in both cases, am I not saying that the writer is the one who believes that the world has been freely chosen by whoever l ives i n it, to be given the meaning it deserves for all its i nhabi·

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J A N U A RY 1 97 2

tants a n d by a l l those i n h abitants w h o respect it, irrespective o f its d i sasters, wars, and outrages? If so, we're back to Stavrogin's search for the god that does not exist. Or Malraux's definition oflife as trying to swim across the river knowing no

one can make it and that we'll all drown, yet swimming just the same. Yes, as a free choice. Only an elite can believe such a harsh reality. Ordinary folks who suffer daily from the exploitation, greed, avarice of the rich, have to believe that they will somehow be avenged, like the Christian credo that it is e as ier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. Actually, I prefer the Buddhist notion that a poor man will be rein­ carnated as a butterfly while a rich man will come back as a cockroach. You just made that up, didn 't you ? Yes, but I like it. Anyway, every religion h a s to offer some s uch ven­ geance, or it won't spread. The Jewish doesn 't. _

Which is why they don't proselytize. And why it's not just a religion but an ethnic entity, so to speak. Which is why most Jews carry out their tra­ dition, but in fact are atheists. Or at least the elites. And these elites are j ust as bogged down trying to make sense of our absurdity as any other elite, and they, too, conceal their metaphysical alienation, j ust as all other elites .

Fact is, there are d ifferent levels of elites. The top, what my grandfather called category one, know exactly what the score is. They are either the greedy bastards of the world or the revolutionaries, that is, they either say, Wel l , s i nce existence is absurd, let's enjoy it and the hell with others, or tney say, O K, there's no way out of o u r absu rdity but let's try to make everyone as comfort· able and satisfied as possible. But then, said my grandfather, a n d he was quite right, there is the secondary elite, which either mi mics or fo l l ows obedi· ently-well, he didn't put it that way, I did. And fi nally there i s tne third l evel ofelites, to wh ich he t h ought he belonged, ed ucated bourgeoi s w h o try to di­ vulge, explain, tra nslate, make palatable. That elite is caught i n between self­ awareness and self-deception . Exploited and abused, domi n ated a n d ha­ rassed, it has a n eed to believe in some kind of retri bution. But n eed and conviction are not synonymous. And it really is not convinced.

Like CP functionaries. Precisely. They n eed to bel ieve that by fol lowing Stalin, or a nyone else's

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JAN UARY ' 972

orders, they a re helping h u ma n ity reach a h igher level of happiness. And that their dedicatio n makes them in fact one with h u manity. Like all those fantastic communist rank-and-filers who went to Spain

to fight Franco using false names, false papers , leaving behind false stories. No one would know that they died in Spain fighting for humanity, but to them it was an act of advancing that humanity of which they felt part. Exactly. They felt that in their act they were representi ng all. Li ke the m a n who seized the bus in an act representi ng all those in the q ueue.

But in s o doing did he not establish himself as a leader? A member of an elite-in-fusion, so to speak. No, I would say that his act was gen u i nely democratic, a n expression of people's will, l i ke any decision by a n AG. I have a problem with AGs , at least where I teach. Most ofmy students,

and I dare say most of the whole student body, work. Many full time. They come to Vincennes, and I presume Nanterre, Jussieu, et cetera, to gain a bit of knowledge to improve their dreary life . They don't have time to attend AGs, much less to participate in the workshops and investigation commit­ tees set up by the AGs. Then also, there are scores of students-I know three personally-who are absolutely brilliant but extremely shy, and won't open their mouth in an AG, confronted by hundreds of other students. So I have doubts about how democratic "direct democracy" really is. What's you r sol ution, then? Very complicated. As far as students are concerned, I would make the AGs much smaller, maybe just by class, but even then, my class in the U nited States had sixty-five students, so we'd have to break that down. Maybe all students should be given free room and board, and stipends . But how do we deal with the rich ones, or those who not only work for their keep n ow, but also to help their very poor, often unemployed families, which is true of many of my Algerian students . Obviously the problem of direct or participatory democracy now, in our level of capitalism, is part of the overall problems of our capitalist society. I think the example of people s eizing the bus and hence creating a group-in-fusion has problems both ways , since af­ ter they all get home and return to work the next day, they're all serialized again. They would have to start again, and again and again. Too demanding, too taxing. I ' m perfectly willing to grant Marx and you that there is no such thing as human nature, and grant you that there is a human condition which we have to take into account to better our society. But I think that part

JANUARY 1 972

of that condition, a s real a s our eyes, nose, two arms, et cetera, as real a s the animal's condition of speed or fear or flight, et cetera, is the fact that both hu­ mans and animals can take only a limited amount of pain or stress or exer­ tion. We may not know what that limit is, but I think it does end up defining our potential. Very true, but no one claims revol ution s are easy. If we defi n e p rogress as the i ncrease of people participati n g in the decisions that affect their lives, there can be no dou bt that, despite the massacres, genocides, mass m u rders that have consistently plagued h um a n h istory, there has been p rogress. There m a y be dictatorsh i ps a l l over t h e world today, bu t n o h istori a n , or a l­ most none, wou ld claim today th a t dictators hip is better than bourgeois democracy, j ust as al most none claim ed before that a divi ne ruler was better than a parliamentary royalty. Each stage may get crushed tem poraril y and the world may regress tem porarily, but once i nstituted in h u m a n ity's ethos, the notion of progress becomes endemic i n the world's people. Look at the C u l ­ tural Revol ution, for example. It apparently ended u p in h orrid excesses. ( I say "apparently" because I do not trust o u r mainstream , that is, establish­ ment hi storians and med ia.) But the fu ndamental characteristic of the Cul­ tural Revol ution is that people make poli cy and ad m in istrators ad m i nister that policy. This notion is now part of our world, part of ou r u nderstanding of what people call h u man nature. N ot all the king's men, all those p ropagan ­ dists i n Wash i ngton a n d London ca n erase that. M a o said two steps forward , one step back. Perhaps now t h e money-governments o ft h e world have s u c­ ceeded i n taking two steps back. But once a man tastes honey, he can not deny its sweetness. So, yes, it is a defeat each time a group-in-fu sion deteriorates into a serialized conglomerate of i n d ividuals. But no one will ever forget how fantastic they felt w h i le l iving out that fusion.

You should explain all that in detail in your ethics . If l write it. You know, I 've lost a lot of my energy. I ' m sixty-seven, a n d aware that if w e have a revolution, m y work w i l l become mea n i ngless. A n d i f w e don't, ah . . . My passion t o write is gone. A s you know, all my life I kept u p my i ncred i bl e pace b y taking speed , w h ich my doctor now forbids m e to take, so I have slowed drastically (although I can sti l l get some) . Still, I j u st finished a thousand new pages of Flaubert. But it bores me now. I don't think it's age. It's the times. For me, it's disappointment. You know, we came very close to a revolution in the United States, the night Mar­ tin Luther King was killed. The blacks were so angry that they took over one

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hundred cities -yes, a hundred. A hundred cities were burning that night. And the whites ? Watching it on television. If we had j oined the blacks, who knows . So me too, I j ust don't have the spirit anymore. My students think I do. They talk about my passion. I overheard a great compliment the other day, one student telling another, "Oh Gerassi, he's either a communist or an anarchist or crazy or all three, but you never fall asleep in his clas s . " But maybe that's just my training. I started writing, I realize now, for three rea· sons: to make money, to gain fame, and to change the world. But now that I feel I 'm not going to help change the world one bit, fame and money aren't good enough motives to keep me going. I u nderstand, but you should try to remem ber our old Mao Tse-tun g. "A s i ngle spark may start a p rairie fi re." Look at '68. We alm ost had a revol ution here, and it a l l started because the govern ment built a stu pid swi m m i n g pool at N anterre.

Did ' 6 8 , its failure, change your work habits ? When did you decide to write Flaubert? By a fl u ke. A frie n d had his correspondence, so one day when I was in her apartment I picked u p the book and started readi ng. That was i n '45. Then, sixteen years ago, old man Garaudy, who was stil l struggling with his sou l, ca m e to see me, basically, I think, for help. He s uggested we work on the biography of someone each on his side and then compare. I said OK, and sug­ gested Flau bert. That was i n ' 954. But I did n 't do anythi ng, as I was then rereading M a rx. I had been disappoi nted by vol u m e th ree of my trilogy. I had also decided not to conti n u e my eth ics. Anyway, I started read ing everyth ing I could o n Flau bert. And it began to amuse me. When I got to his last n ovel, I sudden ly realized I had to deal with h i s death, which meant with my own death. And that's when ' 68 happened.

So ' 6 8 put everything in question? N o, not in '68. I did n 't really u ndersta nd '68 u ntil '70, u ntil now. And what do you understand about 6 8 now? '

Th at to write i s s i mply to exercise a profession. Somebody makes s h oes, somebody becomes a soldier, somebody writes. Today I write three hours every morning, except Fridays when I tal k to you , and write th ree hours after l u nch. T h e rest ofthe time I do what they want me to do.

And what did you understand of death, first of Flaubert, then of you? For Flau bert it changed noth i ng, because he was terrified of d eath all his l ife. But u ndersta n d , it was n't a fear of a state of d eath , if one ca n speak in

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J A N U A RY ' 9 72

such contradictions, it was a fea r of nothi ngness, which is why he tried to be­ lieve in some form of hereafter, and which is why all the com mentators and biographers said he was religious. He wasn't_ H e wasn 't stupid , q uite the contrary. He was putting up a s how for hi mself. His gods always d eceived him . . .

Like Emma's lovers. I ndeed, and he always fai led, like her, to escape the cl utches of those who wou ld destroy him, and her. The choice to com mit adultery is Em ma's only means ofexercising power over her own desti ny, and ofcou rse it leads to her death. His choice to condem n the bourgeoisie, of which h e is part, leads him to seek a salvation he ca n n ot believe in, and he too ends i n despair. Fear of death often leads to seeki n g it. Flau bert's god offered h i m n o solace.

And yours? My god ? My death? I n m y case it was not to escape death, but to en­ compass it that I wrote about it, through him of cou rse. You feared it, or better put, you were never to let it affect your vision of life, your choices, your priorities ? I never thought about it as my death. It is there, in me. It colored my re­ lationsh i p to politics, i nsofar as I would not do at forty what I d id at twenty, o r now that I am sixty-seven what I did do a t forty.

You mean the resistance ? N o, what I mean is the interior significance of my acts. Exam ple: If we had a revol ution in 1 945, after the Liberation, I would certainly have taken part, and probably had gotten killed o r i n some way suffered from the ensuing terror. I wou ld do the same now at sixty.seven. But my conception of m y be­ havior would be different. At forty I wou ld expect to see the resu lt, good or bad, of my acts. At sixty-seven , not. I n other words, knowi n g that one dies means that at a certain age one can not see the consequences of one's ac­ tions, whether in fact one does see them at twenty or forty, si n ce one can die '-at any time, especially i n a revolution. But at sixty-seven , one knows that one not, even ifvery l ucky.

i\:

Does that not affect your behavior? Of course, insofar as the possibility of dying at twenty or forty is an in incorporated i nto my actions. But it does not change the actions, o n ly if you wish, to my being not o nly a revolutionary but also a rebel. Today,

�at sixty-seven, I can only be a revol utionary, for if I should die in the revolu­

�;tion, there wou ld be no injustice.

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But the injustice of seeing so many innocents die, not the ones caused by human greed, but the others, like earthquakes always killing the poor. Like Freud wanti n g to believe i n god just for a moment to tel l h i m off. Like my friend Fran<;ois Charlot, who was in the hospital with me last Tuesday-he got beat up by the cops worse than I did-saying, I sure wish there was a god so I could punch him in the nose for being so pro· rich. Is he O K? That was q u ite a demonstration. Of course the Algerians got the worst of it, didn't they? They sure did. One actually lost an eye . Charlot' s OK. Not a word in the pres s . La Cause will h ave it i n fu ll, with ten pictu res, a special issue. Politique H e bdo wi l l a lso have some great pictu res. What did the doctors do to you? Nothing much. They took X-rays of both my legs and my head, which was bleeding a lot, but no fractures or concussion. They patched me up and I went home to sleep it off. But tell me, not knowing the outcome of all your actions, and knowing that you won't know, does that not at least make you anxious? Someti mes. In fact, last n ight, I woke up to go piss, and when I went back to bed I cou l d n 't s leep, t h i n ki ng a bout death a n d old age. I ' m an anxious type anyway. So a nxiety always reverts to death, doesn't it? But I did fall asleep after half an hour, not very deep sleep, and in the morning I felt a bit woozy u ntil I had my coffee. So it was n 't l i ke the other times.

You had three attacks. Yea h , one i n October [1 970], a small one i n M ay, and another i n J u ly [1 971 ]. I call them attacks of old age. I guess they were m i n i-strokes, si nce I could n 't wal k u p stairs or tal k very clearly. It didn't last long.5

I remember, since you canceled our interview. J u st one, right? Then I was O K. It didn't affect me psychologically, I don't t h i n k. Wel l , I did start thi n ki ng about bei ng i ncapacitated, stufflike that. But n ot about what s u rveys claim old fol ks think about, n amely bein g aban­ doned. I stil l h ave my friends. I work every day with you n g people. I a m still usefu l . But I feel, at the end, that it will soon be all over.

And that doesn't provoke more anxiety? N o. What does is sufferi ng. Like after the war, when I was flying every· where, yes, I was very anxious for a whi le, I was afraid that the pla nes would fal l, catch fire, that I wou ld get bu rned up, that kind of stuff. My fi rst flight, boy! There were no rea l seats. It was a bom ber with sort of benches along the

J A N U A RY 1972

sides a n d a hole in the m iddle for parach ute j u m ps, a n d we were i n the thick of a storm, flyi ng very low, to Bermu d a because the pilot d i dn 't t h i n k he could make you r East Coast. You were pretty scared of planes too, I remem ber. At the beginning, yes. Once I was so nervous fiying over the Andes that my wife got fed up and said she wouldn't sit with me anymore. So I said, O K,

no more anxiety, and took a newspaper and started re ading it, calmly

from left to right. Suddenly she burst out laughing: I was holding the news­ paper upside down.

H a-ha hal That kind of anxiety d isappears with old age. That's the good part. The bad is bei ng treated as old. Three days ago, Foucault, M a u riac, a n d I joined the G P i n a demonstratio n i n front of the J u stice Department to protest treatment of prisoners in jails-well, you know, s ince you were there-a n d after our press conference we all sat down, remember? Right there on the steps. When our protest ended, a big burly guy sitti n g beh i n d me- I guess t h e G P h a d asked h i m t o b e a s o rt of bodyguard -saw that I h a d a bit of tro u ble standing up and picked me u p like a sack offlour. I t rem i nded me of Proust i n Remembrance af Things Past, when a you ng woman offers him a seat in a crowded trolley, and he ends up feeling so dejected because h e obviously looked o l d. That's h o w I felt. Oh yes, worse. When th e c o ps began to push and club a bit, one jostled me, then said, " Excuse me please."

He had recognized you. No, that's the poi nt, he saw I was old. I didn't feel insulted, but . . . Sure, OK, I 'm old, but I don't feel old, I mean, I forget stuff, I have a hard ti me get· ting up from the floor, but I can sti l l work, I can stil l analyze Flau bert's sen· tences.

That's the key, to keep the mind going. Like all those disgusting old geezer politicians , de Gaulle and Adenauer, who lived nice long lives , then retired and boof. Or Churchill.

How old is Fernando now? Seventy-two. Stil l pai nti ng? Still taki n g those long walks in h i s beloved Vermont h i lls,

despite his cancer? How bad is it? It's bad. It's cancer of the esophagus, which is de adly But yes, he still .

walks those two miles to his studio, you remember, the old little red school·

house, which the town of Putney has loaned him [for thirty-five dollars a year] . With his fa ithful dog. He wrote me for the new year. A strange letter, I guess in response to mine, which co m pl ai ned sort of, of being i n exile from ,

JAN UARY 1 972

the revolu t ion, which of course isn t taking place anymore, not since the '

whites abandoned the blacks after they killed four white students at Kent S tate last year. I guess he i nterpreted that to mean that I was puttin g my life in question and he told me that it was perfectly acceptable to do that, that he had done it at ea ch phase of his life, after the S panish Civil War, after being discharged fro m O S S , after m oving to Vermont and becoming a teacher, and so on. Sou n d s l i ke he has become bitter, no? I don't think so. He told me in that letter to like what I do, that was the key to life. Like he liked painting, whether he sold or not, that he loved col· ors, that they were his buddies. He just hoped that his cancer wouldn't hurt too much for him to paint. I thi n k that's the key. Those who a re afraid of the suffering involved in d eath are n ot really afraid ofd eath . Those who a re afraid ofd eath h ave regrets about their l ives. And that applies to me. I had a good typical bourgeois life for a typical bourgeois. Schooli ng, profession, friends, travel, plus i n my case a bit of glory and fa me. That part was not li ked by the bourgeoisie, but even ifl tried to refuse the bou rgeois honors for my anti-bou rgeoi s work, I guess the satisfaction of havi ng been relevant within o u r absurd existence gave me sat­ isfaction. 6

Like [Bertrand] Russell. A queer bird , that one. An aristocrat who became better and better as he aged , l ike good whiskey. He made the War Crimes Tribunal happen by sheer conviction, at n i n ety-five yet.

When I went to see him in Wales , after I got back from North Vietnam he talked almost like Fidel, on and on in to the night, about his pet tribunal. I asked him at one point what kept him going like that. Remember, he was also writing his memoirs then, a good six hours a day. He poured himself an­ other shot of S cotch , I think it was, held up his glass, and quipped: "A bottle ,

a day. " Qu ite a warrior. Yet after the war, he had advocated a preventive war against Soviet Russia. That was a wei rd period , i ndeed. We didn't know that rad iation does not dissipate, a n d we tended to believe most of the p ropaga nda fed to our news· papers by the CIA. That's why we created the RDR, a colossal m istake.

You were even good friends with Arthur Koestler then.

J A N UARY 1 972

N ot really. I didn't like h i m a l l that m u c h . He always talked a bout h i m­ self i n the third person , " U ncle Koestler . . . " " Papa Koestler . n But I l iked his wife. She was pretty, jovial, warm, maybe perverse along the edges, cor­ .

.

ru pt a bit. I went out with her some. She had been Camus' m istress, and sometimes the three of us went out. And Darkness at Noon was a fasci n ati ng book. M erleau did a great job a nalyzi ng it i n his Humanism and Terror.

Koestler was part of the RDR, wasn't he ? Darkness at Noon was pub­ lished in 1947, the same period when you wrote Materialism and Revolution, which by the way I still make required reading in some of my classes. I think it is the best politico-philosophical analysis of communists' so-called objec­ tive path of history. It was n't meant to be political . Don 't forget that I was not pol itical then, I was a n i ntellectual, trying to show what is really happeni n g i n ou r world and why, Even the creation ofthe R D R was not a political act for me-of cou rse it was for everyone else-but for m e it was a n i ntellectual's need for i ndepen­ dent cogn itive understandi ng, and hence, since to name is to act, actio n . But not a political party. I didn't become politica l u ntil last year, when I u nder­ stood the political sign ificance of '68 and when I joined with the G P as a militant. But whether you thought of yourself as political, your activity from 1945 on has always been political and, perhaps more important, since as you

say, hell is each other, interpreted by your peers, and probably by ordinary Frenchmen, as political, right? U n questionably. From the end of the war u ntil '51 or ' 52, we tried to stay nonpartisan, and of cou rse that got us attacked by both right a n d left

•

.

.

Who' s "we," then? Camus, Merlea u , and what you or the press, or even Castor, calls the family, Bost, Pou i l lo n , Gorz, and Castor, at a distance so to speak. I mean they were always there, at the rallies and meeti ngs when we staged them, but, once we started the RDR, never really members. Even Cam us, t h ough he was a mem ber, he stayed a bit distant, as did Merleau, who did not want to a l ien­ ate the com munists, who attacked u s q uite ferociously. He always i n s i sted that the R D R cou l d never become significant u n less it becam e a party, a nd if it did it wou ld get absol utely nowhere, because the French voted for the big parties only, the com m u n ists, the socialists, the G a ullists, and the non­

.

Caullist rightists, period. And he was right, of cou rse. But none of us, I mean those of us on the left i n the R D R, wanted it to be a party. It was in that sense

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J A N U A RY ' 9 7 2

that I saw myself, a s h ead of it, n evertheless a s an i ntellectu al a n d not a s a politician. By ' 95' , we had about ten thousand ad herents, and it was grow· i ng. The ran k· a nd-filers were on the same wavelength as Merlea u an d I . The active leadership, Rousset, [Georges] Altman, a n d others, were more anti­ com m u n i st t h a n anyth ing else- by the way, you should i nterview RoussetI did. Good. And they wa nted more money than our ten thousand could do­ nate even if they wanted to, so Altman, who had been a com m u n ist but was now d irector of the rabidly a nti-co m m u nist daily Franc-Tireur, went to Amer­ ica to get money from the C I O [Congress of I ndustrial Organizations]. We knew that the C IO's foreign b u reau, u nder [ J ay] Lovestone, was getting its money from the CIA, so that's when I asked the members to vote to dissolve the R DR and they voted a lmost u nani mously to do so. Cam u s was out of the pictu re by then, and M erleau was too preoccu pied with.his writing. He would com e to 42 [rue Bonaparte, Sartre's apartment] with the fam i ly for the edito­ rial m eeti ngs of Les Temps Modernes, but that was it. And he would write arti­ cles for it occasional ly, of cou rse. But then the world had changed. It h ad be­ come clear that America wanted to American ize France, and a l l of Western E u rope for that m atter. C I A meddling in our politics and media, and even m ore so i n Italy, and England's total su bservience to America, had all become too evident. And Fra nce was wagi ng an i m perialist war i n I ndochina, which had to be condemned. That's when the sailor Henri Martin refu sed to sail on a shi p taki ng war material to Vietnam, and faced mutiny [charges], perhaps execution. The CP asked me for help. I agreed. So bega n my fel low-traveler p hase, ' 952- 56. But in ' 956 ca me another Russian i nvasion: H u ngary, and my den u n ciation cau sed another break, which lasted u ntil the Algerian War. The com m u nists were very soft on that issue, but I did go to Russia then and, as you know, got enta n gled in a very passionate and serious relationship, w h ich made me go back m a ny ti mes.

Lena [Zonina]. your translator? We traveled throughout R ussia a lot together, someti mes with Castor, the th ree of us. She was, and is, a fantastic woman. Her father had been a rev­ o l ution a ry from the begi n n i ng, but Stalin executed h i m , and also her brother. H er m other, a devoted com m u nist, was kicked out of the party, and she was herself, though never charged with "anti-party" activity, but often i nterro· gated by the N KVD. During the trial of[Yuli] Daniel? she was harassed a great d eal for h aving s igned a statement supporti ng h i m , an d at various ti mes re-

1 54

J A N U A RY ' 972

fused an exit permit t o visit m e , but she persevered and did c om e to Paris, and returned without a problem. We live in a disgusti n g capitalist syste m , but those who suffer are the poor. In R ussia, the govern ment is afraid ofevery in­ tellectual, not the poor, because they are guaranteed their l ivel i hoods, but people l i ke us because we might be too critical about someth ing they d o or say, and then what? They never figu red that out.

I think the explanation is that those opposed to the capitalist system still, by and large, accept the electoral process. In the United States, the press, the media in general, is so controlled by the industrial-financial­ military complex that the only real voice of dis sent is limited to a few journals or magazines read by intellectuals, who are barely respected anyway. Here, intellectuals are respected, and their statements , like yours, are carried in the established media. Your government tries to stop La Cause du Peuple and j ail militants precisely because they have given up on the electoral system. Like Matzpen [the Israeli Socialist Organization] in Israel. America's way of silencing dissent is by depriving dissidents of j obs, so very few ordinary folk can risk it, and no one pays attention if, say, a Norman Mailer says capitalism is n o good. Intellectuals often sign statements in the New York Times; they sometimes even pay for full-page ads . It does absolutely no good unless half a million folks then march on the Pentagon. And you will never get a thou­ GP

sand marchers in favor of nationalizing the biggest gangster companies in

the world, namely the insurance and health industry. Here, if the govern­ ment wants to privatize a public hospital there would be ten million march­ ing. Americans have been convinced by the corporate media that public companies are less efficient than private ones . All very true, but for us, you , me, the "fa m i ly," if we were Russian, doing �)Ur thi ng, we wou ld be i n gul ags, wou l d n 't we?

Yes , precisely because our dissent would have mattered. And that's why the com m u nists kept after me. I guess, u ntil I u nder­ stood, after '68, that everything is political, my whole trajectory was deter­ .

by the com m u nists, by what they said, what they did, how they treated and how I opposed them.

1 55

February I 9 72

You said the other day that you became a fellow traveler in ' 5 2 , with the Henri Martin affair. But what happened when the Korean War started ? Were you silent? G E RAS S I:

S A R T R E : That was our first big crisis at Les Temps Modernes, I mea n between M erleau and me. The others were n atural: Aron was a right-wing so­

cial democrat, so he had l eft. Malraux wa nted to be part of de G a u l le's team, so he left. But the fi rst really sign ificant issue was when the gu n s started in Korea. First of a l l , we believed most of America's propaganda, that the N orth [Koreans] i nvaded without provocatio n , that Syn gman Rhee was a good democrat in the South, that Kim I I-Su n g was a fanatical bastard, et cetera, et cetera. It took a few months before we bega n to get the whole picture, that there had been skirmi sh es between North and South ever si nce the Russians p u l l ed out of the N o rth and the America n s did not in the South . Then

we

fou nd out that Kim was a resistance hero while Rhee was a semi-collaborator, who had sworn to u n ify Korea u nder h i s tutelage. But when the guns began, we didn't know all that. We didn't even know that [General Douglas] M acArthur was the old fascist general who had ordered h i s troops to fire on the vets of World War I who had congregated i n Wash i n gton to demand their bonuses beca u s e they were starvi ng. We simply said: "Here we go, World War I I I. "

F E B R UARY 1 972

But be silent about what? U ntil we got all the facts, Merleau, l i ke the rest of us, believed the pro­ paganda, and hence he thought this was Stalin's way of ci rc umventing the Yalta agreements, by conqueri ng the whole area by proxy, yet did n ot want to criticize Soviet com m u n ist policy because it would be i nterpreted a s an attack on our own com m u nists here i n Fra nce, who after all spoke for th e exploited proletariat.

Like today, if one criticizes Israeli policy, one is immediately accused of being an anti-Semite here at home.

Precisely. So he wa nted us to be silent on Korea. I th i n k it was his u p­ bri ngi ng as a bourgeois democrat yet very Catholic. His m other h ad been a very strict Catholic and h ad j u st died, so he had her buried with all the reli­ gious fa nfare. H e was a very stron g advocate of personal freedom , but as an abstractio n , if you will, not the freedom i n context of a capitalist world , the freedom of own i n g a pair of shoes. In other words h i s democratic principles were very bourgeois, but resti ng i n a n inferiority complex about h i s class. He absol utely hated it. But there was also the question of his career, which h e did not want to jeopardize. He longed to be appoi nted to the College de Fra n ce, and he was eventually. That lust was u nconsciou s, of cou rse, but I th i n k that was in part the reason he d id not sign his editorials, for exa m ple.

But neither did you. I only wrote one, alone, precisely a bout Korea after we learned the facts, and I signed that one. Then after M erleau and I split, and I wrote Communists

and Peace, which was serialized i n the review, I wrote another and yes, did n ot sign it, because it was the view of the whole staff. But he was political editor ofthe review. He wrote al most all of our editorials, and n ever signed the m .

That's normal. After all, editorials are meant t o state the point of view of the review in general, and if a staffer disagrees, he or she e ither writes a dissenting statement or, if the review won't publish it, resigns. " I n a ny case, M erleau was very pro-com m u n ist yet always careful not to engage the university in his politics. Like Camus, the personal colored the po­

t"

Camus? I thought his politics were determined by his being a piedThat too. But much more i m portant was his wife, Franci ne. Sh e was bright, a m athematician, a n d extremely pretty. But s h e was eq ually ex­ reactiona ry, pro-"Algerie fran�aise," pro-OAS [Secret Army O rga-

1 57

F E B R U A RY 1 9 72

nization, created by right-wing n ational ist officers to fight de G a u lle's plan to grant Algerian i ndependence]. She actua l ly testified at [General Edmond] Jou­ haud's triaL'

How could Camus put up with that? By the time of th e trial , Ca m us had died i n the car crash_ But he had treated her abo m i n ably. We often went out together, Castor and I and them. He was h aving an affa i r with [th e actress M aria] Casares (Qu i roga] then , and everyone knew it. 2 She was playi n g then, and i ntermission was at ten-fifteen , so every n ight, no m atter whom he was with, ignoring Francine's visible pain, he wou l d excuse h i m self to go cal l Casares. And then, if Casares was up to it, he'd take Francine h o m e and go c l u bbing and w h atever with Casares. He was very nonchalant about it, yet was wracked with gui lt j u st the same_ But then none of us were very normal after the war. Co nsider Les Temps Modernes. M erlea u , the political ed itor, was very close to the .co m m u n ists. I, as co­ fou nder a n d co-ed itor, was con sta ntly attacked by the com m u n ists, yet I was certa i n l y on the left. N ot so with Aron, [Albert] O l l ivier, and ( J ea n] Pau l han, both of whom I knew from the resi sta nce. Ol l ivier had been active i n Ca mus'

Combat. Pau l h a n , whom I knew wel l before the war, had been with me i n the com m u n i st resi stance movement. There were disagreements a l l the ti me, a n d not j u st over Korea, though th at's when O l l ivier and Pau l h a n left the re­ view. But we had serious fights over such issues as p u n is h i n g the col l abora­ tors. Ca m u s wanted Brasil l ach executed , for exa m ple. M a u riac did not. Nor d i d Castor. I was in America, so out ofit, a nd I thought of myself, as I told you, as not pol itical. The whole cou ntry was then equa l ly turbu lent. Don 't forget that after de G a u l le q u it, we were ru led by a tripartite govern m e nt, the right­ wi ng basically Catholic M RP [Popu l a r Repu blica n Movement], the mealy. m outh socia lists, a n d the com m u nists who had refu sed to take over from de G a u l le. And i n the m iddle of all this, when I retu rned from America, there was m e, famous, looked upon as a spokesperson for the noncom m u n ist left, and totally befuddled . It was then that the mass m ed i a began to actively attack the ( P, a n d I was con stantly asked to explain, give interviews, debate the left and right, go on tal k s h ows, even host a talk show. There's a great d ifference be­ tween bei ng fam o u s and bei ng a celebrity. I knew I was fa mou s-as an i ntel­ l ectu a l . But w h at does a celebrity do? Ca mus u sed to kid me t h at I could not b l ow m y nose i n Paris without it bei ng tal ked about i n Rio de J a n eiro. I n ' 947, weekly rag cal led Samedi Soir sprang up w hose o nly busi ness was to tel l

a

ta l l tales about celebrities, you k now, l i ke who sleeps with w h o m , and s o on.

F E B RUARY 1 972

And then Pierre Lazareff, that disgusting press mogul,3 lau nched France Di­

manche, which was almost as bad. Somehow they fou n d out that I had the mumps, so they reported that Wanda had come to visit me to prove that the side effect of the i l l ness-it's su pposed to m ake a man i m potent-was not true; and as gratitude I gave her the role of Jessica, H ugo's wife, in Dirty

Hands.4 I ran i nto that scu m bag later at some club; he came u p to me and said: " I know you despise me, but ' greatly ad m i re you." But the other side was a lm ost as bad. Dom i n ique Desanti, for exam p le, did a hatchet job o n me in Action.5 But you have to put everythi n g in context: once the center of the world, France had been cut i n two by the Germans and basical l y ignored by all. So after the war, the world began to exist for France and Fra nce began to exist for the world. Cou ple that to the development of the mass media, and you have a sort of free-for-al l , everyon e trying to find a niche, or fame, or goals, or a purpose. And i n that chaos, the main attraction was " Existential­ ism," and me as its fou nder. Wherever I went, also Castor, who was d u b bed La Grande Sartreuse, 6 we were photographed, as ked for com ments on a ny­ thing, preyed u pon to help get gigs, solve conflicts, save the sick-it was maddening.

No doubt, but let' s be honest, you kind of asked for it, too . You were constantly seen in Left B ank bottes [clubs, not necessarily respectable] drink· ing until the morning. True, but so were my attackers; they usually got there before we did, so they didn't come to write nasty th ings about us; they were there getting drunk on their own.

Did your fame cause j ealousies at Les Temps Modernes? , don't think so, certai nly not with Merlea u , who s hied fro m our public Ufe. , wrote about that i n " Merleau-Po nty Vivant." As for the oth ers, no, I think

:they enjoyed going out with us, that is, those who became what Castor calls :�the fam ily, and they weren't eggi ng for fame as writers. t 'r:'

They were mostly your old students, weren't they, like Bost and Pouillon?

,,you, Some, yes, but not all_ Lanzm a n n had not been my student, nor were when you joi ned us in '54, and Castor i ncl uded you in the fam ily. I re; , �member you loved to hang out i n La Cave du Vieux Colombier with us. � That' s because of Sidney Bechet, who played there with Claude Lu•

�er's band. I loved that kind of jazz. �'"

So did we, and you loved to dance with M ichelle Leglise [Vi a n]. You two a great team.

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F E B RUARY 1 972

But that was later. Th e great upheaval period, during which your fame, and celebrity, spread across the world, ended with the Korean cannons, as Merleau used to say. Aron, Ollivier, Paulhan, left then. Camus remained a close friend but was no longer interested in the political debates. Who ran the review then ? Jeanson? J eanson beca m e the boss then, but that mea nt n oth ing beca u se we all wrote w h at we wanted, with no i nterference. For legal p u rposes I was "re· sponsible d i rector," mea n i ng that if a n article i n the review was deemed trea· sonous by the govern m ent, they had to arrest me. But a l ot of very good work was done by Lanzm a n n a nd [Marcel] Pej u and of cou rse Jeanson, though his views were a bit soft u nti l the Cam u s affair.

You didn't plan that, did you ? Absol utely not. When the adva nced copy of The Rebel arrived , I asked Jeanson if h e wanted to review it. He had written a v.e ry favora ble article on Ca m u s before, so I felt he'd do a n ice job on the book. N o n e of us had read it yet. I n fact, I d i d n 't read it u ntil after Jeanson's article was set in type. When I did, I i m m ed i ately thought, U h oh, he's going to hit h i m back, m eaning at Jeanso n , of course. That's becau se I always knew that Cam u s was very ego· centric; he once told me that he should h ave received the N obel Prize just for

The Stranger. Anyway, it never occu rred to me that Cam u s would attack me, personal ly, in a letter to " Monsieur Ie d i recteu r des Temps Modernes, II totally ignori ng Jeanson. And when I responded to the letter, I did so not out of loy· alty to J eanson, but because I completely agreed with his criticism ofthe book a nd with his right to say so. And the i ncident helped at least in one way: J ean· son thereafter ran the review carefu l ly, adroitly, and acutely. He was always on the correct pol itical wavelength, which allowed M erleau to care more for his p h i losoph ical works. Do you think that Camus' letter to you was motivated by that egocen­

tricism you mentioned? M ore com pl i cated . Ca m u s was always i n a dilem ma: Algeria n s have a right to i ndependence, but the settlers m ade that cou ntry thrive; Russia has a right to fear A merica, but the buffer zones it creates i n Eastern E u rope end u p being satellites; Henri M arti n h a s a right t o refuse t o participate i n a n imperio alist war, but the elected government has a right to i m pose its pol icies. H is personal life ra n the same way. Then there was the questio n of death. He had variou s bouts with tubercu losis. He was terrified of it. He l usted for i mmor· tality. Like all who fear d eath, he cou rted it. Everyone cla i m s that it was Michel

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F E B R UA RY ' 9 7 2

Galli mard who was d rivi ng the car that kil led both. I wonder ifin fact i t was n 't Cam us. I n any case he would have egged M ichel to go faster and faster. B ut Camus knew that i m mortal ity is a joke; no matter h ow bri l l iant a book may be, how long wil l it rem a i n in our i ntel l ectual conscious ness ? A thous a n d yea rs? Two? Ten ? Ridiculous. The quest for i m mortality, and Cam us knew it perfectly, makes sense only while one is alive.

What happened to Les Temps once Jeanson left to work full time for the Algerian FLN ?

By then Gorz, Pou i l lon, Bost, Lanzm a n n , and of cou rse Castor kept the magazine flowi ng smooth ly. Merleau was gone by then?

Yes. He had d istanced h i m self q u i etly d u ri n g the 1 950S. Precisely when you got closer and closer to the C P ? Communists and

Peace, which came out in 'S2, pleased them a great deal, I gather, yet as I reread it the other day, I found in it the germ of your eventual rupture.

The end i ng? I ndeed. The forewarning of what is to come is there. But much later, in ' 64 , with the Ghost of Stalin, correct? It certainly seems to me that you were very political during that whole period, first with

a great play, to me your best, namely The Devil and the Good Lord, in which you seem to argue for the notion of the end justifying the means, that's in 'Sl, then Communists and Peace, and your book on the Henri Martin affair in 'S3, and of course that very funny play Nekrassov in ' S S .

B u t m y approach w a s always ethical. Whenever I condem ned the com· munists, or a nyone else for matter, it was always from a moral po i nt ofview. And don't forget that my major effort d u ri n g that period was Saint Genet, in which I tried to show how society both ru i n s a man and creates a gen ius by its stupidity and prej u dices.

I had lunch with [ Jean] Genet last week, and he complained, jokingly perhaps, that your book had so completely dissected and analyzed him through his novels and plays that he couldn't write anymore. It's true he hasn't written anything for a long time, has he?

Ha·ha! Don't blame me for that. I think that he simply does not fee l l i ke fighting for

a

cause that he has won . The i ntell ectual world, if not a l l the

French, now accept that homosexual passion can be as vivid and mean i n gful ·as any other kind. And that any victim of prejudice can become a crimi nal, as a way of fighti ng back against an unjust society. But you 'll see, he'll write again. I n any case, my analysis of Genet and his work was purely moral, as is

F E B R UARY 1 972

m y analysis o f Flau bert. Just because I condem n their society a n d t h e bour· geois class that oppressed Genet or that Flau bert hated but l usted after, has political sign ificance, does not mean that I analyzed it politically. In my m i nd then, before I u nderstood that money is politics, just becau se a capitalist was greedy, selfis h , avaricious, et cetera, was a moral j udgment, not a political one.

You operated like our universities do. They separate economics from politics. There's no department called political economy in the United States. I think it's the only country in the world where that's the case, as if economics has nothing to do with politics, and in the United States a stu· dent can get a degree in political science without taking a single course in economics, and vice versa. In your case it was morality over here and politics over there. Qu ite so, though of course my works are all very political. I just didn't t h i n k that way consciously. But I th i n k that was because my training, and orig. i nal i nterest, was p h ilosophy. And that didn't change with Budapest? Not very much with Budapest, but certa i n ly with Prague. Bu t you know, I was always there, even if ! d i d n 't real ize it. As early as d u ring the resistance, in o u r grou p, which was called Socialism and Liberty- I was the one who named it that, by the way- I always resisted the com m u n i st idea that free· dom, l iberty, comes o n ly after the classless society has been established. That's my objection to Goetz in The Devil and the Good Lord.

Yet he is the most sympathetic character of all, even more, I think, than Hoederer. Wel l, Len i n was a sym pathetic character, wasn 't he? [N ikolai] Bukharin even more so. And [Karl] Radek. Even G ramsci langu ishing in M ussol ini's jail. True, but then there' s always my darling, the greatest democratic com· munist until Che, namely Rosa Luxembourg. Is that why she fai led ? Like H oederer? But that was always my com mit· ment: social i s m a n d l i berty. And that was always why, no matter how m uch of a fel l ow traveler I was at different times, my objection to the com m u nists reo mai n ed firm-socia l i s m and, very important, and l i berty, even in the p rocess, on the way to the classless society. And you thought of that as a moral issue, not a political one? U ntil '68, yes. O nce I u nderstood the roots of '68, precisely the lack of meaningful l i berty i n o ur societies, then I fi n a l ly u n derstood that everyth ing is political.

F E B R U A RY ' 972

What was the core o f that understanding? That to capitalists, l iberty mea n s to say what you want, but n ever to do. Capitalist society holds all the i m portant pu rse stri n gs. You a re free to yel l, to demand, to condem n a particular policy, to agitate so it will change, and in­ deed, it som eti mes does change, l i ke the 1 961 referen d u m i n which a majority ofthe French expressed thei r desire that Algeria be granted its i ndependence, and it was. But freedom fro m poverty, freedom from prejudice, freedom from the pol ice, from oppression, is out of the q u estion . Such lack of freedoms destroys h u man beings. It eats away at their guts, their desires, their goals. That's why m iddle-class kids i n '68 wanted to overturn the govern ment. And that's why, when they marched down i n front of the M i nistry of I nterior, where all the repressive fi les were stored and the cops guard i n g the joint yelled, "There's no one i nside, com e and seize it!" and made the fi st salute, [Daniel] Coh n·Bendit or Geismar, I forgot, yelled back, "We don't want power." That's when the com m u n i sts decided to try for a compromise with de Gaulle. They u nderstood that the kids wou l d not bring down the govern ment, no matter how many millions of them m a rched aga i n st it. And when that sank i n , Castor a nd I finally realized that we are all political an im als. You then eventually j oined the maos. Did Castor also ? You know, she h a d always shared my views, my political views, even if we discussed them as moral. But ' 6 8 changed her, too. S h e beca me aware that there was a lot that women had to do, actions I mean, that writing about women's l iberation was not enough, that change, real democracy, has to be fought for i n . . .

In the str eets

.

Exactly. So she did. They started demonstrati ng, occu pyi ng, et cetera, and did often joi n the GP when they thought that the struggle was com mon. But from then on, Castor went to her m eeti ngs without me; I was not allowed. And it changed her relationships with my "women," as they say. Why? Because they live off me. You know, these women live off me. I consider it norm al si nce, after all, I was so demanding when we started o u r relation­ ships, that they ended u p doi ng n othing else but livi ng it. So today, Wanda, Michelle, Arlette, my [ad opted] daughter, all live off my writi ng, a nd while it is normal, Castor doesn't feel com fortable with it a nymore.

Olga, too? N o. She did her own thing, and teamed up with Bost.

F E B R UARY ' 972

I hear that there are five young writers who receive monthly stipends directly from Gallimard at your order? Who told you ? Robert [Gallimard]?7 Don't tel l anyo ne. I don't want them to feel obliged to m e .

Are any of the five women ? I ' m n ot goin g to tell you , because you ' re too good a journalist, but I 'll tel l you this, I s ure wish we had o u r own Rossana here.

Rossana Rossanda? Yes ; she is the most magnificent com m u nist, not in the party mind you, that I know, and a great fem i n i st, who loves to cook, and does so for [K. S.] Karol, as well as any visitor. 8 I love to see her. She is my ideal of a com m itted fem i n ist a n d revolutio na ry writer. And I love her cooking.

March 1 972

G E R A S S I : France went through a very agitated period from 1 945 to 1 9 6 2 , yet that was your most productive period as well. S A R T R E : The end of the resi stance, war i n I ndoch i na, the col lapse of

the tripartite ministry, the R D R, the war on Algeria, and if we go to ' 966, the destruction ofthe left in Fran ce. We, in Les Temps Modernes, and I personal ly, responded to each crisis, each p hase. We made some mistakes, li ke the RDR was a bad one, but we were m ore or less o n the button d u ri ng each p hase, i n · ternational ly, which was t h e most, but n ot only, crucial issue then, based on our fu ndamental anti.imperialist com m itment. We were right to join the com· munists in the campaign aga i n st the Americanization of NATO-we still are of course-and the " Ridgway Go Home" demonstrations, we were right to side with the com m u nist labor battles, because the party did represent the vast majority ofworkers i n France, we were right to join the C P in its agitation against the colonial war i n I ndochina, but we were right to condem n Russia for its i nvasion of Berlin, Prague, and of course Budapest i n '56, right to con­ dem n the whole left for its stan d on Algeria, both the C P, which was wishy­ washy on it u ntil it became clear that Algerian com m u n i sts were fightin g with the FLN and that Massu was torturing their militants. But even then, support for Algeria was weak, and it destroyed the cred ibility ofthe left.

M A R C H 1 972

Th e tripartite government did not collapse because o f Algeria. What really went wrong ? Squabbles. The social ists represented , and sti ll do, France's petty fu nc­ tionaries, basically the petite bou rgeoisie. They sought a few reforms h ere and there, but god save them from any semblance of a revol ution. J u st a bit more l i beralism, a bit m ore bou rgeois freedoms. The com m u n i sts didn't want a revol ution i n France either. They never did, either on orders from Stalin, or be· cause they were worried that the U n ited States and England wou l d i nvade if they took power. At least that's what their militants claim . But there's also the fact that all the top leaders are also petit bou rgeois, enjoying their status as deputies or senators or u n io n chiefs, and they don't want to sacrifice that. So socialists and com m u ni sts agree: j u st give us more reforms. And, obviously, when two major parties agree, they squabble. They fi n d issues to shout in· s u its. Like the CP is opposed to the Com mon Market, even though Brezhnev is for, while the soci alists are i n favor, though not i n the form presented, so in the referend u m , they will a bstai n . The C P orders its adherents to vote no, thus validati ng the referendu m . And so on.

Why then did the left not create a genuinely leftist party during this period? First, becau se the resistance got all the young anti· N azis to join the CPo Once Russia was at war, the French CP waged a great fight against the occu· piers. It was well done, well led, hard and just. So most ofthe young with a po· litical conscience, who fought with the com m u nists during the occu pation, then joi ned the CP afterward. To these kids, the CP was papa. Like most chil· dren they remained loyal , even if disappointed that their papas were not more militant. Which is why th ey loved so m uch that old·ti me warrior Andre Marty. As you know from you r father, I ' m s u re, M a rty was mad but

•

.

.

Fernando said his nickname was "the butcher of Albacete. " I ndeed. B u t t h e party's ra n k·and·file knew only that he h ad led t h e ' 9' 9 Black Sea m utiny [when the French navy had been ordered to fi gh t the Bol· s hevi ks], fought in Spai n , led a formidable wartime resistance force, and, with that other great resistan ce hero Charles Ti llon, advocated a more revol ution· ary sta nce as a member of the CP's Politburo. Many of those ran k·a nd·fi lers favored M a rty's stance, t h u s th reatening the old established leaders hip, so in 1 952 M arty and Tillon were tried for treason and i n ' 953 th rown out of the party. The C P n ever fu l l y recovered from that. I

So why didn't those who left the party during that period, obj ecting to

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its reformist position, form a new communist party, or a revolutionary one? Something like n Manifesto in Italy.

France never had a left as i ntelligent as Italy's. But also the French war on Vietnam brought the CP new adherents, or rather held the old ones, the ones who wanted to q u it, because the CP was solidly in favor of Vietnamese independence, and si nce there was nothing else, I mean the goddam social· ists were colonialists-imagine!-as they were later in Algeria! So gradually we, at Les Temps Modernes, got closer to the C P, and I wrote The Communists and Peace, then came The Henri Martin Affair, then I attended the Vienna peace congress in December ' 952, and fin ally The Devil and the Good Lord. And you started cooperating with the party?

No ! We simply agreed on the major issues and coord i nated ou r reo sponses. But we never den ied that there were two major antago n i stic pow· ers, which were likely to confront each other mil itarily, and blow us all up to s m ithereens . The difference was th at it was the U n ited States that was edgi ng toward war, not the USS R. There was the Ridgway business, the M cCarthy witch h u nts, American i ntervention i n the Korean civil war headed by the well·known fascist general M acArth ur, the missi les deployment in Tu rkey, and on and on. No one had any doubts in Fra nce, or on the Europea n conti­ nent in general, th at America wanted to destroy Russia. M any, of cou rse, agreed , but no one dou bted America's i ntention. What most E u ropean s didn't realize was that the land war wou ld be fought i n Europe, mostly West· ern Europe, and that if so, France wou ld no longer exist. And you continued to go to peace congresses sponsored by the com­ munists ?

Yes, it was harder and harder to push my l ine, which was that the world would benefit from u narmed cu ltu ral confrontations. Of course, that was n 't their view at all. They believed that culture and politics can not be separated. And they were right, of course, as the kids of '68 showed me. But I was then pressing that position, and the Russians did n ot treat me as a wei rdo. Actu· ally, at the next congress i n M oscow, they sched uled a workshop to debate the issue, with two teams. Ehrenburg was on my side. The debate conti n u ed for a while, at the congress in Poland and F i nland. I was suspect, of course. And Elsa Triolet warned them that I would fi n k out eventually. And of cou rse I did, when the Russians stormed i nto Budapest. You also attended a peace congress in China ?

Not a good trip. First, because Chou En·lai, who was in cha rge of the

MARCH 1 972

event, thought w e were Russian spies, becau se Moscow had i ndeed recom­ mended us. He even avoided us on the p latform and did not shake our hands. Mao d id, but that's p robably because no one told him who we were. U s ? You went with Castor? She was very eager to go.

You didn't write anything about your trip, but she wrote The Long

March. But except for a few fi rst-person descri ptions of sites, she could have written that book here i n Paris, at the l i b rary. Li ke me, she did n 't u ndersta nd what was going on. You k now, we d o n 't speak Russian, and we always had official translators. But Russians are E uropean, i n the sense of expressions, cu ltu ral responses, w h at have you . You can sense when a Russian is lyi ng, es­ pecia l ly i ntel lectuals, who don't l i ke to lie. But we could not read the Chinese. There was no way to tell ifthey were tell i n g us some fantastic tale or the truth. So Castor's book ends up dependent o n docu ments and other books, which are all at the l ibrary. Didn't you travel in China? How long were you there? Six weeks. We went everywhere, Peking, Shanghai, Canton. N an ki ng. OK, we saw a lot, but in fact noth i ng. When we asked if we cou ld wander in a typical village, they took u s to one that was so clean, I thought we were on a stage. Every little house was pai nted wh ite. There was no m u d i n the streets. And everythi n g was so a l i ke we got lost. So we asked where was the Hotel de la Paix. They applauded. Aga i n and aga i n . Obviously they had heard the word "peace" so often they thought we were p reaching it, or whatever. Eventually, the guy who had been fol lowing us, the secret service agent d ressed as a vil­ lager, ca me forward and showed u s how to get back. Didn't you have discussions with intellectuals ? S u re, d i n ners, l u nches, t h e works. If w e raised t h e question o f Korea, silence. If we asked about party policies or anyt h i ng interesting, they re­ s ponded by asking us if we had tasted s uch and such a dish. What I remem­ ber most i s the congrat u l ations I got from i ntellectuals everywhere for writi ng t he l ife of Nekrassov. Yep . Seriously. Someone in R u ssia m u st h ave told them that I had laid bare h i s treason, forgetting to tel l them that it was fiction, a p lay. So wherever we went, I was hai led as the man who exposed the famous N ekrassov's fra udu lent m asquerade.

Didn t you visit factories, have discussions with your tr a n slato rs . . . ? We wou ld be taken to factories where we were served tea and told, by '

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the di rector, that Chi n a is worki ng very hard , and they were at this factory, i n order to catch u p with the West. With our translators, we could talk about the opera we saw, and compare it to o u rs, or about wh ich city h e prefers, or about past h istory, and even there, without talking about cu rrent events or the revo­ lution. N othing else. If we tried, say about the J apanese i nvasion, it would em­ barrass him or her. So we stopped. We ended up sayi ng we saw n oth i n g i n C h i na. That was you r experience a s well, was n't it? But I was in China for a very few days , j ust trying to return to France from my two months in North Vietnam, and that was 1 9 67, with the Cul­ tural Revolution in full blast. And there, when every group I saw was carry­ in g Mao posters and red flags, I was totally confused. I was quite anxious. When I got to Nanning there were no planes leaving or coming. And the red guards kept looking at me suspiciously; I speculated that they thought I was Russian, so I spoke nothing but French.

How did you finally get out? It's a long story. In short, I managed to get on a military convoy that was going to Shanghai, and there I found the French embassy. I claimed I was Roget Dumonville, had been stripped of all belongings, including my French passport, and all my money. They gave me a laissez-passer and a ticket on an Air France flight.

Why didn't you write about that part of your C h i na visit? I didn't want Dumonville to get into trouble. I will someday. It was ac­ tually a fantastic trip, including three days in the back of a truck with s oldiers who spoke English but with whom, by then a firm Frenchman , I had to speak English with a terrible French accent.

Ha-ha! But in Vietn am, as I read in you r book, you had no trou ble com­ municati ng or understa n d i n g the people? The Vietnamese are completely different from the Chinese. First of all, they speak French, or most do. And then they were raised under French cus· toms . They like to sit and talk in cafe s , they argue, they shout. And they like to laugh, that's the best part. 2-

Like the C u bans. You s peak Spanish, so you never h ad a problem. B ut I don 't, and it didn't m atter. I wrote seventeen articles about C u ba and its revo­ lution, some q u ite critica l , and even the Cubans pri nted them all. Not in the United S tates, unfortunately. But Karol' s book, Revolution­

aries in Power, was, and in Cuba too . And it is quite critical as well.

That's somet h i n g that o u r Stali noid com m u n ists cou ld never fathom,

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MARCH 1 972

that one ca n be c ritical yet s u pportive. I remember once a d i n ner with Aragon a nd Coctea u , wherei n Arago n was attacking Jean Genet, maybe because I had written my study ofGenet by then , and it was very favorable, and I had broken with the m , as th is was after Budapest. And Aragon said that he was sick and tired of th at fucking faggot getti ng so m uch attention , let h im go rot with those blacks and Palesti nians. Cocteau al most cried, and of cou rse repeated it to Genet. Stu pid. They lost the support of a great writer and a wonderfu l h umanist right then a n d there.

That's rather typical of communists; they never understood that under the rebellion lies a revolutionary. Preci sely. Even before I became really political , I understood that in a capitalist society all prisoners a re political . So when I was i nvited to tal k at a com m u n i st ral l y for H e nri M a rti n , I was sh ocked to see a huge ban ner pro­ clai ming the CP "The party of h onest folks." What's worse was, his wife, when s h e s poke, she complained that they had jail ed her husband with com­ mon prisoners.

And that's also what bothered communists about Cuba, because many of the guerrilleros had been common prisoners, like [ Juan] Almeida, who be­ came a general and head of the Fidelista army, or in the United States, Mal­ colm X. Even som e of our maos m ake that mistake. For example, when they staged a h u n ger stri ke to protest the disgusti ng treatment of prisoners i n our jails, specifically at Tou l , their complaint was the treatment of pol itical prison­ ers. Even Geismar cou l d not avoid the disti nctio n between common and po­ l itical prisoners.

And that's the argument, turned around, that I have against your sup· port of Padilla. He's arrested because he feels privileged. A poet is above the law. A poet can smoke pot, because he' s a poet. I f you want to proclaim that anti-pot laws are lousy and should be repealed, like I do, fine . But a revolu· tionary government seems to think, yes, mistakenly, that pot smokers be­ come counterrevolutionary. So everyone who smokes pot is pursued. Down with such a stupid law! But to sign a special petition for the sake of one poet who smokes pot is like s aying, please treat political prisoners more amiably than ordinary common prisoners . Wel l said.

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April 1 9 72

G E RA S S I : At lunch last Sunday, you referred to Malraux

as

a pig. Was

it becaus e, as Castor wrote in her memoirs, he tried everything to get Galli­ mard, your and his publisher, to dump Les Temps Modemes? S A RT R E:

I n general, yes, he's a pig. Everything about h i m is phony. I

mean, The Human Condition is a fa ntastic novel, one of the really great o n es of this century, certainly, but he, h i m self, is a phony. An adventurer who went to Cam bod i a to steal its artworks and sell them . He's always been a money man. OK, I know, he saved you r father from execution by the Com i ntern. I I ' m not sayi ng that h e d id n 't d o some great thi n gs. But h i s so-called great leader· ship i n the resistance, Colonel Malraux! When I went to see h i m , right after the Germans entered Paris and split France i n two, to s uggest we start a re­ sistance group, h i s a n swer was: "What can we do? We don't have ta nks or planes. Let's wait for the Americans to get i n volved." And he wa ited and waited, all the way u ntil they landed i n Italy. But what Castor was mad about was his m a neuvers about Les Temps Modernes. What happened ?

I don't know i f you remember: Trotsky's widow h a d petitioned the French left to stage a "tribunal of honor" about her husband and his assassi­ nation. When Malraux was head, or a leader, of Writers and Artists Agai n st War and Fascism, or whatever that organizatio n was cal led-ask you r father,

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he w a s a member- he corresponded or someth i ng, I don't remember, with Trotsky. He had some kind of particular rel ationship with Trotsky. So the tri­ b u n a l asked h i m to testify. When he refu sed, and he did so because by then he was ass-licking de G a u l le in his l ust for power, his widow sent us a copy ofthe lette r, a n d we were goi n g to print it. So he went to Galli mard, that was Gaston, the old man, and threatened n ot only to leave that publisher ifGalli mard con­ tin ued to s u bsidize us, but also to expose Gallimard's collaborationist atti­ tude or perhaps its actual pro-German acts. So Gaston gave in and pressu red us, and when we refu sed and went a head with our plan to p u blish the letter, he stopped his subsidy. So we went over to J u l l iard , and after the old man J u l­ liard died, Claude Galli mard, who took over Gaston's house when papa semi· retired, took us back. What was in the letter? I don't remem ber, noth ing earthshaki ng, but I thin k it was embarrass· i n g to M al raux beca u se it showed h i m to have been a Trotskyite or sympa· thizer, which wou ld not do wel l , he thought, with h i s drive for power. He was wrong, of course. It did n't do h i m a ny harm.

And how did Gallimard collaborate with the Nazis ? Like a l l publ ishers who conti n ued to publish openly d u ring the occu pa· tion . Of course, G a l l i ma rd was the biggest, so it got more attention . But it was never ostracized for making Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, a known fascist, editor of N R F [Nouvelle Revue Franfaise, the most fa mous prewar, warti me, and postwar l iterary review] to com ply with German censors h ip demands. Some of its ed itors were secretly in the res istance. So nothing came of it. And your feud with Malraux? N oth i n g cam e of that either. But everyt hing he wrote fro m then on was crap.

Including his work of art and his anti-memoirs? Crap.

But you know, during those anti-fascist committee days, and all the way up to and through the civil war, Malraux was very close to the commu­ nists , yet when he turned right, Gaullist, he never revealed any of the secrets he knew. He told me, when I asked him in '54, that what he had learned back then was because he had been trusted by the party, so he wouldn't reveal any­ thing later. I remember him saying " not like that scum Koestler. "2 OK, so I'm a l ittle hard o n M a l raux. But he cou ld have done wonders for

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France, besides havi ng its old buildi ngs cleaned. H e wanted to live i n luxury, so he aimed for that, and he was smart enough to k now how to fool the critics into prais i ng his books, especially his anti-memoirs , which are really s h it. You're frown i ng. You don't agree?

I agree on his postwar novel, and on his anti-memoirs because I know where he made things up , or even worse, j ust plain lied. But I liked his work on art, and

I was one of those critics who praised it when I was art critic at

Newsweek. But OK, so Malraux wrote bad stuff, wanted money and luxury, et cetera, but for someone with his experience, his previous commitment to the good guys, how could he move that far right, when France was behaving so abominably, in Africa, in Vietnam, in . . .

At home. Right here i n the north. What was that?

The miners' strike. That was very i mportant. In 1948, under the tripar­ tite govern ment . . . Didn't the communists quit in

'47?

Oh, yes. The com m u nists had left the govern ment i n May '47, but not because of the horrific m assacre in M adagascar, b ut over the attem pt to pri­ vatize Renault. What happened in Madagascar?

The n atives rose up demanding i ndependence and killed maybe u p to a hundred French colon izers. So the French army responded by slaughteri n g at least ten thousand, although some esti mates went up to ninety tho u s a n d . So­ cialist Pau l Ramadier was prime m i n i ster a n d M a u rice Thorez, the head ofthe Commun ist Party, was h i s deputy. J ust like the massacre at Setif, Algeria, i n May '45, when the French army adm itted killing six to eight tho u sa n d Al­ gerians, while Foreign M i nister G eorges Bidault said the tol l was at least twenty thousand. No one gave a s h it. Well, some i ntellectuals did. Ca mus de­ nounced it. The French cared only about thei r wallets, but the socialists didn't, refusing to vote for a general raise even when it was their own people doing the demandi ng. They sent the C RS [Co mpagnie Republicai n e de Secu­ rite, France's tactical police forcep to crush a major strike by the m i n ers in the 'north, m i n ers who were not agitating for a revolution, or even a change in government, but just better pay. Food. And the C RS opened fire and kil led some of them. These were the same great m iners who had staged a stri ke against the Germans d u ring the war. The Germ a n s had rou nded u p a few and

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executed them by fi ri n g squad, right then and there. Now these great heroes of France wanted a better liveli h ood, and the socialists sent the CRS to kill them.

The north? That's where the socialist boss Guy Mollet is from, no? Yes , Arras, th at's his fiefdom. And he and his party were responsible for Indochina too, right? And how. And no one cared about that either, at least u ntil the CP fi nally got involved, but thanks to Henri M artin. To be fair, the med ia were partly reo sponsible. They covered it so badly that most of the French thought we were fighti n g the J a panese over there. They weren't even s h ocked when, later, Fra nce and the Vietm i n h were i n the m idst of negotiations to end the war, some air force bastard named Thierry d 'Argenlieu bom bed the port of Hai· p h o n g;

we denou nced it as an act of pi racy in Les Temps, and al most all the

d i ssenters went to jail for sed ition .

France h a d the full support of the United States then. Obviously, our leaders were coveting all those territories already. The Dulles brothers cer­ tainly wanted I ndochina and Madagascar; it fit right in with their grandiose plans of dominating the world, at that time mostly with bases and armies , not quite yet with capital, but dominating j ust the same. I always wondered about them. I mean, Eisen hower tu rn ed out to be OK. H e stopped us and England from seizi n g the Suez Ca nal. Why did he not get rid of those two fascists?

First, because they were very important to the Republican Party. Next, because they represented the cream of the ruling class. John Foster Dulles, who was E isenhower's foreign minister [secretary of state] from I 9 5 3 to '59, had been a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and an outright supporter of the Nazis in the ' 3 0 s . He pushed "containment" as U . S . foreign policy, ad­ vocated a NATO and S EATO as a way of dominating Europe and Southeast Asia, and helped create them once in power. It was he who ordered his brother Allen, head of the CIA, to prepare the coup to overthrow the demo­ cratic leader ofIran, and to prepare the coup to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala. He defined neutralism as "immoral. " Big business loved him, and Eisenhower didn't realize how his policies would lead to an "industrial-military complex dictatorship bent on worldwide war­ fare" until his final days in office. Like his brother John Foster, Allen Dulles was a prewar partner in the powerful law firm Sullivan and Crowell, and concocted the vicious agreement whereby j ust about all the good arable land

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o f Guatemala would belong to United Fruit Company, actually one-sixth of the whole country. But unlike his brother, Allen was not pro-Nazi before the war, but had many contacts with Germans on both sides, which ended up being very useful for him later when he successfully managed to bring many of Hitler's scientists to the United States under phony IDs and documents . As head of the CIA he was always planning new weapons, or getting his cap­ italist pals to develop them, the most successful of them being the U-2 , which the Russians finally shot down at over fifty thousand feet in the air. But Sartre, when you say that Eisenhower was so good to stop the French­ English·I sraeli invasion of Suez, you don't realize that was both Dulleses' policy. They didn't want you or England to be major colonial powers any­ more . It was time, they were convinced, for the United States to dominate the world. And incidentally, it was Allen who arranged for Nasser to die of a "heart attack" two years ago. For me, the most disgusting coup that both Dulles brothers fomented was the one in Guatemala. You traveled there with Dolores, if ! remember, and before the coup.

I ndeed, I went there th ree times, but the big tri p, in '49 with Dolores,

was really memorable, not so m uch G u atemala, although we saw a l l the fan­ tastic Maya n ruins, but o u r trip to H aiti was outstanding. This was of course before [Franc;ois] " Papa Doc" Duvalier's dictatorship. The president then was a guy called [Dumarsais] Esti me, a black man, the fi rst si nce the u.s. i nvaders were taken out by Roosevelt. But real power was in the hands of the taxi driv­ ers' federation, yep, taxi drivers, and they took us everywhere. To voodoo cer­ emonies, to hidden fa rms behi nd stark mou ntains, to meet Haiti a n com­ mu nists dreaming o f a return o f someone l ike t h e i r great hero, Toussaint louverture, who fought the French so magnificently at the begi n n ing of the nineteenth century, and to meet the Americans, engineers hoping to m ake a fortu ne, as racist as any French colonialist i n Algeria or M adagascar. M y memories of Haiti remain very strong. We went everywhere i n Central Amer­

:

ica, down to Panama, which was, and I gather still is, a total ly s u bjugated American provi nce, and we went to many places i n the Caribbean , but it's ou r few weeks i n Haiti that I remembe r most-well, with Cuba, wh ich was , and

iis, as I have gone back, absolutely enchanti ng, but back then it was also a I'

! fompletely corrupt American colony.

r!l�

You actually felt and saw the corruption?

And how. With bri bes you could get anyth i n g and everyth i n g. A ten; year-old girl, or boy for that matter, if you wanted. Anyth i ng. We went one 1

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night to the Shangh a i , the famous, or infamous, n ightclub where t h e s how in­ cluded cou p les fucki ng o n stage. That really u pset Dolores, who pretended to be shocked , but I th i n k because she was worried about bei ng taken for a black wom an, hence a local woman, si nce she assumed, probably correctly, that a wh ite man l i ke me wou ld never come from America or France with a black wom an. S h e was wrong. Her skin was too l ight or else no one gave a dam n . S h e was n ever i n s u lted or asked a n em barrassing question.

You broke up with her shortly after that trip, no ?

N o, m uch later. S he ca me to France and began to bu g me. Fi rst she

wanted to d i vorce her h u s band. O K, I gave her some money so s h e could do that. Then she settled in a villa i n Ca n nes. H a, I remem ber the owner, his name was Pissarro, because he was a descendant of the pai nter. Then she ca me to settle in Paris. That was too much. So we s p l it.

You mean you told her to go away? That's not a "split, " which is mutual. OK, I told her it was over, and she went back to America. It was a very busy period for me.

Including a lot of attacks and lawsuits, I gather. In fact, what happened to your suit against Nagel? [As the publisher of Dirty Hands, Nagel autho­ rized a translation of the play for Broadway titled Red Gloves.] It lasted for years. I n fact, I j u st won one p h ase, but there's more not re­ solved yet, although it is clear that I ' m goi ng to wi n . As you know, when I fou n d out that whole passages had been added and some taken out to make the play m ore a nti-co m m u n ist, I tried to stop the prod uction .

I s aw i t on Broadway It didn't come across that anti-communist t o me, but then I ha d read it before seeing it. What were the worst changes? I don't rem ember now. The one everyone talks about is when Jessica says " i I a du chien," they translated that, " he's vulgar," instead of, wh at? "he's sexy"? .

One could actually say "he has dog though few would understand. Better to translate it as "he has sex appeal. " A s i f a com m u n i st can't be sexy! B u t there were more i mportant , "

changes, so m e wanted by [Charles] Boyer [who starred as Hoederer], who k n ew he had to appear as a very hard leader, but wanted to be very charm ing as wel l . Details. Anyway, the play was a flop on Broadway, thank god, and when Boyer came back, we tal ked thi ngs out, and everyth i n g is O K now. But it's a p eriod piece; it h a s no val ue now.

A PR I L 1 972

I disagree. I think the play says a lot about party politics, party loyalty, ends versus means, et cetera. I like the play. Not as much as The Devil and the Good Lord, which I think is tremendous. It has never been prod uced i n America. It may be put on i n Englan d , though t h e translation i s not very good, but n ot for political reasons t h i s ti m e.

S peaking of attacks , though, I noticed that Mauriac was really blasting you back then. Was that a personal feud? It sounded like one. We h ave to be clear a bout which M a u riac we're talki n g about. The old man , Franc;:ois Mauriac, who got the N obel for literatu re in 1 952 and d ied two years ago, was a fanatical but tormented Cathol ic, a fai rly good nove l i st, a very moral man who condem n ed France's role in I ndochi n a a n d its tortu re i n Algeria. H e wrote for L'Express [a center-right weekly]. Then there's h i s so n , Claude, not s o Catholic, not as good a writer, not as pol ite, who wrote for Le Figaro [a right-wing daily]. Claude edited the journal Freedom ofSpirit, and h e did attack m e feveri s h ly a n d often personally, but also sided with u s in co n­ frontations with the govern ment, which he d eemed racist, a uthoritarian, a n d devoid o f moral scru ples. H e never assumed that his personal attacks o n me were i n fact personal, and greeted me as a friend. Yet I read some in his j ournal that were vicious. On the other hand, he was with us [for a sit-in occu pation) in the Goutte d'Or and then at the press confe rence m ade us look l i ke a bu n c h of do­ gooders from the Salvation Army. Still, because he was there, Le Figaro ran a n article about t h e event. What Claude really l usts for is a reformist leader who wants a beautiful republic that wou ld give hous i n g to all and exploit no worker, where there would be no racism a n d no violence, yet no unions and no socialism .

At your demonstration at the Palace of Justice th e other day, where he had a seat and you didn't, he saw the tremendous effort you made to sit on the floor, and he quickly came to help you into his seat. Nice. How did you know that? You weren't there, nor were any mil itants. Michelle was. But tell me, you never write in the cafe anymore ? I m possible. The Flore, Les Deux M agots a re always full of curious tourists. U ntil recently, I wrote quite a bit at Les Trois Mousquetai res [on av­ enue Mai ne near rue Gaite, one ofthe most cu ltu rally diverse streets of Paris). But they've modernized the place, and it has lost its charm. There's still Le Liberte at the corner of Gaite and Edgar Quinet. Too busy.

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Actually, I always wondered how you could write i n a cafe. Novels, plays, OK, but philosophy, Being and Nothingness, Flaubert? I always felt I had to stay i n contact with the world, with my world. Ever s i n ce M a rx, p h i losophy m ust lead to action. Otherwise it is i rreleva nt. So a p h i losopher does what he has to do, then s its down at h i s desk, wherever it is, a n d "reta kes the th read of his anger," as Valery once said. The d i stractions don't matter as long as I cou ld retake the thread of my a nger, an ger against t h i s system , against a l l those who believe that they have a right to be greedy, w h o feel they are su perior to others, like the French in Algeria, i n M adagascar, t h e American s i n Haiti, i n Puerto Rico, the wh ites i n black New York, the D u lleses i n G uatemala or Egypt. Philosophers m u st be angry, and i n this world, stay a ngry.

Do you think this is true about all artists, or only committed writers? As I w rote in What Is Literature? I think it is true about all good writers. We discussed that already, h ow M alraux, Dos Passos, Ste i nbeck, et cetera got real bad when they gave u p on changing the world. You know more about a rtists; what do you think?

Good artists want to change the world in a different way, but I think it's true for them as well. It's like when I asked [Willem) de Kooning how he could have kept it up, especially his wonderful women, since the early '4 0s, he answered: " Revenge, my boy, revenge." But let me turn it around: must a writer be committed to be good? And of course by committed we mean to the poor, the exploited, the subjugated. I thi n k so. N ow at least that we know why the poor, the exploited , and the subj ugated are so. Is [ Pierre) Courtade [a communist author and journalist) a good writer? Bei n g com m itted is a prerequisite but n ot a sufficient element for a writer to be good. Are you suddenly talking about talent? Let me remind you that you

have said that "talent is drawing the chair to the table. " Very true. B u t i n that act o f drawing the chair is a l s o the com mitment, the experience, a n d especially what we were talking a bout a m i n ute ago, the a n ger.

May 1 972

G E R A S S I : I reread "Merleau Vivant" since last week, as well as his major works, and was struck by how careful you were not to imply that you

were not great friends. S A R T R E : Yes, I was a bit hypocritical. H ave you read his Phenomenol­ ogy ofPerception? So you realize how close it is to much ofwhat I wrote in Be­ ing and Nothingness? H e had read some of that work, and had asked me not

to publ i sh it until his book came out, chapters I had written during the war, before h is, and he was h u rt that I did not wait. For h i m it was a qu estion of his career . . .

And since it wasn't for you, why didn't you wait? You th ink I should have, h u h ? Wel l , maybe. But to tel l you the truth, I wasn't moved by his career concern . Like on Les Temps Modernes, h e d id not want his name on the cover, as co-di rector, because he thought it might affect his career. But he did accept. I 've read many articles signed by him in the review at the time. Articles were OK. It was a stra nge period. Our magazi ne was seen with jaundiced eyes, as a whole. Suspect. But to be published in it was con sidered a career plus. It was weird . I ntel lectuals from a l l l eft-wing variants s u b m itted stuifto us all the time, but the same i ntel lectuals criticized the overal l "pur-

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pose," a s they said, of t h e magazi ne, without ever stating what that pu rpose was. Anyway, M erlea u ' s pieces were very H u sserlien; remem ber, he was a p h enomenologist to the core, and politically a M endessite. He even wore the M endes-Fra nce tie. I In other words, M erlea u was a bourgeois who favored an h onest and " p u re" bou rgeois state. H e was also somewhat religious.

N ow you s ou nd like you disliked him a lot. Let's face it, we were never close friends. At school , I thought he was in­ telligent and perhaps even i nteresting, though I was already by then reluctant to talk a bout ideas, which seemed to be the only th i n g that i nterested him, at l east when he was with me. Castor, of cou rse, was m uch closer to h i m , since h e was dati ng her best friend, Zaza. But then, as you know, Castor blamed h i m for Zaza's death when he broke up with her, not knowing that her parents had th reaten ed to expose the fact that he was i l l egiti mate if he didn't. But there was other stuff that bothered u s. He was sleeping with some ugly girl who kept for h i m all the papers h e wrote, u n s igned of cou rse, in her pad, so when the N azis raided her place and she cou rageously refused to say who had written them, the N azis bel ieved it was she and took her away to a con­ centration camp. There was a lot of stuff l i ke that which bothered us, like Cam u s .

Camus? What do you mean ? U s i n g women. Camus was li ke that too. Like what? Well, he wou l d try to seduce every woman we knew, and then dum p them, u n less they rejected h i m, i n wh ich case he hounded them, like J u l iette Greco . . .

1b.e great singer? Yea h , and they a lways d u m ped h i m , because once he sort of succeeded, all he tal ked about with them was h i mself. But you and M erleau pretended at least to be good friends, no ? Yes , but he was n 't really part of o u r group, you know, what Castor now calls the fam i ly. I ' m not s u re how to exp la in it. I remem ber one day, he came up to us at a cafe a n d said, I ' m not doi n g anyth i n g for d i n n er, can we team up? Castor said we were to have d i n ner with G iacometti, but he could join us ifhe wa nted to. He did, and later, after h e left, G iacometti said, "You know, he's not our people." And that said it all, a lthough I can't really explai n what it meant, someth i n g of the sort that we th i n k about d ifferent thi ngs.

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Yet you've written that h e influenced you, politically at least, more than anyone.

Yes, that's true. Specifically on the Korean War.

I ndeed, he helped m e see the issue clearly, that America was wil l i ng to risk war to have control, which Russia was not. And then he became neutral , so t o speak. Yet in Humanism and Terror . . .

See, that's one of his many contradictions, as was h i s role i n the RDR. He was i n , yet out. He l i ked our "th ird way," yet supported the com m u­ nists . . . So did you then.

In France, because that was the party of workers. But M erleau's ap­ proach to the ( P, in fact to everythi ng, was always philosophical. And you claim in various places that you were extremely influenced by him.

I was i ndeed, the whole nonparty left was. But today? Well, who cites his works now? Oh come on, lots of intellectuals still do. His analysis of Bukharin's downfall I think is brilliant, as is his critique ofTrotsky' s tactics . 2

I agree, but that's all old h at now. Yet it' s in that text that you quote his famous sentence, with which he sort ofwhitewashed Stalin' s crimes , and hence so did you, the sentence: "The values of communists are our values , in spite of them. " Do you still stick to that?

Yes and no. I mea n, globa l ly speaki ng, yes, like [Louis d e] Saint-j u st's fa­ mous slogan: "A patriot is he who supports the repu blic com pletely; w hoever fights it in detail is a traitor." Of course, today, we wou l d h ave to say, "who­ ever supports the revol ution," not the republic.

If you stick to that, you can't criticize Padilla or Mao Well, certainly Merleau would not h ave.

.

.

.

Of course not, because he, like all good Marxists, would put the revo­ lution in its contingent situation, which is how he gets to say that there can

be no revolution without terror. You don't buy that argument. I remember that in my interview with you for the New York Times, you said that what you 'wanted was a revolution without terror, but you concluded that was a contra-

M AY 1 9 7 2

diction. Yet i n "Merleau Vivant" you insist that t o always criticize, which af­ ter all was also Merleau's position-another of his maj or contradictions, yes ?-is not enough. Yet that is precisely what you do in the RDR, no? All very true, but you h ave to remember that at the time ofthe RDR I am a flaming bou rgeois, petit bourgeois. I n fact, I don't really stop bei ng one un· til after '68 as I tol d you.

But in '47 you wrote that a writer who does not commit himself is a bad writer. Commitment is not just criticizing, it is taking a position. Abso l utely, b ut taking a position, sticki ng one's neck out, is not neces· sarily bei n g a revolutionary, yet anyway, since eventually it does lead to that; to criticize is either mea n i ngless, as the govern m ent says, s u re, go ahead, that's freedom, and it does noth i ng about you r criticism, or else it silences you , becau se you r criticism th reatens it, l i ke d u ring the witch h u nts. Mc­ Carthyis m was not j u st the am bition of a politicia n " lt represented a whole group of people who were afraid of losing money, or not making as much, as you you rselfwrote i n Les Temps Modernes. There was a rival ry between those who wanted to trade with Soviet Russia and those who did not, who made money fro m war, or the i n d u stry of war . . . The military-industrial complex. Ri ght. That's why you had witch h u nts in America, and why we had them here, l i ke our ridiculous pigeons affair,3 Th at should have made me chose right then and there, but I waited. I was a bou rgeoi s and did not d irty my hands too much. I had to have a more flagrant i ncident. And it came, with the General Ridgway affair, when the U nited States was m uch too obvious in tryi ng to make Fran ce a colony. Even de Gaulle thought that was outrageous, wh ich is why he kicked N ATO and all U .S. bases out of France.

And made his famous statement, " No nation is free if it allows a for­ eign base on its land." After that we h ad to choose.

And so your famous phrase, " Not to choose is a choice." But you chose to be anti- U. S . , not pro-communist. What then pushed you to go all the way? The Rosenbergs? Wasn't that later? They were executed in ' 5 3 . Castor writes that you were in Venice at the time. They had been found guilty in ' 5 2 , lost all appeals, and were executed in June ' 5 3 - You then wrote Communists and Peace, which actually is kind of

M AY 1 97 2

mild, considering your rage when you read i n Venice that they had been electrocuted .

But you see, I never thought that Eisenhower and the American gov· ern ment was that stupid, that horrendous, to actually go through with their exeCution. I wrote Communists and Peace before they were executed, in '52, when I was still thi n king th at America would come to its senses. And then we had our Henri Martin affai r. It hence became i mpossible to believe in bou r· geois democracy. But I was sill reacting as a bourgeois myself. I wou ld say the execution ofthe Rosenbergs was an outrage. The Henri Marti n afl'ai r was a vi· olation ofthe right to dissent. You see? I was making moral judgments. Did you not know that the right always uses terror when it feels threat· ened? That the execution of the Rosenbergs, who were guilty, really, of noth­

The Daily Worker, on the Lower East Side, was an act of terror to frighten all s erious dis­

ing more than being communists and hawking the party paper, senters ?

Not really. I mean, theoretical ly, I knew that. But i n practice, the right is so adept at using courts, j u ries, the law, to conceal its terror, that we bour· geois are always fooled, at least somewhat. But you're absolutely correct: the right will always revert to terror when it feels threatened, and always has. O K, as a bourgeois , you were gullible, as was Merleau, as full of con­ tradictions then, in the '50S, as was Merleau. What about now that you claim to be solidly a revolutionary, committed to the G P, which does not believe in bourgeois elections . Is a revolution without terror possible, and do you sup­ port such a revolution?

Wow, you really want to put me on the spot today. O K, first issue fi rst. Yes, I bel ieve that a revolution is i m possi ble without terror, precisely because the right will resort to terror to stop it. But there has been no terror in Cuba. Repression, yes , but no terror.

That brings up another aspect of revolution, wh ich is this: to succeed , a revolution must go all the way. N o stopping i n midstream. The right wil l al· ways use terror to foil it, so the revolution must u se terror to stop it. Now, you mention Cuba. True, there has been no terror in Cu ba. Why? First, because, as you have said, Castro allowed popular tri bu nals to judge the Batista torturers as a way of getting the hatred out in the open, as a cathartic clean s i ng of the lust for revenge. But more i mportant, because ofcircumstances: first, the rich Cubans had a lot offamily and friends in M iami; second, the U n ited States let

M AY 1 9 7 2

the rich come i n a t will-precisely becau se they were rich, hence of the same u p per class as those for which you r govern ment exists; third, because Fidel let them go. Anyone cou ld leave with two su itcases of belongi ngs, no gold and no money, correct?

Correct. Add to that, U . S . stupidity. At first the United States was con­ vinced that Castro was a bourgeois reformer. I was an editor at Time then, and the top editors immediately understood that Castro was genuine when he allowed those trials to take place. Even our correspondent in Cuba, who turned out to work for the CIA, kept saying, The trials are fair, the trials are fair. But my bosses understood: sure the trials are fair, but if Castro is willing to execute the torturers , it means he's serious, and ifhe's serious, he'll learn quickly enough that behind everything that Batista did was an American capitalist. When he did learn that, he told our secretary of state, Christian Herder, that he would not guarantee the inviolability of U . S . businesses in Cuba. That did it. But by then, Castro's bourgeois front men , remember, the temporary government he put in while consolidating his power with the military and by creating militias everywhere , were out. So he didn't need terror. OK, that's the exception that proves my case. A revol ution must, ab­ sol utely m u st go a l l the way to h ave a chance of succeedin g i n a world domi­ n ated by powerfu l capitalist cou ntries ready for war. Len i n and Trotsky knew that very well, and they went after the cou nterrevolutionaries with vehe­ mence. The Red Army b u i lt by Trotsky had to be s u perior to the fou rteen cap­ italist "volunteers" and the two White armies. H ow? By making the rank-and­ fi le choose their officers, with total recallability, and political com missars who explained the m ea n i n g of each operation. So the same gru nt sold iers that the Germans beat over and over suddenly beca me ferocious revol utionaries. And then Lenin and Trotsky lost the revolution because they turned on

their left? Exactly. Like Robespierre, who had the backing of the sans-culottes, t he n wa nted stability i n the streets, and turned on them. Stabil ity is a cry of t h e right. It should n ever be sought by revol utionaries. Once Robespierre lost t he streets, he was doomed. As was Mao, or the Maoists in China. Another revolution without ter­ ror, although the West keeps trying to argue that the Cultural Revolution was terror. Agreed, there was no state terror. Excesses? A lot. But t hat's not state

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terror, l ike Sta l i n's o r Franco's, which are obvious, but also, the state terrors of witch h u nts, and phony trials, and legal executions like Sacco and Vanzetti, or the Rosenbergs. The state terrors ofthe established capitalist cou ntries never have to be as pervasive as the terror of revol utions for the s im ple reason that the capitalists have all the weapons of s u ppression, the armies, the police, the media, the cou rts, et cetera. In China, M ao s hould have let the C u ltu ral Revol ution run its cou rse, let the kids purge the party h acks, let them p u rge the army h ierarchy. Basically it was a fantastic grassroots rebellion by people who said, We set policy, the bu reaucrats ad m i n i ster our policy. But Mao got scared that even he might end u p bei ng sent to hoe potatoes on s o m e col l ec­ tive farm, and the so-called G a n g of Four d i d n ot feel strong enough to go all the way. So, they peri s hed, a n d with them , the revolution. So how do you deal now with Saint-Just's statement? Who were ulti­ mately the traitors, Mao or the Gang of Four?

We don't know a nythi n g yet, except that, to me anyway, the l eader ofthe Cultural Revolution was Lin Piao, and h e certa i n ly n ever tried to escape to Russia. Once he was ki lled, probably by the army, the revolution was doomed; the Gang of Four became powerless. We' l l see. What i s certai n is that either Mao or the com m u nist apparatus, his or the a rmy's or the party' s , h ave basi­ cally stopped a move to the l eft, wh ich means that the original revol ution, you know, Mao's, Li n Piao's, Chou E n-Iai's, is over; they failed, and C h i n a will move radically to the right. I'm absolutely positive of that. A revol ution that assumes th at to survive it m u st crush left and right, l i ke Robespie rre d i d , like Stalin did, m u st fail. So what i s your role i n all this ?

I mean, t o go back t o Saint-Just, what is

the revolutionary intellectual' s position when h e sees the inevitable ?

To remain faithfu l to hi s, to the revolution's, pri nciples. And since you, now that you are political, a revolutionary intellectual, who hopes for a revolution without terror, do you condemn the terror, when it comes ? If terror comes to Cuba, do you condemn it? You are certainly guilty of the second part of S aint-Just ' s statement, since you criticized the forced self-criticism of Padilla.

Where the Cuban revol ution went wrong was not its fau lt. The m istakes were made by i ncom petents. But that's because most of those w ith educa­ tion, traini ng, tec h n ical skills, et cetera, were from the top bourgeoisie . . . And mostly white in a country 8 5 percent black or mestizo

. . . and they fled to Ame rica.

.

M AY ' 9 7 2

They fled Russia, too. B ut Russia then had a civil war, and d u ri n g that war, a lot of ran k-and­ file com m u n ists gai ned a tremendous amount of skills. Plus there was a long h istory of com m u n ist l iterature written by Russian i ntellectuals, of all sorts of revolutionaries, a narch i sts, Decem brists, all sorts of th i n kers, and doers too. That didn't stop Lenin from complaining that his closest team was full ofincompetents. Remember Lenin's great sentence when the invaders were beaten-"We've defeated the counterrevolutionaries, but we will never get rid of the imbeciles . " I ndeed, that's good, but yes, leaders a lways t h i n k they know best, wh ich is one reason that they try to stay in power. OK, so the revolutionary intellectual criticizes , say, a detail, like Pa­

dilla, only on the basis of revolutionary principles and in the name of those revolutionary principles-in other words , did the revolution act here in con­ formity to a global ensemble of principles that are the basis of the revolution. Correct? Whew! That's some task. OK, what I criticized about the Padilla case is that the tribunal that j ud ged h i m to have a "cou nterrevo l utionary attitude" was not based on such principles. Ha, so it wasn't the verdict, "counterrevolutionary attitude," but the

tribunal itself, which was not what, in your mind? Ouch! I guess I h ave to say, a tri bunal set up by a ru ling com m ittee of some sort, n ot one em a nati n g fro m the revol utionary struggle. You're getting into trouble there, because had it been a people's court,

like the one I witnessed, made up of his neighborhood folks, his maid ifhe has one, the guards on his block, his street cleaners, the repairfolk in his building, all folks who either fought B atista's army or j oined the militia after Castro won, he could easily have gotten ten years of cutting cane "for the people. " So what's you r a n swer? Criticize from within, not from without. And iffrom with i n only gets you in trou ble, and doesn't do any good ? I don't have an answer. Get out, like Voline and write a great book ex­ plaining it all [ The Unknown Revolution] . Or wait it out and confess, like

Arthur London, and explain later [in The Conftssion] ,4 or as Merleau ex­ plained about Bukharin, criticize from within, then accept the court's judg­ ment without reservation. So what are you going to do about your situation

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at La Cause d u

Peuple? [An editorial i n the paper had called for the assassina­

tion of a particular informer. Sartre reacted with fury, accusing the G P of not being able to t ell the difference between a situation and an individual.]

I told them to change thei r position or I wou ld q u it the G P. If you qu it, you lose your efficacy.

And if I stay, I lose the power of my political voice. The G P is the only party or gro u p or gathering, since they are not a party, that tries to be both rev­ olutionary and ethical, M arxist and moral. That's what attracted me to them in the first place_ N ow, when you thi n k about it, the idea of ven gean ce is a moral idea_ But now what? I s popu lar j ustice to be translated i nto lynchi ng? If that's the case, it's all over. But, to get back to the basis of our d i scuss i o n, as long as the cap ital ist

world wants to continue to subjugate the masses , make the rich richer, while the consequence, the poor becoming poorer, is inevitable, revolution is not possible without terror, until the whole world is revolutionary. Right?

Right! And who sets the terms ? Precisely the sub j uga te d m ass e s .

Yes, b u t the masses do not d o t h e choosi ng. That i s t h e result of a bunch of petit bourgeoi s i ntellectuals who create a proletaria n defi n ition of justice. And if they don't, who will? Popular justice was very popular during

Robespi erre s time; the charrette [the cart '

used to transport victims to the

guillotineI was loved by the masses.

Very true, as long as Robespierre i ncorporated the violence ofthe m asses i nto his terror, he and that terror were popu lar, as were Cuba's trials and execu­ tions of the 375 Batista henchmen. But Robespierre substituted popular terror with juridical terror, and he lost everything, i ncluding of course his l ife. Did y ou express this to your Cuban hosts, when you were there ? Oh yes , I told them that they stil l had their terror i n front ofthem . M ean­ whi le, it was great, real ly great to be in C u ba in the ' 60S, not so? And how! I 'll never forget in 1 9 67 finding everyone armed except the cops, and those bea uti ful traffic cop s , all gorgeous young women in mini­

skirts You should have seen the traffic j a ms 5 .

.

That was the period when Castro got rid of the old comm unist appa­ ratchi ks, too_ Ah yes , the so-called mini-faction of Anibal E s calante, who was packed off t o Czechoslovakia . A great period in Cuba.

M AY 1 9 7 2

S o w h at went wrong? Or, let's put i t i n context, why i s i t not today, just a cou ple of years later, as wonderfu l as it was? Money. The U . S . embargo hurt, no doubt about it, and the educated

bourgeois elite continues to leave . Also, after the missile crisis, Khrushchev lost interest, and when B rezhnev took over, that loss of interest grew wider. It' s tough in Cuba today, and a lot of people try to get to the United States. But the only terror is that generated by the United States, planes dropping poison in the lakes, bacteria in the cane fields, sabotaging shipments , a lot of stuff like that, yet still, Castro's intelligence service is nowhere near as brutal as the ones taught by A I D [Agency for InternatiOJ,1al Development] and Civic Action, the two U . S . C I A a gencies that train friendly police forces all over Latin America on how to torture. In fact, I think Castro's intelligence appa­ ratus is first class. Did you meet Barbaroj a when you were there ? No, who's that?

[Manuel] " Redbeard" Pineiro, Cuba's chief of intelligence, a brilliant, simpatico, extremely efficient cop, and a very nice guy. Boy, you s u rp rise me: a n ice cop ? A revolutionary cop. Anyway, no terror s o far. It will come, as the population suffers more and more from lack offood or clothes or whatever. Li ke i n C h i na. Wel l , maybe there was a terror during the "let a thousand flowers bloom" period or whenever. And there was a sort of m i n i-terror d u ri n g t h e heyday of the C u ltural Revol ution, but if so, it appar­ e ntly was n 't bad . I wonder if one reaso n , probably the main reason, for the terror is that the revol ution aries do not co mpletely disma ntle the old regi me apparatus. That's what Lenin said, yet he himself did not dismantle it. He used it,

and look at the consequence . The question is, d id he have a choice? Two Wh ite arm ies, fou rteen cap­ italist "vol u nteer" arm i es, a recalcitra nt peasantry, fa mine, plots , god knows what he d i d n 't have to com bat. Yet, by your own definition, he did not remain true to the revolution's

principles . Not only by crushing the Kronstadt sailors, but by playing power politics, by not aiding the Bela Kun revolutionaries in Hungary, by closing the b order with Iran to its rebellious Tudeh communist party guerrillas in exchange for British recognition of his government, and on and on. All very true. Stil l , the only party i n Fra nce i n 1 952 that system atically o p ­ posed American i m peri a l i sm and rep resented the proletariat was the com-

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m u n ist, S O there's no other position but to b e a fellow traveler, critical, but allied. Until Prague, and then?

Two things happened. First, I wanted to go to Russia because of my enormous . . . ah . . . Because of Lena.

Yes , but also, and this is crucial, Algeria . The CP was not p ro- F L N . As usual, the party wavered between its stupid nationalist and opportu n istic stance with which it hoped to gai n votes, and its reluctance to side with M u s­ lim fa natics. The FLN was not a fanatical Muslim sect then; it was nationalist, yes, but as we always said, nationalism in a developed imperialist country is fas­ cism, nationalism in an underdeveloped, imperialized, or colonialized coun­ try is revolutionary. You s aid that yourself in your preface to Franz Fanon's Wretched ofthe Earth.

I ndeed, but what party cou ld be moved to be pro- F L N in Fra nce in 1 962, besides the CP? I mean a large party that cou ld h ave some influence on the govern ment? There were a lot of i ndependent leftists back then w h o were in favor ofthe FLN, and a lot of ran k-a nd-file com mies, and quite a few CP intel­ lectuals too. So I hoped, and I really worked at it, to push all these leftists to back the FLN. My thought was that if enough leftists proclaimed themselves in favor of Algeria n i n dependence, and were loud about it, you kn ow, demo n ­ strati ng i n t h e streets and stagi n g pro-F L N rallies, t h e n t h e CP wou ld feel obliged to join i n . The F L N gave us a chance to u n ify the left, to save the left: in France. O K, it did n 't work. But it created a germ for what was to come. It was then, i n our support ofthe FLN, that the new left: was born in France. It then deepened as we became more m i l itant i n our support of the Vietna m ese against American i m perial i sm . When you convinced me to join Bertran d Rus­ sell's I nternational War Cri mes Tri bunal, you argued that it wou ld hel p Viet­ namese morale. I agreed_ It was a moral positio n on our part, right? But it a lso hardened our backbone. And fro m those moral positions, a you n g, noncom­ munist, m i l itant, street-oriented left was born , a left that scoffed at establi sh­ ment compromises, a left: that had no respect for leaders. And that all crystal­ lized in '68. What I did not understand when you talked to me about the tribunal was its significa nce in the mi nds of the you ng. They saw in o u r ses­ sions that we were appealing directly to the people, to the masses. A sort of fancy, because of the big na mes involved, people's tribunal. It did n 't get

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m u c h p ress, a n d t h e A merican med i a scoffed at it, i fthey even bothered to re­ port it_ But it s a i d to t h e you ng, the hell with their cou rts, with their laws, which always d efe n d t h e rich and crucify the wea k and the helpless. What we s a i d, fu ndamentally, is t h at their "rule of law," which they herald from their capital i st rooftops, is a farce, a way of s u bjugati ng the poor, the n eedy, the weak, t h e j ust. We a lways knew that, but the tribu nal, precisely because it en­ compassed i ntellectuals and pacifists of world renown, got that m essage to the you n g. They k n ew a l l that i n stinctively, of course. B ut the trib u nal said: Russell believes that, too, so do Sartre and Bea uvoir, Dave Del l i n ger and Lelio Basso, J i m my Baldwin and Stokely Carm ichael, Lazaro Cardenas and I saac Deutscher, a n d all those Nobel winners, people the you ng respected. That wa s ext rem ely i mp orta nt.

B asic ally, that was the beginning of the G P , too, wasn't it? T he t rib u nal was h eld i n two sessions in '67, i n .Stockhol m and Copen­ h age n , and t he fact that the U n ited States and England would n ot allow it to be held o n their territory hel ped a great many you ng people all over the world

to real i ze that America and England were now all ied in a fascist i m perial pol­ icy. It was extre mely stu pid to h ave ban ned the tri bunal from thei r poi nt of view, a n d it s u re h elped the flou ri s h i n g of the new left, which then the com­ m u n i sts h ad to s u pport, in the M ay '68 events, when com m u n ist workers joi ned the stu den ts a nd the you n g i n thei r battle against the de Gaulle govern m entAn d their subsequent betraya l. B u t t hat was because the kids did not want to overth row the regi me­ that is , they didn't want power, and the CP then had no choice but to maneu­ ve r fo r so me gai n for their mem bers. That's when the GP was really born, a m ovem ent to s eize power, but not by the ballot, which elects only rotten pol itici ans , but by revo l ution. Indeed. Eve rywhere. I ncluding in Israel-Palestine, which created a major con tradictio n for you, didn't it? We' re not so far apart. I 've always been in favor of one I s rael- Palestine state, in which all are equal. Trou ble is that the religious right is too powerful. They want a Jewish state, whatever that is, with all the h istorical crap en­ mes hed into their constitution, which of cou rse alienates not o n ly all M us­ li m s, a nd all Ch ristians, but also all nonreligious Jews as well . So, OK, in that lig ht, I 'll be for two i ndependent states, equal and free. But the G P s upports the revolutionary actions of the Palestinians.

M AY 1 9 7 2

So d o I , a n d s o does the I s raeli left, when I s rael s u bjugates the Pales­ ti nians, takes away their l a nd, stops them from bein g able to live free_ But they support the armed struggle, they consider the suicide bombers "freedom fighters

."

I have always su pported cou nterterror aga i n st established terror. And I have always defined established terror a s occupation, land seizu re, a rbitrary arrest, and so on, as does the Israeli left, M atzpen for example_ I have always had very close ties with M atzpen. 6 That I know since you were the one who put me into c onta ct with ,

them. By the w ay did I tell you that they were really great with me during my ,

trip in ' 6 9 ? They showed me everything I w ante d to see, introduced me to the fedayeen, even got me to talk to the rabbis who oppose Zionism. And now most of their leadership is in jail.

We sent a formal p rotest to the government and to our Is raeli frie n d s o n that. The charge is that they are i n contact with t h e fedayeens, which is against the law. So much for democracy! You know that Lanzmann broke with me when he heard t ha t my trip was sponsored by Matzpen. How do you get along

with him now? I had a very serious problem with h i m for a while, becau se he asked me to sign a letter at the ti m e of the Six-Day War beggi ng both sides to stop. That was OK, but then Lanzmann organ ized a conference based on that letter, which was signed by all the usual suspects, to s u pport Israel. That's when he cried that if[Lyndon] J o h n son s upported I s rael he would s hout, "Bravo, John­ son!" This is i n the m idst of the Vietnam War, when Johnson was sending more and more troops, and bombing and burning poor peasants with na­ palm. That p ut a d a m per on our relationship, but he wasn't i nvolved in any­ thing we were doing, so I let it gO.7 You

weren't embarrassed by his j ournalistic activities , like his writing

for Elle? N ot really. He was a bourgeois who wanted the good bourgeois life. H e paid his d ues a s a you n g resistance fighter . . . Whoa! As a good Maoist you know what Mao said, that one i s never

finis hed paying one' s dues . . .

Very true. Stil l , OK, he didn't do any harm at Elle. One can be a revolu­ tionary and write for Elle, no? And France Dimanche?

MAY 1 972

That was i n '48, I believe. I guess I wasn't very political ly conscious the n . I do remember that when I was with Fa non one day then, and Lanz· m a n n showed up, a n d Frantz j u m ped and said, "You write for France OJ· m

anch e ? Are you crazy?" Yeah, that was em barrassi ng. But now, well, he's a

good bou rgeois, researc h i ng a fi l m , and praising I s rael, but h i s praise, in his head, is the con seq uence ofthe H olocaust. H e really doesn 't see what is hap· pen i n g to the poor Palestinians, chased fro m their land, their houses seized without compen sation, their children driven out of schools, harassed from morn i n g to night, beaten by heavily armed strangers. Lanz m a n n thinks of ls· raelis as H olocau st victi ms. And to h i m , a nyone who criticizes Israeli pol icy is a n a nti·Sem ite. Period. And any J ew li ke the mem bers of M atzpen, and Pierre Bloc h , a n d you , are all self-hati ng J ews. He's old enough to h ave been part of the H olocaust, and wou ld h ave been had h e been caught d u rin g the occu pa­ tio n , so that's where he's stuck. Is Israel debated within the G P ? N o , on that issue, they're u n ited , they're solidly pro- M atzpen, as is the whole new left, and the Trots, and the anars [a n a rchists]. 8

But there is inner trouble at the G P, no ? Yes, but not on policies. Those who h ave q u it did so beca use they don't l i ke the way their c h iefs treat them, haranguing them, call i n g them in compe­ tents when someth i n g goes wrong. And the chiefs, especially Pierre [Bloch], treat them that way out offrustration, I bel i eve. A tremendous amount of the left, j u st about everyone that shows up at Rena u lt to demand fai r wages for workers, or picket the elite schools, or dem and m i l itary bases offfarmiand, et cetera, agree with the G P, but no m atter h ow right the cau se, no matter how m uch their paper La Cause du Peuple is read across France, they don't join. That is very frustrati ng to Pierre and his fel low self-appoi nted leaders. The GP n u m bers fou r thousand active m i l itants today and ca n n ot seem to grow. M ost n ew leftists are too reluctant to join any party. Except, it seems, La Ligue [Communiste Revolutionnaire] . 9 I don't u ndersta n d why. They don't do anythi ng. They're i ncredi bly dog­ m atic and Stal i n ist in their organ i zationa l structu re. I can't figu re out where they fi nd those who joi n . [The party's leader Alai n] Krivine has asked to h ave a meeting with me, and I will go, because I wi ll do my best to u n ite the whole new left, a n d despite its ways, most of its adherents are you ng, the product of '68.

Quite a schedule you have these days : Flaubert, volume two of the eri-

M AY 1 9 7 2

tique, articles for L a Cause, a n d you still spend time a t the cafes and with all

your women!

Paris, France, wou ld be somethi n g completely different without cafes. To sit calm ly, ogling passers-by, ma ki n g com ments . . . Nasty?

N o, not n ecessarily. Like, Oh, that's some hairdo she's got. Or h ow about that coat? So, you're at the cafe with women, I gather.

Absol utely. Cafe l ife with men is no fu n . I know we agree on that: pleas­ ant conversation is about emotions, senses, perceptions, discoveries, not ideas, or politics. And who do you spend those "pleasant" hours with? Arlette . Michelle, Wanda, Castor. N o, actual ly, those ladies I see usually in their homes. For one thi n g, you can 't enjoy hash in a cafe, can you ? That reminds m e , how much do l owe you for that last bunch? Forget it. I got it from Arlette or Wa nda. It was good, was n't it? Great. Really great. Where did it come from? I don't know, but it costs one h u n d red thousand francs for a h u n d red

grams.

That's five hundred dollars! Twice what I pay in the United S tates. But as good? I can't tell. At home, we smoke grass. The hash here is more powerful. I was gone after one joint. So was I, or two maybe. Perhaps you mixed too m uch with the tobacco. But it's very nice, isn't it? Arlette and l or Wanda and I really go off o n it, es pe· cially if we're making love. You don't take speed anymore ?

Corydrane? No. The doctors said it's dangerous now. Too bad, beca use I loved it. It doesn't create a high. It just speeds things u p. Do you know that I wrote the whole ofthe Critique on corydrane? It made my hand I couldn't write any faster.

move so

fast,

Did you ever try it with cocaine, or making love with cocaine, which really heightens orgasms fantastically?

No. N ever tried coco, opi u m , or heroin. Or LSD for th at matter, al­ though I gather that it has some of the same effects as peyote, you know, mescaline, which I used to take. I th i n k that's how I first started h alluci n ating

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my crabs and lobsters. But it wasn 't nasty. They would walk along with me, on my side, but not crowdi n g me, very pol itely, , m ea n , not th reatening. U ntil one day ' got fed up. , ju st said, OK beat it, and they did. ' l i ked mescaline a lot. As yo u know ' am n ot a natu re lover. ' m uch p refer to sit fou r hours in a cafe than wander the Pyrenees, l i ke you r father.

But not me. I'm a city man too. I know. Sti l l , with mesca l i ne, those Pyrenees h i l l s take on so many different colors, it's really art. OK, so you get stoned periodically. When do you go to La Cause ? By and large, this is my schedu le: Flaube rt every morn i ng u ntil lu nch. As you know, we h ave lu nch late, from 2 p.m. to 3:30 or so. Then I write pam· p h lets, a rticles, whatever, for the G P, or ' go there and get em broi led in their squabbles. Eve n i ngs, u n less there are ralli es or m eeti ngs and the like, I spend with either Castor, Wanda, Arlette, or M ichel le.

And where does Pierre fit into all this? Right now, because t he squabbles are serious, , am more often involved than I should be, or want to be. The G P risks getting dissolved . A whole bu nch h ave q u it, mai n ly because they consider Pierre too authoritarian, too hard.

But that's not what is breaking up La Cause? It's the article on Bruay, right? [On April 5 , 1972, a young girl named B rigitte Dewevre had been mur· dered in Bruay.en·Artois, and a "peoples' article" in La Cause du Peuple (May I7) had accused a local notary public of the deed, in effect calling for his lynching. Sartre responded in the paper (May 2 6 ) with a vehement criticism, reminding the editorial board that "innocent until proven guilty" is not a bourgeois principle "but a peoples' victory, " "not to be abandoned by a peo· pies' Justice. " ] Pierre had nothing to do with that. But h i s people wrote the article. The others, the "democratic revolu­ tionaries," were the ones who q u it over that. I had dinner with Claudine [Trouvier, a GP militant] two days ago; she called it fascism, pure and simple fascism. Yet it fits with the G P ' s notion of "popular j ustice, " doesn't it? There'S an article by Pierre in the next i ssue- it's out today-which tries to say that, but with many concessions. The problem is that Pierre, and the h a rd core of his fol lowers, want to push toward a rmed struggle. And of cou rse, we a ren't there yet, nowhere near. But these kids are anxious, very anxious. And Pierre is convinced that the i ntellectuals i n the G P, those who

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have a good education, l i ke Geismar, are to blame for movi ng too s lowly, for finding too many "ifs" and " buts." The strange thing is that they are all i ntel­ lectuals, includ i ng h i m . He's a n Egyptian Jew, isn't h e ?

Yes, b u t raised i n Fran ce. H e studied with [Louis] Alt h usser and is ex­ tremely wel l read. You know, he fou nded the U n i o n of Com m u n ist Students, and then the G P. Where is Geismar in all this ? He's the paper's editor, no?

I saw him last n ight at the meeti n g for [Paule] Theve n i n . So did I . H e spoke very well but said nothing. So you n oticed that all the leftist groups were represented, the Jewis h

student association, t h e P S U , t h e Ligue, La Cause du Peuple, but not very many people to hear Paule Theve n i n

.

.

•

She was great though, condemning [Interior Minister] Marcellin di­ rectly for the murder of her son [killed by police during a demonstration]. But I was stunned that Geismar could not rise to the occasion.

H e's not that solid at the paper, either. H e behaves l i ke a pol itical com ­ missar. He a n d [Andre] G lucksmann, w h o does a l l the work, a re t h e force be­ hind the ed itorial board , but they exh ibit a sort of tri u mphalism that bothers me. Although their fight for the occupation of the empty apartments i n Paris was great, and qu ite a victory for many families. There are 1 65,00 em pty ones i n Paris today. And how many homeless? Now what? The G P is disappearing. La Cause du Peuple is closing. And now every social advancement has to be fought in the streets, just like in the

United States. Ord i nary people, d issenters, oddballs, a nyone who has a legitimate, or illegitimate gripe for that m atter, no longer has a voice i n France. Democracy, I mea n bourgeois democracy, is dead. The Fifth Republic wiped out proportional representation? Oh, we haven't had that for ages. But at least we had a lot of different parties, different movements, all with thei r newspapers. N ow we're l i ke you. Our Republ ican Party is the G a u l list, with its various sects, and our Demo­ cratic Party is the Socialist, with its com m u nist, Trotskyist, green hangers-on. Even from a capitalist viewpoi nt, we no longe r h ave a sou l. We h ave become a crass, co nsumer-oriented, racist, ageist, u ncari ng society, an appendage of America.

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MAY 1 972

You need another d e Gaulle.

N ot agai n ! Stop with that goddam bastard . What do you see in him, anyway? I know you hate him, but look, he was the only statesman who knew that France, perhaps all of Western Europe, was more threatened by the U nited S tates than by Russia, the only one who warned that " No nation that has a foreign base on its soil is free , " and ordered French missiles to be pointed both east and west. He kicked the U . S . - NATO out of France. He agreed to talk to the F LN and for Algeria' s independence. He fought the fascist generals who did not. He proclaimed an agrarian reform that kept farmers and their families on their land and solvent. He repeatedly vetoed Britain' s entry into the European Union. And when he resigned, he was per· fectly willing to turn over the presidency constitutionally to his vice presi­ dent, a communist. What more do you want from a French leader?

With h i s ridiculous "grandeur" he was an i n sult to France. He ap­ poi nted Pom pidou as h i s pri me m i n i ster, and that scum bag eventually did al low the Brits to becom e mem bers and ruin it so America could domi nate us better. And worst ofa l l he arranged for Pom pidou in M ay '68 to promote Mar­ cel l i n to i nterior m i n ister so that fascists could destroy our civil l iberties,

Q

/'americaine. Did you at least like his statement, when you were hawking an illegal paper right in front of police headquarters and they didn't arrest you, "La France does not arrest its Voltaires ! "

See! That idiot d i d n 't even know that Voltaire was i ndeed arrested i n Fra nce. H e a n d hi s heir ru ined France. But i t doesn't matter w h o is most to blame: they a l l are, so that today we h ave massive censorship, or self-censor­ ship, no art worth our heritage, no l iterature, no self-esteem . We've become the lapdogs of your capitalists. You still have the daily Liberation. For a w h i le. H ave you noticed how the paper has moved to the right? It was started with your money; don't you still have influence ?

None w hatsoever. Wait: France ' s most viewed program is one on books , ninety minutes of discussions about books and ideas , the most popular show on French TV. In the United States such a program on national TV wouldn't last a day. And there are still some producers who want to put on your plays, which they wouldn't do unles s they thought lots of folks still wanted to see them. That

MAY 1 972

would be out o f the question in the United States. There . independent thought attracts no one . no popular critic. no one.

You're referri ng to Nekrassov? O K, but it won't make a bit of difference with our public. The play is a conde m n ation of our press, but d o you thi n k it will make it change for the better? Ha. By the way, I wa nted to ask your advice on that play. When it was written and produced, everyone got its two m a i n themes, namely that t h e press is corrupt as h e l l a n d is part o f the Cold War machinations , and that com m u n ists do fight for workers. You've seen it, you 've read it. What will it say today? The same. I think. but it might be colored one way according to the ac­ tors . I heard that you were thinking of Louis de Funes [a slapstick comedian] for Palotin [a caricature. meant to be taken as play's idiot but who turns out to be the socially hip winner] .Io

Would n 't that come across as too pro-co m m u nist? The ti mes have changed; I don't want the play to be communist propaganda. I would cut the end a bit. It·s too long, and there the triumph of the communist daughter can come across as a bit preachy. especially since she's not a party notable. only an ordinary militant.

Good point. Especially now, after Prague, Budapest . . . And your own The Ghost of Stalin. It's okay to be allied to the commu­ nists in their fight for better wages for the workers . but it's also important to make sure that your viewers know that the Communist Party does not nec­ essarily represent the interests of its members . And that does come across in the play, although it gets a little fuzzy by the length of the ball at the end.

Do you know that there's also a producer who wa nts to put The Witches

o/Salem on stage? I don't know if that'll happen. I liked your movie much more than Arthur Miller's The Crucible be­ cause it was much more political. in my sense of being class conscious. Miller was fighting the witch hunts. of course. But you put it into its class­ war situation. But you know. you were historically wrong, as was Miller, of course.

I n what way? Historically. the class war was between the poor folk who had no ac­ cess to the river and were stuck paying huge fees to the Putnams, and the rich ship owners who also controlled the ports. Reverend Parris represented those poor, who accused the rich, even the governor of Massachusetts . of witchcraft. which was defined in those days as being out of the ethos of the

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"City Upon a Hill. " The original leaders , the famous preachers , John Win­ throp and John Cotton, believed in communalism, everyone flourishing to­ gether, and Parris was their disciple. In fact it was the preachers, John Cot­ ton's son-in-law Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather, who got Parris to call off the attack, because it was getting out of hand. The confrontation was the rich against the poor, and the accusers were the good guys, but re­ member, to be accused of being a witch in those days was to be charged with being an individualist who didn't give a damn about others. Shows t h at neithe r M iller nor I did our research, doesn't it? No one got that. Historians still don't write about the class war in Salem. We got it by accident when we were researching our book The Amer­ ican Way oj Crime. We came across , in a basement of the Salem courthouse,

a list of people in Salem and what they owned, and it showed that 85 percent of the people in Parris's church were dirt poor. By the way, the irony is that, when New York Times Books, which was the original contracting publisher, sold our contract to Putnam Publishers , we ended up being published by a descendent o f the original Putnams . They printed five thousand copies and refused to print more when they sold out. I asked Mrs. Putnam, the owner, one day, why not, and she honestly replied: " I didn't like it. It's a commie book. " It's not, of cou rse, but it shows that capitalism and orga n ized crime worked together right from the begi n n i ng, and I can well u nderstan d that the American establish ment wou l d n 't like that spread about. But in France, Le crime a I'americaine was a best seller, wasn 't it? And how! I ' m still living off it. What about L'Engrenage [a play by Sartre, called In the Mesh in English] ? I hear that, too, may be revived on stage . Actually, it has been playi n g a lot recently, twice i n Germany and Switzerland, in Italy, and here last year. You know why? It comes across as a parable on C u ba, the revol utionary cou ntry tryi ng to be independent and be­ ing blackmai led by its powerful neigh bor. And to th i n k I wrote it i n �8.

But it was meant to be a film, wasn't it? You wrote it as a scenario. Yep. I even signed a contract with some producers, but they eventually told me that their backers, the big buys, had changed their mind. Then the Italian com m u n ists wanted to do it. I even had a n ice talk about it with [Palmiro] Togli atti [leader of the Italian Com m u n ist Party].

M A Y 1 9 72

Oh yes, that famous long dinner with him and Gina Lollobrigida, the most beautiful actress in the world. I was madly in love with her at sixteen.

But you got it wrong. That famous d i n ner was in '54 at the Piazza Sa nta Maria i n Trasteverde, and she was eati ng with a group at another table. But it sure was a memorable dinner, although not so much because of h er, rather beca use ofthe gen uine interest that Togliatti had about what was h appen i n g in France. I w a s amazed that he really l istened, and wanted to learn . . .

.

Yet before we go gaga over the Italian communists, let' s remember that they too, and specifically Togliatti, as much as we may like him person­ ally, and Fernando did indeed in Spain, they, and especially he, were faithful confirmed Stalinists.

True, but unlike his French cou nterpart, he n ever personally insulted his critics. He always responded politely, and he l istened to those critics. Our dinner lasted three hours, a n d d u ring m ost ofthat time, h e asked questions, not only about what I thought ofsuch-and-such, that could have been just out of politeness, though I beli eve h e really wanted to know, but especially about French politics, French com m u n ist tactics, French government pol icies, a n d so on. I looked at h i m a s a de-Stal i n ized Stalinist. And what about Gina?

We were in a very popular sector ofthe city, ful l of restau rants, all open air, almost one next to the other, and h u ndreds of people, rich and poor, strolling by. Our restaura nt was reputed to be one of the best, and it was. Indeed. [Film director Gillo] Pontecorvo took me there in '67. He's the one who told me that this was the restaurant where you had your famous dinner with Gina and his party chief.

Boy, h ow stories are concocted I G i na and her group were s itti ng a bout th ree tables away from us, and of cou rse the strollers recognized her an d started yel l i n g their appreciation, their love even. B u t th en someone recog­ nized Togliatti , and the whole crowd moved over, s houting "Viva Togliatti," clapping, saluting. It was somethi n g to see: people hailing a comm u n ist politician so much more than Italy's greatest sex symbol. I n fact, it got so noisy, we couldn't talk anymore, so he suggested we go to a nearby cafe. H e waved to t h e crowd, shook a few hands, and w e walked o n . The cafe was a hangout for many workin g-class com m u nists, and they cheered him as wel l , but after a while they left us alone to talk. That i s , u ntil a famous local s inger walked in and asked Togliatti if he wanted to hear some old songs. Sure, h e

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said. And the t rou badou r began to si ng some lovely old songs, songs from the 1 830s, a" papist songs. I even remem ber one or two l i n es, l i ke, "Careful, the devi l has l a nded, G a ribaldi is at the gates of Rome!" Togliatti knew the songs, a n d began to s i n g with h i m , then everyone in the cafe did also, a" these com m u n ists singi n g these old royal i st and papist songs, laughing and gen u i nely enjoying themselves, a n d me too, as I picked up a few refrains, and sang along.

Castor tells me you have a great voice, basso. I u sed to, but I did OK that n ight. Anyway, ca n you i magi n e Thorez, or any of o u r com m u n ist l eaders, walking through the crowds with no body· guards, s i ngi n g reactio n a ry songs, liste n i n g for th ree hours to criticisms about com m u n ist tactics from a foreigner? That's I tal ian com m u n i sts for you , wi l l i n g to be teased , respect i n g their enemies.

No longer, I fear. Resu lt? The good o n es broke away and launched " Manifesto . . . That's also the period when you went to see Heidegger. Did he impress you at all ? N ope. There was one session that did not i m p ress me, but I found in· teresti ng. It was with a whole bu nch of G erman philosophers, very i m portant ones, asking h i m very p rofound q u estion s, I presu me. I u nderstood noth i ng. B ut my ti m e with h i m alone, naw, it was a waste ofti me. Anythi n g he said I at· tri buted to H usser!''' I was m uch more i nfluenced by H usserl than H eideg­ ger. Actu a "y, I had already written Being and Nothingness, which people like to say was i n spired by H eidegger's Being and Time, when i n fact I only read it d u ri n g the war. I ncredi bly, I fou n d it i n the li brary of the stalag where I was a prisoner. H e did help m e make a few of my concepts more precise, though. He was pretty s h rewd. Which i s why he played footsy with the N azis and sur· vived.

And this is the period when you go rather extensively throughout Rus­ sia. How could you not realize what a disgusting regime it had? You know, I was bli nded by my u n derstanding of world politics. Be· cause I knew that Russia wou l d n ever start World War I I I a n d the U nited States wou ld, I d i d n 't see the i nternal rea lities of Russia. You know, when I got there the fi rst t i m e, i n '54 or '55, my h ost, the head of the writers ' federation, I forgot his name, told me, " M onsieur Sartre, you are free to go anywhere you l i ke, except the concentration camps because they don't exist." Do n 't forget,

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Stalin was dead a nd o u r old friend E h renburg had publish ed The Thaw, about the de-Sta l i n izatio n process_ A terrible novel.

Yes, but i m portant. He was the fi rst. [Konstantin] Simonov, for example, was stil l bei n g careful.">' Didn't the folks you saw then, and later after Khrushchev's de-Stalin­ ization speech in '56, talk openly to you about the real conditions ?

Yes, but guardedly. Castor will put many of the com ments i n her next book of memoirs, when she talks of our trip to Russia, but s i n ce E h renburg is now dead, she will attribute a" the comments to h i m , so as not to endanger those who made them. B ut you know, even with the writers we got to know we", tel l i n g us how it was, and m i n d you , most were M a rxists and genu i ne revolutionaries, they did n 't really want to say too m uch t h at was bad. They would fi n d good points, l i ke that [Osip] Mandelstam was now bei n g pub­ lished . . I3 .

What about the memoirs of his wife ? They are fantastic.

Yes, everyone made a poi nt of mentioning that. And that convinced you?

Of cou rse not. To my cred it, I never came back from Russia and shouted, l i ke N izan, "I h ave seen the future and it works." Nor did you denounce it, like [Andre] Gide, I4

I n fact, I never wrote anything about Russia, good or bad. But yes, I wanted so much to believe that the revolution takes two steps forwa rd, one step backward, as M ao had said, that I hoped the Soviet system would pull out of its terrifyi ngly repressive stage. And yet, privately, even if you didn't say so publicly, you were fooled a great deal. How come ?

I went to Russia with a" my bou rgeois preconceptions, w hich ofcourse included my h atred of bourgeoi s morality, or I should say, lack of morality. Be­

·

cause the bourgeois media lie so systematically a bout everyt h in g, or, to be more accurate, tilt a" n ews to the defense of bourgeois life, I obviously was predisposed to beli eve that a nti-bou rgeois cou nterpropaganda was more

·

truthfu l , or less fictitious. I was too u sed to the usual a rticles, which always

·

went l i ke this: " I n Timbuktu yesterday protesters complained t h at French paratroopers beat u p the mai n p ro. i ndependence groups, but what we saw ·was the paratroopers, in stifli n g u nbearable heat, fixing the road a n d drilling

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for a n ew wel l to bri ng water, a n d a bit of relief, to the poor i n h abitants." That's typical: mention the real issue in passi ng, q u ickly, then praise our side with glowi ng details.

That was certainly true about the media during the U . S . invasion of Vietnam. Nor did anyone, either the New York Times or the Washington Post, report President Eisenhower's warning about the "military-industrial com­ plex . " Our media even faithfully reported without comment the number of Vietcong soldiers killed, without ever adding up the official figures, which amounted to hundreds of thousands . So, I took all the criticisms of Soviet Russia i n the Western media either as outright l ies or vast exaggerations, and wanted to bel ieve as much as pos· s i ble of the rejoi nders by com m u n ists or by Russian propagandists. OK, so when I got there, I q u ickly realized that they l ied too. But I knew that in the West, workers were exploited and their protests vastly repressed.

Actually, compared to the United States, your workers are in heaven. Do you know we have no law that guarantees workers paid vacations, or pregnant women that they will have their jobs back after giving birth , or that they must be paid while delivering and afterward? We have no law that guar­ antees the worker his investment in a private firm's retirement plan, even if his contribution is mandatory. We don' t even have a law forcing companies to pay fired employees compensation and no law giving them health cover­ age, and let's not forget we have no national health system. Unions fight for these, but don't forget. in the United States , the government can abolish a union outright, and jail and fine its leaders for leading a strike, which the government can declare illegal. You r capitalism is terrifying, no q u estion about that. We have solid u nion s and a national health system and laws that guarantee a certain amount of secu rity, all true. But from our poi nt of view, work conditions are p retty bad. Don't forget that except for a few bou rgeois leaders, l i ke jean Moulin, most ofthose who fought the N azis, and so many d ied doing it, were o u r workers, especially the rai l roaders, a n d most were solid com m u nists. O u r factories are proba bly not as deh u manizing as you rs, but they're awful. So I expected that the factories in Russia wou ld be so much better. I asked to see some. Of course I saw them as a tou rist, but they were clearly no better, even though everything I was shown was probably the best they had. I knew about the Stakhanovite system [of production quotas for workers], but of course I coul d n 't ask q u estions, or rather, when I did, I depended on the

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official i nterpreter that they gave m e . A n d if a worker, o r a nyone, said some­ thi ng, if it was not to the translator's ideological liki ng, w h at wou ld stop h i m or her from tel l i ng me, "Oh, h e saw you o n TV yesterday, a n d shouted , H oor.a h for Sartre." Add to that o u r prejud ices, i n herited from years of o u r media concoctions. Like, one day i n Prague, Castor and I went without a translator to the m a i n l i brary, and the librarian i m med i ately started yel l i n g at us h ow terri ble life was under the com m u n ist regime. We immediately assu med h e was an official provocateur of some sort. Or, i n China o n ce, where Castor wanted to read up whatever she could in French or Engl i s h on femi n is m and women's issues, especially on the rumor th at the govern ment had a program to kil l off the newborn females. The l i braria n recognized her and said one thing i n C h i nese for the i nterpreter to translate a n d anot her, how u n h appy she was and how d o m i n ated women were, i n her l ittle French when the trans­ lator went to the bath room. Aga i n , we assu med the incident was set up, to see our reaction .

What about once you teamed up with Lena ? You went everywhere with her, and once you two were lovers- I presume she didn't lie to you about what you saw. No, of course not, but all those great tri ps were after the de-Stalin iza­ tion, and before the return to Sta l i n ization with Brezhnev.

And in Cuba? Everything is different i n C u ba. For one t h i ng, everybody disagrees p u b­ licly with everyone else. I remem ber the fi rst time I went, at the begi n n i n g of the revolution, in ' 60 or '61 , I was on

TV with

Castro, and we disagreed about

somethi ng. I can't remember what it was, but for two d ays afterward, every­ one gave me their opi n ion, in Spanish, of cou rse, but my translator translated all the views, Castro was wrong on that, Castro was right on this, you got the best of him on that, et cetera. And for you , it m u st be eve n better, si nce you speak the language.

And yet I get suspicious, too, sometimes . I remember in '67, a beauti­ ful young woman approached me in the street. She had s een me at the press conference when the Cubans had caught five CIA agents planting bacteria in the sugar fields just before the harvest and where President [OsvaldoJ Dorticos had chastised the American press for not believing the agents. Some Miami reporters had asked such questions as what was on the kitty­ corner from where you lived in Miami, or what is the name of the bodega on the next corner, stuff like that, and when Dorticos got mad, I intervened to

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explain that U . S . reporters are trained to ask embarrassing questions like that when they are reporting a story favorable to the opposition. So this young woman asked me if I could help her get to Miami. She had asked five times for an exit visa. but had gotten no answer. She handed me a list of her relations. I assumed that she was a spy. because of my intervention on TV. and ignored her request. Lo and behold. eight months later. she looked me up in New York to thank me for helping her. assuming that the reason she got an exit visa was because I interceded for her with the government. She was completely genuine . and boy was I ashamed. And by the way. she quickly got to hate the Cuban-Miami exile community. You see, that's how our media brai nwashes us. 50 we have no choice but to remember that all govern ments l ie, that all med i a l ie, i n order not to lose the advertising where the press is p u rely capita l i st or to be i n good with the govern ment a n d keep getti n g the l icenses where they don't live off ads or where the govern ments hold Da mocles swords over the reporters and edi­ tors. Where I'm at n ow, with all my condemnation of 5ta lin ist regi mes and parties everywhere, i s to n ever forget that no one becomes a com m u n ist of any stripe u n less he o r s h e really wants to fight for a better life for the poor, for the workers, a n d for the colon ized. Revolutionaries a re made by the greed of capita l i sts.

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G E RA S S I:

I 've just read the new issue o f Les Temps Modemes, which is

dedicated to the maos in France, j ust when the G P and La Cause du Peuple seem to be crumbling. SA RT R E :

Don't confuse the various groups. You went to the m eeting of

La Cause? No, but I heard those who quit the paper let loose on Pierre.

They really admire him, his knowledge, his analytical skills, his tenacity. But they consider him a dictator a n d they stuck to their decision to quit. The whole editorial board? All seven?

Yes. And then, in Les Temps, Glucksmann praised Pierre.

He's really the only one who does. And I don't understa nd why. I s it be­ cause he wants to take over the paper h i m self completely, because Pierre isn't going to? Or is it because he's on a centralist kick? But did you read Fou­ cault's article? He is completely i n favor of popular justice. But not popular or pe o pl e s trials. '

That's because he rejects trials as a creation ofthe ruling class. So how does popular justice work?

Ask h i m next ti me you see h i m . But the merit of h is article is that it

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s h ows how t h e ru l i n g class was able, generation after generation, to turn j u s­ tice into a n a r m of rule. T h at analysi s is fi rst-rate.

What I like about Foucault's analysis is that it ends so logically on the viciousnes s of the state , how it will resort to massive violence, all nice and Ie· gal , of course , to have its way. But boy, is he pessimistic. He' s right, I ' m afraid. Thi ngs are bad everywhere. And no one seems to give a damn a nymore, l i ke all those massacres i n Banglades h , i n Tu nisia, i n I ra n . Over a h u ndred thousand people kil led in Burundi, a n d n o protest. Why aren't th ere protests in you r cou ntry aga i nst the systematic tortu res in Colombia , in U ruguay, in Braz i l ? Everyone knows that they're orga n ized, even ca rried out by the C IA, but no one seems to care. The approaching end of the war in Vietnam, the assassination of Mal· colm X and Martin Luther King, the failure of the Weather Organization to spark massive armed incidents , and especially the total moral and political corruption of the media , which cannot get the balls to blame the CIA or the F B I , the two greatest o rganized crime syndicates in the world, for teaching police forces everywhere how to torture, are having their effect. And the worst is to come. Like i n C h i le. They'll move before there can be a civil war, you 'l l see, they'l l make a coup, and m u rder thousands. The

C h i lean CP will do not h i ng, you ' l l see. They' l l sit o n their asses and cal l for pa­ tience, votes or referenda. I wonder if they really understand that the class war is between rich

countries and poor countries . Russia clearly will end up with the rich . The big question is China, and I ' m afraid it too will side with the rich. As Fouca u lt wrote, I fear the worst. Fou r, fi ve years ago, C h i n a gave us hope th at it would joi n the Third World against the First and Second. Its Cul­ tural Revol utio n, with all its excesses, was a revol utionary movement without the state, a gen u i n e people's war aga in st bureaucratic terror, at home and abroad. But now, with Lin Piao gone, we see a foreign pol icy that has n o rela­ tio n s h i p to what was developing i nternal ly. The Chi nese are repeati n g what we had i n Fra nce, centralist rule by the J acobi n s i n stead of popular ru le by the sans-culottes. C h i nese revolutionaries now see m to be studyi ng the various economic i ndexes, l i ke the gross national prod uct, the rate of exchanges, the balance oftrade. O nce that becomes the test, it's all over.

That's true for France too, isn't it? Yep. Our s m a l l b u s i nessmen have adopted the American standards for everythi ng, without u nderstand in g that it applies only to the domi nant enter-

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prises. They have a sense that something is wrong, which is why they h ave created all those associations of owners. But they're doomed. Actually, they started these association s i n '56, even before de Gaulle's return, with no u n­ derstanding that it would eventually lead to economic ch aos. America can susta i n , for a long time yet, a capitalist d rive to make more and more p rofits at the expense of less a n d less prod uctivity. But France can not. Already, our major i ndustrial fi rm s are fold i ng, like steel.

Didn't de Gaulle's economists try to offset that by a form of "dirigism" (not public ownership but some form of public control or co-control of ma­ jor industries) ? That's how he got the Airbus industry launched, and the new bullet trains. None ofthat can solve our basic problem, which i s that our CEOs want to be richer and richer, like you rs. And of cou rse, the only way to get rich er is to prod uce shodd ier and shoddier prod ucts, or better yet, produ ce nothi ng, becom e a service i n d ustry economy. So we have more an d more b a n ks , s pec­ ulators, real estate firms, com bi n ations and buyouts, and of cou rse delivery folks, salesmen, advertisers, a n d coffee-getters. What we call gofers, from "to go" and "for," in other words, a

flunky

whose j ob is to get things for the boss. I guess you can s u rvive a long time i n America o n that kind of eco n omy, but we can't. As it is, we have t h ree types ofworkers now: the one who gets up in the morni ng, travels a n hour to his job, gets paid well enough to feed his family offour and allow his wife to be a consu mer, travels another hour to get home, and is too exhausted to do anything or read anythi ng, j ust watches stu­ pidities on TV.

That's the one the song is about: "dodo, Metro, boulot, Metro, dodo" right? Exactly. He's a member of the CCT or CFOT [th e largest labor u nion confederations] because the u n ions get h i m paid vacations a n d a decent salary, but he'll never m a ke a revolution, though as we saw in '68, he m ight join one after it has started and he th i nks it ca n succeed. The second type of worker is the you ng, who lives in the city centers, h ates his job but l i kes his life; he goes to the movies twice a week, eats i n restau ra nts, does n't read, not even the newspapers, and blames foreigners for whatever goes wrong. Then there's the third category, mostly the foreigners that N O. 2 h ate s , who do the work that NO. 1 or 2 won 't do, l i ke cleaning the streets, picking up garbage, and running the errands, the gofers as you call them. They l ive i n the projects

20 7

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' 972

outs ide town , where t heir brothers a n d sometimes their fathers are u nem­ p loyed. M a ny of them are il legals, m ostly from Algeria and Morocco, but the govern ment won't harass them beca use no one else will do their jobs, and therefore they won 't com p l a i n , u ntil the d ay when they are beaten too brutally for not cal l i ng the local racist cop " s i r" or, u n e m ployed and h u ngry, for steal­ i n g an apple, and then their whole neigh borhood explodes. But when it does, the rest ofthe workers , the N O. 1 and 2, wi l l denou nce them as ingrates. The resu lt is that we wi l l n ot change. We are doomed to perpetuate the same dis­ gusti ng society u ntil you r economy, in America, col lapses, and affects u s all.

Like 1 9 2 9 ? Except i n ' 2 9 o r a few years l ater, you h a d a p resident w h o knew how to save ca pitalism, by sign i n g contracts with p rod ucers. And even then, he needed a war to get the whole cou ntry goi n g. This ti me, it may not work. M uc h of the world i s too wise a bout America's i ntentions a n d its need for perpet u a l enem ies. A n d the cap ital i st economy no longer prod uces real stuff. Germany a n d J a pan stil l do, a n d unfort u n ately China is feed i n g your, a n d o u r, consu mer n eeds, but the U n ited States? Does it prod uce anything t h at we n eed ? Bes i d es war m ateri a l of cou rse. It will col l a pse, and then, perhaps, a form of h u m a n i s m wi l l reemerge. But not i n my l ifetime. Nor in yours. And yet, there continues to be some movement, some understanding among the young that there can never be genuine dehumanization via a cap­

italist state . That's a bit oflegacy the Cultural Revolution has left the world. I think now the youth of the world has understood that capitalist bureaucracy, capitalist parliamentarism, will never solve the ills of this planet. I ' m not so s u re. Look at Germa ny, where a violent revolutionary group, the Baader- M ei n hof, behaved perfectly correctly. They never killed an i n no­ cent. They went after the vicious pigs of their society, and the American colonels who fawned over them. Yet popular senti ment was agai nst them,

S till, it seems that there are young people everywhere willing to put their body on the line, so to speak, to fight for genuine meaningful changes. I ' m not so sure. The Baader- M ei n hof group were bou rgeois kids. The Tupamaros [an Uruguayan guerrilla movement] weren't. Most of them were exploited sugar workers. Led by a social i st deputy. And how did they get caught? By being tu rned in by the poor.

Because the government got enough money from the United States to

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offer $ 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 for the capture alive of a Tupe. That kind of money can feed five poor families in Uruguay extremely well for ten years . !

Perhaps. B u t most ord i nary fol k don't relate t o bou rgeois self-sacri­ ficers. The Tu pamaro leaders h i p was m ade up of doctors, arch itects, l awyers, and I think, with no proof whatsoever, that workers j u st sym path ize or per­ haps don't trust people who act, or so t h ey believe, out of bou rgeo i s fru s ­ trat io n . Sti l l I ' l l gra nt yo u t h is: t h e R e d G u ards m a y h ave b e e n c reated by the students of Peking U n iversity, but the vast majority, and m a ny of their spokesperson s , especially those fa ntastic you ng women , were workers, or son s and daughters of workers, and their legacy, as you say, has remained, somewhere. As for everywhere else, well . . . Africa! The beginning is great. It will be completely crushed, yes, but the people will remember their Fanon, Mulele, Gizenga, Lumumba, Ny­ erere, both Cabrals , Moumia, Nkrumah, Hawatweh, Ben B arka. Especially Amilcar Cabral, who was a bourgeois, yes , a trained agricultural engineer, but who returned to his tribe, led it in the fight for [Guinea- Bissau's] inde­ pendence against the Portuguese, and wrote some fantastic essays about in­ tellectuals, therefore bourgeois by definition, committing class s uicide. Mo­ rocco's [Mehdi] Ben Barka was certainly one ofthe best and most forceful of all African revolutionaries, who started the nonaligned movement, and I'm sure every African will remember him.

And who killed or bought all these folks? Ben Barka was m u rdered by de Gaul le. The CIA got M u lele and Lu m u mba. And what d id you r "ord i n a ry folk" do about that? Heh? O K, O K. (Well, not all, not Cabral yet.) But they didn't forget them. I don't know a single American black militant or revolutionary, not a single rank-and-file [Black] Panther or Muslim, who does not revere Fanon, or Mal­ colm X.

M aybe, but what are they doi n g? N ow. Here in Fra nce, what's happe n ­ i n g to all those fl a m i ng rad ical i ntel lectuals from '68, h u h ? All of Althusser's students? Althusser does not advocate violence. To him communism is a stage, a passage from one type of s ociety to another, so unless we know what kind of society communism will lead to, and what the costs are, it doesn't seem worth it.2

The p roblem is that the com m u n i st revolutionaries, that i s , those w h o are still revolutionaries, a n d there a ren't m a n y o fthose left, h ave a bourgeois

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mentality: they act out of bou rgeois gu ilt, which mea ns that their conviction is purely mora l . As m i n e was u ntil '68 shook me up. And I stil l am much too bou rgeoi s , desp ite the fact that I 've given u p on writing my eth ics for pre· cisely th at reason. But I 'l l tell you , Pierre does not th i n k , or no longer thinks l i ke a bou rgeois, w h ich is why he's a gen u i n e revolutionary.

We'll see. He's certainly not a democratic revolutionary. And didn't you tell me that what attracted you to the maos was precisely that they were moral revolutionaries ? Yes , but n ot bou rgeois morality. Bourgeois g uilt leads to revengism. That is Castro's greatness, that he knew the dangers of revenge and let those trials get it worked out. M oral revol utionarism is fine.

I s n't that what leads to such articles as the one that so shocked you in La Cause? That was revengism, pure and sim ple. N oth in g moral about wanti n g to break somebody's balls. I s that the reason you don't like The Condemned ofAltona anymore? Yes. The whole play is based on culpabil ity. That's not how I read it. Or even saw it, in the De Sica film. [Sartre's

play was made into a movie directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1 9 6 2 , starring Fredric March and Sophia Loren .] To me it said that when you eliminate the feeling of personal guilt, you end up with the guilt of a whole class. Th at is it precisely. But a real revol utionary does not want to wipe out the bou rgeois class because of its gui lt, but because h i storically it is com· pel l ed to exploit the proletariat.

OK, so class guilt is to be sequestered. That means it cannot be moved, or s aved for that matter, by art. And since it is the bourgeoisie that reads, lit· erature is useless. Yet you continue to write. Why? You've said that you do not have the motive of gaining immortality since, you claim, you don't con­ sider your impending death in anything you do. So? It's true, I a m not a Flaubert who wrote, he claimed, because it pleased h i m. Why does Fernando pai nt? When he realized that art served no purpose whatsoever in the larger scheme of things, that he would never be famous because no art dealer wants to exhibit an unknown at the end of his life-it doesn't pay-he did

go through a small hell, for three months, alone in his studio , staring at a particular painting, a really great one, I must say, of colors dancing, until he suddenly said, " Painting pleases me. It gives me personal pleasure. Period. "

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I ca n't say t h e same about writing. I don't know i fi t serves a nyth i ng. But I hope it does. And you , why do you write?

I started for three reasons: fame, money, and to change the world. When I realized I would never change the world, that nothing we do, we writers, painters, dancers, actors , would ever change the world, I stopped writing. I wrote ten books before signing a contract to write your biography, and as I warned you, I really had no intention of writing it. Everyone told me the same thing: The revolution isn't going to happen for fifty years at least, don't waste your deal. Go back to France, write the biography, explain to the world why a bourgeois who has never suffered for being a bourgeois, who never rebelled against anything or anyone, has become a revolutionary. That's incredibly important for the revolution, which you will never see or experience.

And I t h in k that's true. It's i m portant for revol utionaries a n d for the bourgeois who might become revol utionaries to know how a writer of the twentieth century was led i nto the revo l utionary camp, in spite of h imself, since politics bored the shit out of h i m . And did it. But every time I got in­ volved in something l iterary I ended u p i n politics. I thi n k it is extremely im­ portant to show that if a writer thinks and writes honestly, he ends up a revo­ lutionary. But so few have, in the past.

In the n i n eteenth centu ry, Victor H ugo at least demanded am n esty for the Com mu nards. But not even Zola fol lowed suit. And those who con­ dem ned them, l i ke the Gonco u rts [the brothers Ed mond and J u les de Gon­ court] and Flau bert, should h ave been s hot. You've said that a writer should always be against. I quite agree, always against the government, as Malraux said. So did Hemingway, by the way. But what is a writer's position under a revolutionary government?

He ca n not be against, but must n ot be for. He m u st not joi n the gov­ ernment. He m u st never exercise power. He has to keep his i ndependence, never become a bureaucrat. So you disapprove of [Roberto Fernandez] Retamar being head of La Casa de las Americas ?

No, that's not an official agency, even ifit gets government money. What about Alejo Carpentier ?3 I th ink that was a specia l case, because if he had n't joi n ed the govern­

ment as its representative outside Cu ba, I thi n k he would have d efected. I

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knew h i m fa i rly wel l , or at least I saw h i m often , s i n ce he l ived i n this neigh· borhood - h e always seemed to be sad, morose even . Well, he was suffering and dying from cancer. S o i f a revolutionary

government suddenly took over France, you would not join it, and you'd op· pose Aragon, Eluard, and others working for it? You r q uestion i m plies that the C P is revolutionary. OK, let's say it was, h ypothetical l y. Yes. The ir job then would be to m a ke s u re that the govern ment sticks to its a n d their revolutionary principles, to m a ke s u re it does n ot be­ come o p port u n istic. But our CP coul d never be revolutionary, nor could its in­ tellectuals ever be leaders of a revol ution. They're too closed, too pedantic, too didactic, too phony. You ca n 't tal k to them, nor do they want you to. Only l i sten . Unlike I talian communists, right? That's a mistake; n o matter how charming they are, they still belong to a party with a particular structure that does not allow rank·and·file input in the policies , in the core of a C P o And

if they can, like Togliatti , or [Yugoslavian president] Tito, or our good com· mon friend [Vladimir] Dedij er, it does not and cannot change the party struc· ture.4 It was precisely against this secretive , closed centralism that the kids launched the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and when they went after the party hierarchy, they got crushed. So you want to be a spontex [French leftist sl a n g for sponta neous mili­ tants]? That's what your maos are, aren't they? Yes, and indeed that's what I l iked a bout them. I n fact, that's what I ad· vocated, so to speak, i n the Critique.

Your "group·in.fusion" ? Exactly. But that's not the a rticle at La Cause. We are a l l atomized i n bou rgeois society. W h e n a group suddenly fuses together a n d yell s N o ! but then follows th rough the N o!-which is a moral reaction to extreme i njus­ tice- i nto group actio n , thought and action are joi n ed, as is the group, now a grou p-i n-fusion. It explodes out of spontaneous rejection of a n i m morality, but does not constitute a group-in-fusion u ntil it tra n s l ates that rejection i nto an action that is for all.

Like the group that seizes the bus on Third Avenue ? But such a group could also lynch. And it may not be popular justice. It may be that the victim is thought to be guilty because he was different. So it could be a lynch mob, racism, fascism.

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It cou ld. To make sure i t i s n 't is t h e role oft h e revolutionary i ntellectual. The broadside writers. The dailies . The ed ucational process. But when the grou p-i n-fusion moves, the i ntel lectual is j u st part of the group, n e ither led nor leader. The sans-culottes taking the streets of Paris, not Robespierre or even Ma rat, whom I know you ad m i re so m uch. The cocas [black slaves) seiz­ ing H a iti from the French, not Toussaint Louverture tell i n g them what to do, no matter how adm i rable. They all failed.

Yes, and so will probably the next bu nch. But success by g ro u ps-in­ fusion someday remains the o nly hope for a fai r way of l ife on this p lanet.

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SARTRE:

Tel l m e , how's Fernando?

G E R A S S I : He's suffering a great deaL mainly because he won't take the morphine. He claims he can't paint with it. How about you, and Castor, how was your summer? She's fi ne, as you ' l l see on S u nday. She traveled q u ite a bit i n August; I j ust worked , mostly o n Flaubert, then went down to Nimes with Arlette.

I see the third volume just came out. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. It got rave reviews. Yea h , much better than the fi rst two volu mes, with reason, I th i n k-the third is m uch better.

So what's next, Madame Bovary? Yep. The w h o l e fou rth vol u me, which wi l l be t h e last, of cou rse, is about

Madame So vary. Is that book so important? I read it in school and I liked it, but only as another example of much-vaunted French nineteenth-century literature. You shou ld read it again, and focus on w h at it says about French cus­ toms a n d m a n n ers, morals, prej ud ices, and especially the stu pid ities of our preva i l i n g bou rgeois society_ And don 't forget, it was written by someone who was a petit bou rgeois h i mself, and l ived its ways completely, a l l the while in­ su lti ng it.

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I certainly remember his famous cynical comment that "To be stupid, and selfish, and have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless." So you now work every day on Bovary?

, U nless somethi n g else urgent comes up, like a demand yesterd ay for an article by the guys at La Cause du Peuple. But it has to be importa nt. Like the M u n ich massacre. I wrote that in the morn i ng, then went back to Sovary after l u nch and never a nswered my phone until d i n nertime. I have to get the past issues of La Cause. What did you say about

Mu-

nich?

I broadened it i nto an analysis of Palestin ian terrorism. First of all, I re· cou nted the history of h ow they got c hased, and often kil led, out of their land, d u m ped i nto terrible refugee cam ps, ignored or even repressed by the Arab governments, forced i nto a diaspora that got them bei ng al most slave work­ ers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, and other supposed ly pro- Palestinian cou ntries, rebell i ng for a decent life and then condemned by every rich cou n· try because oftheir own guilt of having done'nothing to stop the h olocau st, of which the Palesti nians were totally i n nocent and probably not even knowl· edgeable. H aving said that, I d rew the i nevitable concl usion that the Pales· ti nians have no choice, no weapons, no defenders, but to resort to terroris m . But I felt obliged to scruti n ize that terrorism. I pointed out that t h e Lod Airport massacre, where a bunch of fanatical J apanese end up killi ng Puerto Rican tourists, was not only stupid but cou nterproductive. Puerto Rica ns, of all peo· pie, who are dominated themselves, folks who have no alternative them· selves to fight for their i ndependence except by terrorism. But the M u n ich terror act, I said, was j ustified on two grounds: fi rst, because all ofl s rael's ath­ letes at the Olympics were soldiers, and second because it was a n act meant to effect an exchange of prisoners. I n any case, we now know th at both the Is· raelis and the Palestin ians got killed by the German police The world except Americans knows that. The media .

•

.

in

the United

States is so pro-I srael, the I srael lobby is so powerful, that everyone still thinks that the Palestinians killed the I sraelis and the German police killed the Palestinians, We never, never get the truth about I srael- Pale stine in the United S tates, unles s we dig through the web, read the Hindu Times or the

London Independent. But tell me , the G P has not condemned the Japanese as­ sault on Lod, has it? I remember their claiming it was a great show of inter­ nationalism.

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Stupid. We h ad some heated arg u ments, but Pierre convi nced them to pu bl i s h my a rticle a s is.

Glucksmann didn't object? He's no longer there; he left while you were gone. H e said he needed six m o nth s to th i n k th i ngs over, wh ich mea ns, I t h i n k, he's out altogether. ' The good guys have left too; you know, le Dantec and [M ichel) le Bris are gone.

And Geismar? I don't k now, but h e's nothi ng. H e can 't write, and h e can't thi n k well politically.2 The o n ly really solid one left is Pierre, and of cou rse all the maos t h roug hout Fra nce. And they write great articles about their local struggles. But th e paper and the G P are on their way out, I ' m afraid. It'll be the end of a great era with the demise of the kids i n France, of those who started the Cul­ tural Revolution in China, and of you r S DS, of new·left movements every­ where, of the n ew generation that un derstood that party politics, i ndeed par· l i a m e ntarism , elections and all th at, are so rigged that reform is i m possi ble. Fro m now on, I fear, it'l l be up to the gen u i n e revolutionaries, l i ke the " Man­

ifesto m i l ita nts, to carry o n the struggle, cou rageou s but alone, and mostly ig. n ored .

Have they given u p o n China? Completely. They've even taken [th e l ittle pictu re of) Mao off [the top of] La Cause. They asked me a while back, s hould they get rid of him; I said I cou l d n 't care less. I n fact, I th i n k Pierre struck M ao off the m i n ute he heard of Lin Piao's d eath. Actually, I agree. When the C u ltural Revolution started de· m a n d i ng that the party a nd the army be cleaned out, the old guard got scared. From Chou En-Iai down. So they started arresting the most leftist grou ps, and then they had to get rid of Li n Piao h i mself, si nce he was very much active in bringing the C u ltural Revolution i n s ide the army.

But Mao was not threatened. Besides, he was getting a bit senile. The real power was Chou En-Iai. and he was more afraid of the kids than anyone, Precisely. And Chou was always a world-states m a n type, the kind who wou ld p u s h M ao to view China as a world power. So l ast year lin Piao is killed a n d basically C hou takes over, beh i nd the facade of M ao, and a rran ges for N ixon to go there, and make everything n ice. C h i n a's international strategy becomes j u st l i ke Russia's, rivals a i m i n g for the same goals.

And since there ' s a tradition in China not to execute political oppo­ nents but to send them to rehabilitation camps , that is, prisons, they couldn't condemn and execute Lin Piao . He was too popular, so they had to fake a

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crash , and just killed him. But claiming that he had plotted to kill Mao, then tried to escape to Russia, he who was the most anti-Soviet of all the Chinese leaders , is so absurd, I don't understand how the world has bought it. Most fol ks j u st bel ieve thei r government and their media. So they t h i n k li n Piao died i n a n airplane crash tryi ng to escape to Russia. That story s u ited the C h i nese leaders hip, s u ited Kiss i n ger, s uited the New York Times. That's all. By the way, did you go see J eanson i n Bordeaux when you got back?

Yes . I couldn't see you first, since you and Castor had gone to Bruay. I had a fabulous lunch with Jeanson and his wife. They really overdid it, with a few dozen oysters and a big chunk of pate de foie gras, then a luscious filet of turbot, followed by a chateau au poivre, the works. He told me he's work­ ing hard on your biography. He has a deadline in five months. Did you tel l him you were doi ng one, too? He knew. There's no conflict; he is focusing on your struggle with your ethics, a sort of history of it, while I'm more interested, as you know, in your traj ectory into revolution. I h ave a small problem with it. Because everyone knows that we worked together very closely over the years, people will assume that I approve of h i s book, s o I have t o read i t before he s u b m its it. He wants m e to, o f cou rse. I did n 't, but I guess I h ave no choice. Why don't you tell him? Now, before he sends you the manuscript, that you will write a preface for it if you agree and a postface if you don't. Brilliant! N o. I h ave a better idea. I ' l l do that for you r book. And j udgi ng from our many arguments, it'l l be a postface. H a-ha ha.

So great, write a preface for his in which you talk only about your struggle with your ethics , explain why you will never write one, and that way, if there's stuff you disagree with, you can say so indirectly through your dis· cussion of your problems of writing an ethics that depends on the situation and the dichotomy between object and subj ect, and the en-soi [in-oneself] and pour soi [for-oneself ] . H ey wiseguy, you want to write i t for me? What else d i d you get out of you r tri p to J eanson, besides a great feast? I have to tell you that I liked him, a lot. His wife, too . And I would have even if they had served a pizza. I got the feeling that he thinks you feel guilty a bit about the 1 2 1 , for not coming back from Brazil fast enough, hence avoiding the trial, his trial. Bulls hit. I had told h i m and the others to hold back u n t i l my return.

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The y decided to release the statement even earlier, an d asked me t o return q u ickly, barely forty-eight hou rs after I got there. I was schedu l ed for a whole iti n erary of conferences. And when I did return I went directly to the cops and said O K, I ' m one of the 1 2 1 . You've arrested the others, arrest me. No wait, I'm sorry, I confused the 1 2 1 with the network. Jeanson has a feeling that you feel guilty about not testifying at the trial of his network. Ah, that's somet h i ng else. Although the dates are a l most identical) Jeanson h a d asked me to testify at the trial, but I cou ldn't, so I wrote a letter, a n d it was read. It made a lot of noise. The n ext day, the OAS marched i n M ontparna sse shouting, "Shoot Sartre, shoot Sartre!" Anyway, after t h e war,

a nd everyone was a m n estied , Jeanson got a job as head of the cultu ral center of C halon, near Bordeaux, and that separated us, not only because of the dis­ tan ce, but a lso because culture or not, it's worki ng for the government. But, as you know, he came last weekend to read stuff and talk to Castor and me abou t his book. He stayed two hours. He told me you were going to give him five interviews to help him

along. Wh at! He made that u p. I ' m not goi n g to give him a s i ngle one. I did help him last weekend. Well, I s h o u ld n 't be nasty: he fought wel l d u ring the war, very well for Algeria, and ran Les Temps Modernes just fi ne. But on Alge­ ria, let's not overstate o u r effect, com pared to books l i ke The Question [by Henri Alleg), and many others.4

But the French believed Alleg, and the others who also documented French atrocities , were telling the truth. In the United S tates , before the My Lai massacre was made public , we published scores of articles and even pic­ tures we had managed to get about U . S . atrocities in Vietnam. Not only did the vast majority of Americans not believe us , but our mainstream media would never publish them. The self-censorship of our media is absolutely appalling, but worse, I feel, is the gullibility of the ordinary citizen. H ow do you explain that? Partly because they've never been occupied by a foreign power that then mistreated them . Partly because of that old puritan dogma that the suc­ cessful are closer to god. But the main reason, I think, is because our ordi­ nary citizen is scared. He's told from the day he's born that free enterprise, laissez-faire capitalism, is the best system. Struggle on your own, he's told, and you've got a good chance of becoming a millionaire like him, and her,

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and Joe and Jane, o n and on. Th e ordinary Joe i n the United S tates dreams long-range plans , repeats ad infinitum that America is the greatest country in the world because his dreams can come true, but lives day to day scared to his core. I actually felt that i n Tocquevi l le's book on America. Every com mentator claims that it praises America, and con sideri ng what E u rope was l i ke at the time, there's no doubt he thought America was m uch, much better. But by stressi ng t h at money dom i n ated the m i n d s of all a n d that crass i n d ivid ual i s m a n d market capitalism had become the pri nciple o ft h e n e w cult u re, he also exposed the dangers to come, w here the society's most flagra nt beh avior would be, as you say in America, dog eat d og. At the time, of course, his book was a formidable democratic cry for equality. But once our obscene aristo· cratic culture col lapsed because of our con stant rebellions, which could n ot happen without class u nity, we moved closer to respect for the com mon man a s part o f a class. We h ave a l o ng ways t o go, a nd becau se o f t h e power of America, which of course will do everyth i n g it can to stop u s , we m ay n ever get there. B ut one thing is clear in Europe, all of E u rope, east and w est, that all human beings m u st live u nder a system that guarantees life, l iberty, and the pursuit of happi ness. That's you r famous s logan , but life means health, a nd you don't guarantee it. Liberty means education , and you don't g u arantee it; you have it but h ave it o n ly for a price. And the p u rs u it of li berty means secu· rity, and that, as you ju st said, most Americans certainly don't have. I n France, w e simplify i t a l l u nder t h e sloga n Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The key is fratern ity. Livi ng together, not crass i ndividualism lead i n g to dog eat dog. OK, no cou ntry in E u rope has establ ished a regi me that can t u rn that slo· gan i nto reality. But every pol itician knows that it is the ideal , and m u st at least pretend to strive for its realization.

Not so in the United States. But tell me, why didn't you accept the No­ bel Prize and say all that, then give the money to the Swedish group Clarte, which is composed of Maoist revolutionaries? I thought about that. But it wou l d mean recognizi ng the w hole s how. I oppose any writer getting a prize from an elite, because as we agree, the value system of that el ite, as much i n Sweden as in America, i s based o n val u e s we oppose, val ues which m u st be destroyed.

But a Nobel is never refused, only the money. True, I ' m listed as a recipient i n a l l their mail, and most b io s say " Nobel

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for Literature (refused ) . " I m ade some com ment that the prize was too politi­ cal, you know, after [Boris] Pastern a k got it, so I had to abide . . .

What comes acro s s as your reason for turning down the money is an individualistic act, one o f personal honor, so to speak. I agree. There's a mixed message there. When Len a came to Paris she gave me hell for that . . . They let her come ? Part of a delegatio n , a n exchange of writers, as their translator. Du ring that early Khrushchev period, they were fai rly lax. She stayed with me, not in their hotel, and that d i d n 't seem to bother anyone. Could she stay with you when you were in Russia, in a hotel? No one seemed to care very much. She had to s neak past that big mama on each floor, b ut they k new, and no one said anythi ng. Do you still communicate with her? N ow and then. I s e n d her books, m i n e and others, she sen d s me a nice letter tha n k i n g me a n d tel l i n g me what's going on. She got i nto a bit oftrou· ble, noth i n g serious, for s ign ing a letter in favor of [Yu li] Daniel and [An d rei] S i n yavsky. She didn't want to stay in France ? She has a child a n d a mother to take care of. She does a l l right as a tra nslator. The ideal for her was to get married , a n d s h e d i d ask me, because then s h e cou l d stay six months i n Paris and six months with her child and mother.

You refused ? I thought you cared about her a great deal. O h , I s u re did, b u t to be married, even only six months out of a year, com plicated my life m u c h too m uch.

Wouldn't it have been viewed by everyone here as a political act on your part? N ot by everyone. First of all , it would not have been good for her. I n Rus­ sia, she has a n excel lent reputation as a translator, and ear n s well . Here, basically s h e wou l d be a kept wom a n . Then there's Arlette, M ichelle, and Wan da; they wou ld be fu rious.

They knew you were having an affair with Lena, didn't they? Yes, and I gather they may have been a bit jealous. But if I married her and l ived with her here in Paris, boy! their jea lousy cou ld topple the Eiffel Tower.

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When you talk about your women, you never mention Castor, a s if you never had an intimate relationship with her. Fi rst of all, we stopped havin g sex in 1 947. Second, as you know, we h ad a different kind of relationship. There was no q u estio n that we were bou n d to each other for life, what we called our necessary relationship. We both had affairs a l l our lives, the kind we called contin gent. But they weren' t of the same intensity, were they? Like Castor with Lanzmann; that too lasted almost their whole life. No, not sexually; they stayed very close, and they still a re. She's still very m uch involved with hi m, l i ke right now financing a docu menta ry h e's maki n g [Shoah), but they're n ot lovers a nymore.

And you were never jealous o f Lan z man n ? N ever. As I told you, I was never jealous. Well , I did tell you t h at, but it was wrong. I was jealous of Olga. We were a very n ice th reesome, when Cas­ tor was teach i n g at Rouen, she, Olga, and me. That's Castor' s first novel, She Came to Stay. Olga was Castor's student and around then Bost was o ne of my stu­ dents. Well, I got jealous when Olga started a n affair with Bost. I was jealous for six months. I d iscu ssed it with Castor, but her u n derstanding and em pa­ thy d i d n 't help. That was the time when I was bei ng followed by more crabs than ever. I t was all part of a serious crisis in my l ife, the fi rst of two , right?

The se c o nd being '58 a n d the coup by de Gaulle . Right. I was giving up my youth . I felt that very strongly. From now on , s h it, not h i ng but responsibilities, obligations, serious ness. Terr i ble. And that lovely creatu re Olga goi n g off with my student. I n ever said anyt h i ng, of course. I mea n to Olga or Bost. But then, I found a way out: Olga's sister, Wanda. They resem bled each other, and Wanda was you nger, all the better. The woman I loved had tu rned me down, so I got her spitti ng image, you nger yet.

You're talking about possessiveness. Yep, and Wanda was o n ly twenty-two! G reat for my ego. You had no doubt that she would fall into your arms ? I mean, she was, she is still, as I dis covered last week when I had dinner with her, rather fli ghty, s p ontaneou s , iras cib le , and unp redictable , just as you describe her in Troubled Sleep. Do you know that al most all critics and biograp hers thi n k that Ivich rep ­ resents Olga? Shows how stu pid they are.

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Well, come o n , everybody knows about your affair with Olga, because of Castor' s novel. But no one has written about Wanda, so it' s a sort of nat­ ural mistake . Anyway, knowing her, Wanda that is , I 'm amazed that you could be so s ure that she would fall for you, and stay fallen until now. I j u st assu med t h at s h e was so pleased to be with me that if she was with a n other s h e wou ld be u n ha ppy. I sti ll feel that. So I h ave never been jeal­ ous aga i n . That's how I felt with Dolores, and Lena. What about Michelle ? S h e ends u p part of my second cri sis i n '58. Wait, you were with her earlier, r remember very well, since r too fell in love with her

in

' 5 4 when you asked me to take her dancing at La Cave du

Vieux Colombier. Oh yes, when you as ked Sidney Bechet to play "When the Saints Go M arch i n g I n ," a nd you and M ichelle went crazy j itterbuggi ng. She tol d me all about th at. But you n ever made a m ove o n her. r was a nice bourgeois kid then , remember? Writing a dissertation on you, my mentor-how could r possibly move in on your girl, that is if she would have me anyway, which of course r doubted. But that was spring '54; I was twenty- two. Too bad . It wou ld have made a nice story, eh? Anyway, my crisis was in '58. I h ated my life, I h ated Fra nce, I hated M ichel le. I would have h ated any­ one who was with me. Fi rst, because we had learned t h at o u r army was using torture i n Algeria. Second, that neanderthal had seized power. Third, I h ad to stop writi n g the Critique i n order to denou nce the tortu re . . .

That's why you wrote The Condemned ofAltona? Yes , and I h ated it, because I was writi ng someth i n g against France, aga i n st the val u es t h at every French men should cheri s h . You hated the play while you were writing it? Yes , l i ke Flaubert hated M adame Bovary. And to make matters worse, I had p romised Evelyne that she cou l d star i n my next play, so I knew s h e would t h i n k this was it, but by then I had fi n ished with her in m y head-well, in my body too, since I was now i mpotent with her a l l the ti me. I h ated the play for th at, too. Did you also want to end your relationship with Michelle then ? N o no. I h ated h er beca use she was part of my life a nd I hated my life, living u n der that pig, havi n g to accept torture as norm a l .

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Castor told me she was really worried about you then. You were drink­ ing much too much, she said, and taking speed. She was worried, but I wasn 't. I took corydrane for th ree or fou r months.

She claimed you were always talking about what happens if one of us survives the other, stuff like that. Ha! It was she who kept bri nging that up. I guess because s h e thought I was goi ng to drop dead. I was pretty bad. Arlette told me that I wrote her a letter i n which I placed one line on top of the other. When did you start up with Arlette ? I n '55 I th i n k.

And when did you adopt her as your daughter ? Let's see, I came back from Russia i n '62, then Lena ca m e to Paris i n '63 , a n d the OAS w a s fu ll steam then, so I guess I adopted h e r i n '64. Was that when they set off the first bomb ? No, it was on my way to Russia, i n '62. I had spent the n ight at Castor's and had ordered a taxi from there to go to Orly [Ai rport], so we stopped at 42 [rue Bonaparte, where Sartre was living with his m other] on the way to see the damage. Not much. I h ad already rented a cou ple of rooms nea rby. So we moved my mother, she was fine, and I went off. The irony was that the rooms were in a house w here there lived an Algerian tailor who refus ed to pay the OAS-you know, they were gangsters, extortionists-so he asked the police for help, a n d they sent a whole bunch of cops, from seven in the morning to eight i n the eveni ng, but none d u ri ng the n ight, when the OAS blew up all thei r bom bs. So after another one there, Gisele Halimi [Sartre's lawyerl fou nd us an apartment i n the fancy 1 6th [arrondissement], right o n the Seine at Quai Bran ly. And the i rony was that u p stairs lived two OAS bom bers. So as long as they didn 't see us, we were u ltra safe. But they said they were goi ng to blow u p Castor, so s h e called the Sorbo n ne and asked for vol u nteers. Scores showed up right away. They stayed at the windows and at the p h o ne in sh ifts, and nothin g happened.

But you had placed your mother in a hotel, right? Meaning you knew it was dangerous times. Of cou rse. But it didn't affect you? Not at all. By then my cris is was over. The war with Algeria was over, but

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w e were a t w a r i n s ide France. The cops wanted t o try us for treason and the right wa nted to blow us u p . That kind of situation is the best medicine to get out of depression.

Did it get you to stop drinking, and taking drugs, and how about s moking? I 've n ever stopped drinki ng, but I did cut down, mind you , just to please Castor, beca use the alcohol was not w h at brought me down , or up for that m atter; it was the s ituatio n i n France, i n the world . The d rugs , yea h , I stopped. Smoki n g was l ater, and I d i d n 't stop completely, as you k now. I l i m it myselfto o n e cigarette per hour.

That's caused some funny mom ents , like with Girardin, you remem­ ber, Jean-Claude Girardin, the student I sent you who was writing his dis­ sertation on your theory of the state? O h yes, brill iant guy. I really enjoyed talking with h i m . Well, when he left you w e met for lunch and h e told m e that h e must have really bored you, because you kept looking at your watch. Ha ha hal Did you tell h i m I was waiti n g to smoke? Arlette and M ichelle someti mes forget why I keep looki ng at my watch and get mad at me. But the root cause of that was health, right? Were you suddenly aware that alcohol, drugs, smoking, could kill you prematurely? No, I did all that for Castor. She was preoccu pied with dyi ng-not death, dyi ng. Her research for that book of hers on old age s h owed her that old folks don 't think so much a bout death , but about the process of dyi ng, and it was n 't true about me- I never thought or thi n k a bout death or dyi ng, but it was true with her, u ntil Sylvie [Le Bon de Beauvoir] , that is.

How did Sylvie change things ? By [Beauvoir's] adopti n g her as her da ughter. We both l i ke Sylvie a lot, and Castor had an i nti m ate relatio n sh ip with her as well . She's twenty-n i ne, so Castor knows that she'll be able to h a ndle her affa i rs for a long time. She will leave her everyth i ng. It takes a lot off her mind. She can be more sponta· neous now, more com m itted. Did adopting Arlette allow you to be more committed? More hot, so to

speak? t h i n k I 've always been both, I mean hot and cold. In other words, l of· ten wrote very angry, very violent articles, but coldly. I

Like on the Basque trials, which I j ust reread in Situations. Boy, you were fuming.

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Exactly. Who could possi bly not hate Franco yet again for that tria l and executions? Yet I was very cold in side when I wrote it, very com posed , calcu­ lating. I wanted to be extremely effective. Were you cold when you wrote that violent attack on the United S tates for ex ecuting the Rosenbergs ?

N o, I was hot then. I remem ber, I was i n Ven ice when I heard the n ews i m m ed i ately cal led Liberation and asked if they wanted an article. When

.

I

they said yes, right away if you c a n , I sat down and dashed it offa s i f ! was con ­ dem n ed to d i e i n five m i n utes. I then phoned i t i n . Both Castor a n d Lanz­ man n -we were together in Venice-thought it was bad, becaus e it was so violent, but I didn't, a n d it turns out no one else d id. Oh no, it was great. It is still quoted by militants everywhere, in fact by everyone who remembers the great demonstrations, by their children who have been told that the execution of the Rosenbergs lost the United States re­ spect all over the world. Do you know there are still all sorts of conservative writers trying to prove that, yes indeed, the Rosenbergs were guilty, academ

·

ics who claim to be "obj ective," doing their best to try to save America' s soul. The Rosenbergs' execution remains one of the darkest spots, proof, of the lack of justice in the United States, and your article is still quoted whenever the subject arises.

I'm very glad. Those murders turned my stomach, and convinced me never to trust America n s again. Yet you didn't keep that "hot" attitude when you wrote other political explosions. Like your attack on the government's crucifixion of Henri M ar­ tin. Yet you continued to judge the work of others according to your criteria of hot and cold.

Cold i nside, hot outside. M ea n i n g that o n e m u st know well and calm ly what one is going to say, then express it with the full vigor it demands. You did that in your criticism of art, too. Like Titian and Tintoretto.

Titian is cold; I don't like h i m . Tintoretto, Picasso, Giacom etti , you r fa· ther, are all hot. That's the point of your discussion with Fernando at the Mondrian show, in your novel, when he says Mondrian doesn't ask difficult questions ?

Exactly. Can you make a case that the "hot" painters are also all leftists ? I

haven't studied the question, but let's see. Yeah , Titian ass- l icked his

masters, Tintoretto hated the system, Picasso was a com m u n i st, G i acometti

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cou l d n't express his p ol itics or he would get deported back to h is native Switzerland, but he was certa i nly with us, a good friend. You r father, of cou rse. Velazqu e z ?

H u m . . h e was J ewish in an a nti-Semitic cou ntry. .

Naw, doesn't fit. How about Nicolas de StaeI ?

I know, i n ' 939, before he joined the Foreign Legion, he made his living as a police i nformer and ratted on you r father. But you have to consider his background, th e son of a Russian general, a Baron von so m eth i n g And he com mitted s u i cide. That excuses him, yes? No. OK, doesn 't work. End of a .

new, tha n kfu l ly u n stated , theory.

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November 1 972

G E RA S S I : I hear the maos are planning a daily newspaper. S A RT R E :

They're plan ning one for next year, February.

They have the money?

Yes. I don't know from where. And they're calling for a boycott of the elt�ctions ?

Yes. They hated Secours Rouge. Because it was com posed of petty in· tel lectuals, which is precisely what most of the maos in Paris are. Anyway, now they want to lau nch com mittees all over Fran ce called Truth a nd J u stice, organ i zed "at the base, n meaning by and with the proletariat, which ofcou rse none of them are. The whole M aoist movement, it seems to

me,

is fal ling

apart. And where is Pierre in all that?

He's the o nly one left of the old guard. At La Couse du Peuple, the o n ly ones remaining are a bunch of you n g girls. Curious. And Pierre. I like Pierre, but . . . Can't you talk to him, I mean seriously about the whole business and his anti·democratic role in it? It's because of his dictatorial manner that they've abandoned ship, no?

Undoubtedly. No, I can 't find out what he really wants. H e's very closed.

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Yet the gauchistes [what the media called those who were to the left of the classic left] are s till the main left-wing opposition to the system, the only ones who refuse to play the electoral game, get licenses to demonstrate , per­ mission to publish, and so on. Absolutely. You know, while you were gone, [Pierre) Overney [a G P demonstrator who was kil led d u ring a stri ke at the Renault plant after being s hot by one ofthe com pa ny's officers) was buried at Pere Lachaise [Cemetery). No less than 250,000 fol lowed h is casket to its place in the cemetery. But when the GP called for a rally by the site, only two thousand showed up. They then created a new gro u p cal l ed N ew Popu lar Resistance, which claimed it would kidnap the kil ler ofOverney and try h i m clandestinely. Which of course never happened. That's the sad story of the gauchistes. Otherwise there h ave been some great ral l ies and demos staged by feminist groups. There was a very s uccessfu l one defending a woman who performed an illegal abortion on a seventeen-year-ol d . [The girl 's] mother was also charged because she pub­ licly clai med that s he had fou nd the abortionist. She said she had asked her daughter, Do you want the child or no, and when the girl answered no, she arranged the abortion. Both the abortioni st and the mother were fou nd guilty, but thanks to the m a rches a n d protests, they got suspended sentences. So who are your political friends now? You still see Pierre, I know, but

you' re not very comfortable discussing politics with him. Who else? You. Thanks, but I mean on a regular basi s . You can't talk with Lanzmann. The young guys at Les Temps Modernes are great, but they don't quite fit, do

they? I mean personally. There's Gorz, but he now spends most of his time in the country. There's Claire Etcherelli, who runs Les Temps day in and day out, but she's busy writing a new novel. I read her last one last month; it's really very good. I guess there's B ost, of course. Who else ? How about your old resistance comrades; do you ever see them? Aragon ? 1 saw a lot of h i m , obviously, d u ring the resistan ce. But also after, he and h i s wife, Elsa Triolet, often for d i n n er. We l iked them, Castor and I . I also kind offlirted with Elsa; she was a bit of a coquette, and I l i ked that. We h ad i nvited them the day Stalin died, or was kil led, and he showed up an hour l ate, all up­ s et. He was gi bberi ng. I cou l d n 't u nderstand him, and I thought h e h ated Stalinism, privately of cou rse. Finally, it came out: he thought it would get much worse without Sta l i n , that whoever would take over wou l d be much worse. And h e claimed he was right when years later Brezhnev did take over.

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H e was a fu nny com m ie. Pu blicly very partyis h . Privately very l iberal. H e told us a lot of party gossip, l i ke that Marty was a real cop, not ju st in Spai n , rep­ resenti n g the Comi ntern , but h ere, in France, always reporti ng folks whom he thought were deviating from party doctri ne. He told us that the party d i d n 't l i ke the way Francis Ponge wrote, his style, h i s p rose, so they kicked h i m o ut. Stuffl i ke that. But after Elsa died two year ago, Aragon cam e out ofthe closet, marched in gay pride rallies decked out in a gorgeou s p i n k s u it, and stopped s eein g us. Too bad. H e was fu n , even more fu n once s h e was no longer around to terrorize him. Otherwise, let's see. The Yugoslavs. Ded ijer. H e' s great, and our din ner with him t h e other night w a s fa ntastic, was n't it?

First time I 've seen you so silent. Well, you and he were doi n g all the tal king. H a ! Otherwise, let's see. No, I never stayed friends with any ofthe Lettres Franfaises group. N ot those who stay�d in the party. Those folks are absolutely i m possible to tal k to, and too rude, too pedantic, too know-it-al l . Not l i ke . . .

I know, the Italians. And the C u bans, and even the Russia ns. S imonov? N o, but Solzhenitsyn and Ehren burg, of course. And the Cubans. By the way, your book on Cuba has never appeared in French. Why? It was n 't meant to. I had broken relations with L'Express, and there was no Liberation yet, right? This is 1 960, so I asked, via Lanzmann, to ask Lazareff if h e wanted articles d escribing my trip. S u re , h e said, and pri nted them all, eighteen I think, mostly very favorable to C u ba. I remember one i n which h e never touched Che G u evara's quote, wh ich i s now famous: "We are not M a rxists, but it is not our fau lt if real ity is M a rxist." N o r did he contradict i n a n other article my piece on La Coubre, the Belgian s h i p ful l of a m m u n ition , wh ich I said was blown u p i n H ava na harbor by u .s. frogmen. And m i n d you , there were French sailors m urdered i n that blast.

You weren't there during the missile crisis, were you ? No, I was right h ere, i n Paris. Did the French go bananas-I mean, convinced we were an inch from World War I I I ? Not a t a l l . Fi rst of all, most folks here thought that C u ba h a d every right to buy whatever self.defense weapons it wanted, especially s ince America was so bel l icose. Second, we all knew that Khrushchev would never risk war, and that he would back down after Kennedy's speech .

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What about you, personally? I was very u n happy that the R ussians did give i n . I was opposed to what was begi n n i ng to look l i ke peacefu l coexistence. I had met Fanon by then , and I had been convi nced by his argu ment that peacefu l coexistence would be a disaster for the Third World, that it wou l d mean no money for development. I could see that America, wh ich even before peaceful coexistence always black·

ma i led Third World leaders to join the anti-com m u n ist phobia or get no money, and anti-co m m u nism meant n ot only kill your com m u nists, wh ich Nasser for exam ple did, but vote as we tel l you or else. There was no better ex­ a mple tha n the Aswan Dam, was there? No, I hoped that the missile crisis would lead to more confrontations, to create a rivalry between Russia and America, which wou ld help the Third World develop. But because Kh rushchev gave i n , America felt free to i nvade the Dom i nican Republic and of course Viet­ n a m . I remem ber Fa non telling me then, Russia has accepted its role in h istory as a second power. That means America is free to be mil itarily im perialist now, and we are goi ng to suffer for it, badly. The money i m perialism of Roosevelt is over, he said, or rather, it will now be accompan ied by guns.

S peaking of Roosevelt's imperialism, have you heard of "lend-lease"? That was America's program to aid those cou ntries fighti ng the Axis, specifical ly helping Russia, right? You heard about all the guns and cannons and stuff the United S tates

gave them, right, and the food and tanks and so on we gave England, how generous the United States was . Yes, we d i d hear about that, and it's true, isn't it? It's true, all right-for 5 percent. Of all that money called lend-lease, the Allies got 5 percent, that's all. The rest was used to pay plantation owners in Latin America, the latifundistas, to stop growing food and instead plant coffee or bananas or sugar. It's the coffee agreement, the sugar, the cocoa, the soya agreements . Guarantees the rich their endless fortune, while mak· ing the member Latin American countries dependent on the United States for its food. Nice little trick, heh? I had n o idea. But it does n 't su rprise me. I read that before the war, Brazil was totally self-sufficient i n foodstuffs, but by �6 it was importi n g $500

m i l l ion from the U n ited States. N ow I know why. Good busi ness m a n , that Roosevelt. But of cou rse, we all know that he saved capitalism in America. It was on the edge, wasn 't it, after the cras h ?

Yep . And the stupid capitalists in the United States hate him as if he

N O V E M B E R 1 9 72

were a socialist, because one ofthe ways he avoided a revolution was by giv­ ing labor many of its rights, like the right to organize, to strike, the clos ed shop-all those things saved capitalism. Still, he did help Mexico get its fair shake from its oil.

But even there, wasn 't that because he foresaw the possibility of a world war that wou ld cut down on i m ported oil ? Sure, but nevertheles s , when Cardenas nationalized Mexico' s oil and offered a pittance, whatever it was , I 've forgotten, to S tandard Oil, Exxon to­ day, and Rockefeller demanded that the United S tates invade Mexico , Roo­ sevelt said, Let's let the World Court decide , and he abided by the court deci­ sion, which ruled that Standard had been cheating Mexico by millions, just as Cardenas had documented. That's the only time the U nited S tates has ever obeyed a judgment it did not like. On the other hand, Roos evelt made the war with Japan inevitable.

H ow? His ambition was to make the United States a "two-ocean power, " as he said. The only obstacle was Japan, which was developing so fast, buying the raw materials from all over Asia. So Roosevelt kept putting embargos on Japan, on the excuse that it was building a war machine, which i t was. S teel ingots , steel rods , and then oil were put under embargos . Japan has none of that. So it decided to get it from Manchuria, then China, finally the oil from Indonesia, which floats on oil. Not all Japanese leaders wanted all-out war. [I soroku] Yamamoto, the naval chief of the attack on Pearl Harbor, tried to get a truce immediately after the attack, on which by the way he refused to send the final wave of attack planes. His condition was simply open seas and free market. Roosevelt refused, of course.

America is always in favor of free trade when it benefits America, and never when it does not. Correct. But to get back to what we were talking about, friends , Ehren­ burg, you know that a lot oHolks, liberals, even leftists, think he survived be­ cause he was

a

fink. You obviously didn't.

N o. He went as far as he cou ld, always at the l i m it. You ca n 't condem n

him for that. You know, Lena's fam i ly was J ewish , and her h usband was sent to a cam p. She was then dismissed from the u n iversity where s h e taught. She went to Eh renburg and he employed her as his secretary. That w a s very risky for both, but he stuck to his gu ns until Stalin was gone. He got hell from Khru­ shchev for it too, but that's all.

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You didn' t know her then, did you? No, I met her as my translator when I went to Russia i n ' 62. That was a fai rly decent period there. But not in France? Pol itically? It was awfu l . We were i n l i m bo. On the one hand, d e Gaulle agreed to a cease·fire in Algeria; on the other hand, his police were viciou s in putting d own demonstrations. O n the o n e hand, a good majority ofth e peo­ ple said yes to Algeri a n i ndependence in the referendum of that year; on the other de G a u l l e wanted a constitutional amendment to allow the pres ident to be chosen by pop u l a r vote, which we i nterpreted as his move to stay in power a l l his l ife, the non hereditary king of France. I spent a lot of time at the Sor­ bon ne in those days , talking with students who were very disappointing then. H alf were imp ressed by the structu ralists. I tried to read their stuff, which was i ncredibly bori n g. H ave you read [Claude] Levi-Stra uss? Besides bei n g wrong, he is so bori ng, I ca n't u nderstand how any student can claim to have read h i m . As if that wasn 't bad enough, I spent the rest of my time at the Sorbonne with mem bers ofthe Che-Lu m u m ba cell ofthe C P, and they had nothi ng new or i nteresti ng to offer, except to repeat the stu pid ities issued by Thorez and [Laurent] Casanova [th e n a mem ber ofthe CP Central Com m ittee i n charge of " I ntellectual E ndeavors"], before he was expelled. That period, until Vietnam woke us up, was d readfu l . But then, when we saw what America was doi ng to those poor peasa nts i n Vietnam, we finally became alive. The Vietna mese woke me up, and o u r students made me political , made me u ndersta nd at last that everything is pol itical.

May 1 973

G E RA S S I : SO we've both been traveling quite a lot since we last met. I

How did you enjoy Japan? S A R T R E : I can 't answer except with stu pidities, like this was beautifu l , that was crowded. I mean, I u nderstood nothi ng. We were taken everywhere. We met u nion leaders, socialist party chiefs, deputies, but so what? Every· thing by translation. J ust fancy tourists. Israel was different. Everybody, al· most, speaks English, which Castor u nderstands qu ite well and I manage, and m a ny speak French. Also we had many old friends there, with whom we cou ld ask embarrassing questions.

And? Doomed. The hope of one Jewish·Arab state is dead. If for no other rea· son than that Israel will never return to the Palestinians thei r possessions, their land, their houses, their belongi ngs. Fi nished. Doesn't some of the left still strive for such a state? N o. Wel l , some, but no one listens to the m . The I s rael is want a Jewish state, even the left. J ust l i ke Lanzma n n . I have trouble with that, especially "like Lanzmann." H e ' s a n atheist, like me. H e does not practice Jewish customs, as I don't. He doesn't speak Hebrew or Yiddish, and neither do I . There is nothing Jewish about him,

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a n d under no circumstances would h e ever go live i n Israel. H e ' s totally French. But he does n 't feel comfortable being French. So why doesn't he go live in Israel ? H e may n ot be comfortable there either-who knows. But he feels close to I s rael somehow, even ifhe doesn 't know a thing about how to be J ew­ i s h . But h e thi nks about it, wh ich you don 't. Besides, you ' re only half Jewis h , and your Sephardic father d id n 't even know what Yom Kippur is.

Come on, he was Chairn Weizmann's personal bodyguard for two years . That was part of Fernando's political activis m , not an act of J ewish soli­ d arity. By the way, Lanzmann's film is ready; he's gone to Cannes to show it.

At the festival ? No, on the side. Anyway, forget La nzman n . The poi nt is that I do not see a solution , si nce what exists now is the right faci n g the right, because no mat­ ter what M apa m [the Labor Party, then in power in I s rael] says it stands for, it is a right-wing political party, and of cou rse the Arab govern ments are all right-wing. You've given up on the left in Israel ? It has no power. I found that most Israelis are reactionary and racists. As fa r as I coul d tel l , there's only M atzpen , and those are the kids mostly. No, I see no possibility for the foreseeable future, so Israel will su rvive only if it has A merica n help. You're in favor o f that? Yes, j ust as I approve of the Palesti nian resistance.

Including its resort to terror? The poor and weak have no other weapon. You end up on both sides, so to speak. Does that not contradict the po­ sition of the maos ? S u re. But we' re a l l ied on so many other poi nts; they try to overlook my positio n on I s rael - Palesti ne. S o you expect that the situation will continue as is, Israeli bombs and tanks against rocks and occasional suicide bombers forever? Forget one democratic state, but also no more hope for two equal states? I dou bt it. M aybe i n fifty years after another war. So your trip was a disappointment? B ut n ot, surprisingly. I l i ked N asser a lot. It's easy to tal k to him, and

23 4

M AY 1 9 7 3

argue, a n d ask em barrassing questions. That's not the case with I sraeli of. ficials. They repeat exactly what the official line is, almost by rote. They have no flexibility. Whereas N asser comes across as really caring. He i s afraid that a new war is inevitable but d reads it. He really doesn't want one.

Did you like wandering around in E gypt? Yes and no. It can be very hot and h u m id. And there's tremendou s poverty, though you get the feeling that N asser is real ly tryi ng to h e l p his peo­ ple. Also, Arabs are easier to com m u n i cate with. They say some very formal official statements, then switch to wonderfully personal reactions to what you say. Of course, Egypt is not very Arab. And they all speak Englis h , thanks to British i m perialism. By the way, Eldridge Cleaver tried to reach me. Do you know why?

He got edged out ofAlgeria by both his Panthers and the government. He is trying to get a permit to stay here, and he thought you might help. I gave him the names and phones of various lawyer friends, but he's a typical American who thinks that it's contacts that work. I didn't give him your number, though. I know. He called my secretary, who told him I was away, w h ich I was. But I can 't help h i m . Giscard [Valery Giscard d'E s taingj might. Eldridge is having a n affair

with Catherine S chneider, or whatever her name is, Giscard's mistress ; so I told him to ask her to intercede with Giscard. H e's only a minister, but maybe he could. H e'll run for p resident next year, then ifhe wins, perhaps. 2 1 hear Cleaver clai m s that the only solution for America now is armed struggle.

Cleaver changes with the wind, but usually after the wind has calmed down. Armed struggle makes no sense now in the United States . But I think his reasoning is that you can help him get residency in France . You support the maos. The maos are in favor of armed struggle. He is too. That's his rea· soning. Well, he's right on that score-that is, the h ard core grou p of maos still advocate armed struggle, bu t what they real ly wa nt is illegal activities. Do you support that? In the sense of occu pations of e mpty apartments, s ponta n eous stri kes, marches without perm its, and so on, s u re, but armed struggle today, I don't know what that means exactly. It doesn't really make sense, does it? Armed struggle in France, in

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I taly, i n Germany. Perhaps i n S pain against Franco, but what chance would it have today? What is i m portant is keeping the notion of i llegality al ive. And that is h ard , with the C P total ly en mes hed i n the system, and acting total ly legal ly. Yet the proletariat is hot now. N o one forgets how close they ca me to an actual overth rowi n g ofthe bou rgeoisie i n '6&. But we have to wait for a new genera­ tion of rebels, a new new left, because our "gauchistes" are not a new left, j u st a revamping of the old left without the com m u n ists but still t h i n king l i ke the com mun ists.

You, personally, didn't think that the kids were even that in ' 6 8 , did you? I saw their rebellion as a cultu ral struggle. I felt I had to s u pport them, but I never i m agined it would gather so m uch su pport with workers. Do you know that the stri kes of '6& were bigger and more i m portant than the one of '36, wh ich brought a bo ut the Popular Front? Paris was fantastic i n M ay '6&. There were no cars, no M etros, no buses, no gas, everyone walked to wher­ ever they were goi ng. N o news papers except some student broads h eets. Even Le Monde fa i led to appear for a few days. And on M ay 27 or 2&, I forget n ow, the two great m a rches, the m i llions of students and the m i llion of work­ ers, b u m ped i nto each other at Denfert, I t h i n k, and un ited . O n ly then did M ay '68 become clearly pol itical , not cultural.

But not for you, huh? Not yet. I was sti l l caught u p i n Coh n - Bendit tel l i n g the prefect that they did n 't give a d a m n about h i s swi m m ing pool, they wanted to m a ke love. I saw h i m q u ite a bit after that; he i nterviewed me for some rad io program. He was far fro m bei ng b ri l l ia nt. I d i d n 't l i ke h i m very m uch.

But in May ' 6 8 , you continued to work on your Flaubert. Yet you did go to the S orbonne . Beca use they as ked me. You had supported them on some radio broadcast, and they knew that. They received you better than any other intellectual, although there was still a distance, wasn't there ? O n both parts. I tried to bridge the gap, once I realized that they were neither com m u n ist nor Trotskyist. O h , some were, but the m ajority were an· a rchist. Coh n -Bendit was anar to some extent. I 've always had a strong anar side myself, as you k now. I fou nd out that they were against a l l sorts of cui· tura l , o r let's say ed ucational, policies that I was opposed to. We related on

M AY ' 973

that. For exa mple, the requi rements on dissertations , which were always hor­ rendous, a way for the establish ment to force students to accept its views and defend them in their work. Or the habit of magisterial lectu res. They want to be free to interrupt a nd disagree.

You were alone in your support. Why didn't "the family" j oin you? Cas­ tor did not even accompany you to the Sorbonne . Castor is not very political. She supports my views, but passively. Bost is in favor of di rect action, period. H e j ust wants to put a bomb there, and go. Otherwise, he's too lazy to be active, march and yel l , that's not his way. H e wou ldn't last a week u n der a socialist regime. Pouillon i s completely with u s , but quietly; h e can't say or d o anything publicly a s long a s he is editor of the m i n utes of the Cham ber of Deputies. He s u m marizes what they say, edits it, and has it published every day; a very well-paying job. He'll be with us if the day fi nally a rrives. Gorz will analyze, dissect, and w rite about what we do, but he won't go tal k to students. M ichelle would h ave gone with me, if I h a d asked her. B u t you have t o realize that I make all my decisions alone, fi rst, then I expl ain them. Castor can make me change my m i n d , someti mes. B ut only after I have m ade my decisions. I never discuss the issue fi rst. I decide, then I discuss.

Not very collectivist! And Pierre ? He came to fi n d me. With a group of h i s maos. He asked that I take the editorsh i p of La Cause. That was a Sunday, I remem ber, beca use I ended u p late for l u nch with Castor a n d you. So I invited h i m for l u nch another day, a n d w e h a d a very n ice talk. I sti l l l i ke him.

You stay friends with people you like, even if they are political ene­ mies, but you break with folks who waver j ust a bit off your line, ifyou don't like them. Your atta ch m ents in the final analysi s are always moral . You r conclusion is correct, but not the p remise. I don't stay friends with enem ies. La nzma n n is not an enemy; we disagree on I s rael, true, but if a rev­ ,

,

olution came to Fra nce, and there were only two sides, we'd be on the same side. Same with [Pierre] Leroy •

.

.

The priest who was a prisoner with you? H e's no longer a priest. He got married to a librari a n . We don't see each other very much; he doesn 't live in Paris. But we did n't h ave a break. Merleau broke with me, not me with him. Same with Cam us. Koestler, yes, I don't want to see h i m , ever. But my j udgments are not based on politics, but on whether I can trust the person, personally. And I agree, that's a m oral question. With

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Pierre, I have no doubt that I ca n trust h i m , no matter where he ends u p polit­ ical ly_ Same with Arlette. Don't forget that I defi ne trust not just as someone who would or would not turn agai nst me, verbally. To me, trust is if in an e mergency I can cou nt on that person. Castor th i n ks the same way o n that.

I agree. I know. That's everyone in the fam i ly. What about your break with Aron? Did you read his book ? Yes, but I 'll bet you didn't. H a h al B ut that's because I can 't see very wel l now. You saw M a heu yes­ terday?

Yes. Very short, because he told me nothing. I mean , he said nothing but nice anecdotes . When I brought up Castor, he waved his hand in such a way that I understood he didn't want to talk about her, but he did, in the anecdotes, describing the happy days together, the fun roaming around Paris. He knew that I knew about Castor [and him being lovers] , but we both made believe I knew nothing. But you know, he had tears in his eyes when he mentioned her. As far as you were concerned, he said that since he be· came head of U N E SCO, you had sort of crossed him off, that you never get together anymore. But tell me about your eye, what did the doctor say? The tension is

30.

M uch too high. I have to take drops and all sorts of

thi ngs. In general, I 've become a pharm aceutical su itcase. So tell me about Aro n . You interviewed h i m also when you got back, yes ? H ow did it go? Very interesting. He intimated that you two broke because of four rea·

sons: first, because of the lecture he gave at the Sorbonne criticizing Mer· leau. I remember that he gave a stu pid lectu re, yes, and I cou l d h ave criti­ cized h i m for that, but we didn't break over it. I didn't go.

Ah yes! That's what he held against you, that not only you didn't go, but you also blasted him for it. I may h ave said someth i ng, but it was based on reports from people I tru st, l i ke either Bost or Pouillon, both of whom did go. Second, that you gave a lecture titled " I s Nietzsche a Philosopher?" in which you stole his idea on contingency. H a l I was i n my l ast year at l' Ecole N ormale, and it was a lecture to Nor­ m a le students, though granted, many did come, as did a lot from the Iycees, from hypo-khagne, where it was advertised. So he was there. He had gradu-

M AY 1 97 3

ated already, but h e came for some reason. But I had no idea what h e t hought. We had very little contact then, and we certa i n ly weren 't great friends li ke

I

was with N izan, who by the way cou ldn't stand Aron. And conti ngency, h a l That was m y favorite su bject then. I even wrote a song about it. I sti l l reme m ­ ber o n e couplet: " I brin g boredom, I bri ng forgetfu lness." The third reason was that Castor didn't like him.

That is certain ly true. But my friendsh i p with him had nothing to d o with Castor. I don't think I l i ked h i s wife o r vice-versa either, but t h at did n 't affect our relationship. And the fourth? That you two were very close friends but it was an intellectual friend­ ship, and it broke when you two went in different directions.

Well, that's sort ofcorrect, except we were n ever that close. Wel l , maybe we were, but not l i ke I was with N izan, or M aheu for that matter. We n ever went whoring together, or got roya lly dru nk. We were very close i ntellectually for a while, but as you know, my attachments are more emotional. If I l i ke someone, I will conti nu e liking h i m even ifhe's a fascist, as N izan was befo re he went the other extreme and joined the C Po But I have to feel a real

emo­

tional bond, wh ich I didn't qu ite have with M a h eu-well, some, but n ot enough to want to keep seeing h i m after he went to U N ESCO and a l l those official tuxedo shindi gs. I had none with Aron. I ntellectual, yes, but when it beca me clear that he was an ideal ist, philosoph ically speaki ng, whi l e I was a rationalist, it became clear to both of us that the political consequ ences of those d ifferences would fi n i sh off our relationship. And it did. H e m oved right, while I moved left. But h i s book on me is qu ite favorable, I'm told. At first glance. But it' s full of little innuendos meant to deflate the praise he officially lays on you. I said so in my interview and he got a bit up­ set. Like what? he demanded. Well, I answered, like when you say that S artre wrote the Critique without having read Marx's Grundische, which has pas­ sages right up your alley. It wasn't yet translated into French, I replied. Well, it is now, he added; he should make the corrections . I had a hard time not laughing, because I was sure you still hadn't read it-have you?

No! H a ha! He asked me if I had read the Flaubert, and since I didn't want to get into a discussion with him on that, I said no. Neither did I, he said, so let' s read it this summer and get together in September. He was very pleasant with me, and came across as genuinely respecting you, even if he thinks you're wrong.

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W h o else d i d you i nterview when you got back? Did you see the com· mies ?

No, I ' m s eeing a bunch of them this week, including Garaudy on Wednesday. You ' l l have fu n with h i m . He's a real weirdo, you know. A com m u n ist who wants to bring it i nto Cathol icism , or joi n the two. I gather you also saw Pierre. H ow' s the book coming along? [ Sartre, Pierre Victor, and an architect and militant named Philippe Gavi had decided to record their thoughts on the need for a revolution in France. Sartre's position was moral, Victor's Marxist centralist, and Gavi's cultural.p We're a l most fi nis hed. How are the discussions ? Any juicy arguments ? No. It goes li ke this: a p roblem is posed. Pierre states h is position, thou gh sometimes he waits till the end; then Gavi explains his, always very personal ly; then I state m i ne, usually a l so somewhat personal ly. We talk a bout everythin g, but o u r p urpose, which is u n stated except in the title of the book, is that in this worl d , and s pecifically in France, there is no way a person ca n gen u i nely fi nd fu lfill ment. I ca n get you a photocopy of what we've done so far next week. And when do you have time for Flaubert in all this ? Everyone I know

talks about your financial generosity, because you keep three women-why, by the way?-and give money to struggling writers , and to all sorts of left­ wing causes, but that doesn't impress me as much as your generosity with your time, which I know is precious to you. Give me a rundown of your schedule. As far as the women are concerned , you know, when one has a long relationship, o ne ends u p with res ponsibilities. They're cu m bersome, time­ con s u m i ng, someti m es i rritati ng, but I th i n k I have to go on with them. I don't m ean the money, I mean the time. OK. I get u p at 9 a.m., I have breakfast with an old friend who lives nearby, that's just a habit, but fa irly qu ick, becau se by 1 0:30 I ' m at my desk , th ree hours. At 1 :30 or 2 p . m . I h ave l u nch, M ondays a n d Fridays with M ichelle, Tuesdays, Wed nesdays, and Satu rdays with Arlette, T h u rsd ays with Castor, S u ndays with Castor and either Sylvie or, if you 're aro u n d , with you. From 4:30 to 9 p.m. I work, except Fridays when I leave h o me at 7 p.m. to s pend the even ing with Wa nda u ntil m i d n ight. I tel l her I ' m going home, but I spend the night at Castor's. M onday and Thursday

M A Y 1 9 73

even i ngs I watch

TV

with Arlette. Tuesdays, Wed nesdays, a n d Su ndays with

Castor, Saturdays with Castor and Sylvie. You never spend an evening with Michelle ? No. But I call Wanda and M i chelle every day at 1 :30, u n less I ' m goi ng to have l u nch with one, and every even ing at m i d n i ght.

Wow! I think I ' d go crazy with such obligations. And it was worse when Evelyne was alive-she was n u m ber fou r of my kept women.

So, what about vacations ? Twenty d ays with Arlette a t J u nas, near Nlmes, you know, you 've been there. She doesn 't know I spend any vacatio n time with Wan da-wel l , she suspects, I'm s u re. Anyway, this yea r, Castor and Sylvie w i l l pick me up from Arlette and take

me

with them to Venice, and after a few days, Wa n d a will

come down and we'l l spend fifteen d ays there, then I fly to Rome, w here I 'll stay six weeks alone, or sometimes Castor joi n s me, mostly writi ng.

You like that schedule? No. It's mostly very bori ng. I enjoy writi ng. But as you know, I p refer to be with women than men. I see men on ly on business, or politics. And the only person you never lie to is Castor. Yes, well, now Sylvie, indirectly, since Castor tells her everyt h i n g I tel l her. And as you know, the i m portant trips, like to Russia or Egypt or B razil, at least the first ones, before I establish my own contacts there, I always go with Castor. And to the big rall ies or demonstrations, Castor a n d often M ichelle go with me. But the routine is l i ke I said, and not exciting at all.

What about the rest ofthe family you never s e e them? Bost? Pouillon? ,

M aybe once every two or three weeks, either at Castor's or at a n edito­ rial meeti ng of Les Temps Modernes, but those are held at Castor's too.

What about Olga ? N o, never, not si nce she had that affair with Bost when she was with me and I got really mad. All that is past, but we never see each other a nymore, wel l, except when I bump i nto her at Castor's. Vlado Dedijer just cal led me; he's i n town for three days a nd told me he'd like to see you. He's at his usual hotel, he said.

O K, sure, he's very sympatico. Crazy but sympathetic. Are you going to see him ? I guess so. I l i ke h i m a lot, but it gets complicated. He had an affair with Arlette, maybe still does, so he ends up wanti ng to see u s both. It's perfectly

24 '

M AY ' 973

n o r m a l for him, b u t for her, a n d for me because of her, it's sort of awkward. B u t yes, I ' l l see him. H e's on his way to America to give some lectures or teach or someth ing. Of all my friends, Vlado is the only one who has read the Cri­

tique, besides you and Castor, of course, and you becau se you have to, right? H a ha.

OK, let's deal with it a bit. Your "group-in-fusion" is fairly easy to pin. point in history. It's the Parisians who charged the Bastille, it' s the Commu­ nards , it's the Kronstadt mutiny sailors , it's the people of Petro grad seizing the Winter Palace , it' s the students of the Cultural Revolution, the Paris stu­ dents of May ' 6 8 . How does the group stay in fusion? Historically, everyone becomes serialized by either its inertia or by its institutionalization. Correct? Inertia means inefficiency, which leads to defeat, like the Parisian sans-cu· lottes who allowed an elite to talk for them and eventually to repress them. E fficiency, on the other hand, means institutionalization, which means or· ganization, hence centralism, and again repression. So where in this pro· cess is your totalization? To avoid defeat the group-in-fusion must remain in fusion. How? The folks on the bus went home. The next day they were back in line waiting, serialized. The Kronstadt sailors rebelled again, but Lenin crushed them. The Communards did not get the support they should have and were devastated by [Adolphe] Thiers's Versaillais regulars . And so on. According to Marx, the Communards were too kind, stopped fighting to vote, in other words believed in bourgeois democracy. Had they been led by a dictatorial proletariat central committee that would have ordered the seizure of the national bank and all its assets , attacked Versailles right away, et cetera , it might have succeeded. I n other words, if the grou p-in-fusion had been replaced by a Leninist-type party, it might have been victorious . And the n what? The Prussians would have returned in full , probably helped by Britain, and instead of fifty thousand deaths, France would have suffered ten times that amount. First of all, you i m ply that the process is circular, that, O K, the fol ks on the b u s were serialized the next day and they had to start over again , as iffrom gro u n d zero. But that's n ot the case. The sans-cu lottes stayed active u ntil 1 795; the Com m u nards m ade possible the Congress of Tou rs [national con­ gress of socia l i sts in 1 920, out of which grew the French Com m u nist Party); the C u ltu ral Revolution is n ot dead , nor is its basic tenet, th at policies are m ade by the people, ad m i n istrators administer them; nor is the spirit of '68 dead , on the contrary, as you see you rself in you r classes at Vincen nes. Is

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there a si ngle social science professor today w h o can get away with deliveri ng magisterial lectu res? OK, the curve of progress is j agged, but it moves basically upward. Or,

as Mao said, two steps forward, one step back. We started with gods, then di· vine kings , then hereditary monarchs , then bourgeois elites , and now that is cracking. True . I know that every century or two , more people have a say in the decision·making process that affects their lives. But if the group·in fusion is always bound to fail, no matter how much of a residue it leaves around the edges for historians to contemplate, why risk starting agai n ? And b y the way, d o you think ordinary people h a d more relevance i n the rules for their behavior under Stalin than under [Pavel] Miliukov or [Alexan· der] Kerensky?4 Actually, I t h i n k perhaps so, for ordinary non political people, but that's anoth e r d iscussion, and has no beari ng here. Progress is defined s u bjectively by the i n d ividual in situation. Objectively, we look at the context, which reflects our su bjectivity. Is Cuba better off n ow than under Batista? You and I will say: And how! The Cuban capitalist who fled to M ia m i wil l say: Absolutely not! But even by your criterion, we're in trou ble. The worker, who can n ow

complain about h i s work, his n� ighbors, h i s hours on guard duty to his C D R

[Com mittee for t h e Defense o f the Revolution], obviously thinks he is more relevant today. The capitalist who doesn't even have a say i n what h i s factory or h i s land is to be used for thinks Cuba is a total d ictators hip. You a n d I can­ not d iscuss anything with the capitalist. The question for us is how to main­ tain a group-i n-fusion to its totalization, which is the permanent revolution. So far, i n history, each group-in-fusion has been eventually serial ized. The folks on the bus can only tal k about how great it was to relate to all those strangers, the s atisfaction they got from helping one another, to remem ber that great s mile from the cri ppled old wom a n in a wheelchair when so many hands were there to get her i nto her home. N ow, as they wait for the bus, all they ca n do is look around, hope to run i nto one oftheir fel low bus comrades. But they won't forget that ride, ever. And one day, as they wait for a bus with their son , theY'l l say, Son , you know what h a p pened to me once? And perhaps the son will tel l his class mates. And perhaps one of them will say, Why don't we organ ize a people's bus route; if we a l l join i n , we ca n afford to charter a bus, and we'll stop to pick up all the old lad ies we see waiti ng. And another will add . . . And so on. That's happening in China right now. Peasants, o rdi­ nary ill iterate i mpoveris hed peasants, are complai n i ng openly, talki n g to their

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neigh bors for the fi rst time about strange th i ngs, l i ke the mea n i n g of l ife, demonstrati n g, argu i ng. Look at what is happening in France. Students can no longer be taken for gra nted. They, too, have changed, and they are forcing their teachers to change. The govern ment m ay be conservative, but it can no longer push them arou n d . M ay '68 failed, yes, but it has changed Fra nce, and will conti n u e to do so. Beautiful . But with each failure , with each repression, a generation

abandons hope. If the United States picks the right general to make the coup against [Chilean president Salvador) Allende, the general will kill a whole generation of teachers, students, and intellectuals. How many years before a new generation brings to the Casa Moneda [the presidential palace of Chile] another Allende? And will that Allende move so cautiously, out of fear, that there in fact will be no real progress ? [ Former president of Argentina Juan] Per6n is no revolutionary, but he isn't a patsy of the'United S tates, so if he runs next year and win s , the United S tates will overthrow him. You liked Nasser precisely because he is trying to help his people. That means the United S tates wants him out. And Africa ? The United States will systemati­ cally overthrow any leader who might have a flower of socialism in his dreams, like [ Kwame] Nkrumah [the first president of Ghana, deposed in a coup by the army and police in 1 9 6 6 ] . So what kind of totalization can we talk about? Or let's put it in Marxist terms: do you envision the end of his­ tory? Difficu lt. But yes, the C h i nese C ultural Revol ution, the M ay '68 events here, the constant sti rri ngs in Africa, these are a l l the resu lt of grou ps-i n ­ fu sion. There w i l l b e m ore and more, even i n America. Actually there have been a lot there al ready, by labor, by women, by blacks, and most recently by the antiwar movement. And you can add to you r defi n ition of progress, the speed with which they come. Very slowly at fi rst, perhaps a peasant revolt i n R u ssia o n e centu ry, a wildcat strike another, but look h o w fast they com e now.

But most are not revolutionary; they just want some local reforms. Th at's how revolutions start. The ru l i n g classes n ever l i ke to give i n on anyth i n g, so they refu se even minor reforms and repress the complai ners. That leads to stronger d issent, and stron ger repression. Eventually, a s i mple statement l i ke We don't give a damn about you r swi m m ing pool, we want to m a ke love, lead s to five m i l lion stud ents marching on the seat of power.

But when it gets to that point, the ruling class comes to its senses and

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quickly does enact the reforms, and everyone goes home. And when it doesn't and the groups-in-fusion coalesce to become a revolutionary force , as in Cuba or Algeria, the groups evaporate and a ruling clique runs the country as it pleases-sometimes well, sometimes badly. I see no humanis­ tic, no moral successful revolution as long as the United States is run by cap­ italists, or their henchmen, who want to dominate the world. And a human­ istic moral revolution means fundamentally that each of us is relevant. That in turn means decentralization. And that means weakness, vis-a·vis the massive state power of the U nited States, or the U S S R. Look how easily a puny dictatorship like Franco's has been able to wipe out Euskadi, the B asque autonomous movement, or the one in Catalonia. For the time bei ng. I know. Eventually Franco will die, and new movements will occur. We don't always lose. But we're talking about a totalization of the group.in· fusion, that is, one where every individual counts, is relevant, where experi· ences are equivalent. People make policy and their elected, always recallable representatives administer those policies. Or to quote your people: " Power to the imagination! " That i s precisely the defi nition of the end of history. Your group·in-fusion then is Hegel's thesis, the repressive measures of the capitalist state are his antithesis, and your totalization is his spirit or heaven, or to Marx, communism. Hegel and Marx were optimists. Are you? Every group-in-fusion has failed. Will they someday be successful ? Do we need [Gilles] Deleuze and [Felix] Guattari to help us find new forms of con· sciousness ?5 Absolutely not. The dialectical process does m ove toward the end of h istory, no m atter h ow s lowly we t h i n k it does, because we live so few years on this planet. But would you have thought that a nyone in their right m i nd could have s houted such a slogan before M ay '68?

True. That really ended Leninism, didn't it? You mean everywhere, not j ust our Sta l i nist CP? I mean Leninism. After all, he did say "give me a hundred men trained in fighting the police and I will seize Russia. " Efficacy! S talin was the ere· ation of Lenin. Did Len i n have a choice? Attacked on all sides, "volu nteer" arm ies from fou rteen capitalist cou ntries, two formidable White armies, a bankrupt u n ·

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p roductive eco nomy, no food, n o heat, what cou l d h e do? U n less h e resorts to the efficient criteria, the Bolsheviks are doomed . So the N EP [New Economic Pol icy], so the C h eka [secret pol ice], so the repressions . . .

. . . and s o Stalinism. Once you introduce the criteria of efficiency in the rules of society, the idiot becomes a slave, the genius a dictator. Wh ich is why the revo l utiona ry thrust m u st remain a group. Yet you admire Pierre, who rules the maos as a dictator. He encou rages them to d i scuss the tactics, the issues, and to vote on the actions they a re to take. But, whatever he claims, his view prevails, always. I agree. I keep tel l i n g him he has to democratize. The maos m u st be­ come a gen u i n e grou p-i n-fusion. But they're not, which is why so many are quitting. Then they will fai l .

June 1 973

What got into Malraux t o b e s o vindictive a gainst Les Temps De Gaulle had not yet come to power?

G E RA S S I:

Modernes?

S A R T R E : I don't really u nde rstand. I think it was because we ran stuff by Victor Serge, and his friend s h i p with Trotsky's wife. M alraux h ated Trot­

skyists, probably because he was once very close to them , a n d he h ad no re­ spect for Serge, perhaps because so many i ntellectuals did.' We p u blished sections of his memoirs and some of his letters, including to Trots ky's wife.

And why did Gallimard cave in to Malraux's demands, when Les though not a review well read, was extremely popular with French in­ tellectuals then, especially those who were neutralists ? G aston [Galli mard, the fou n der ofthe publishing hou se] was terrified of M a lraux. N ow that G aston is reti red and [his son] Claude h a s taken over, plus that the old man who owned J u ll i ard is dead, we asked to be taken back by Gal l i ma rd, and Claude agreed. H e's basically right-wi n g but cou ld n't care very much.2 Did Claude ever intervene, or just make suggestions ? No, never. After we ran articles by the anti-psychiatrists, he got i nter­ Temp s,

ested and published Pontalis, [David) Cooper, and [R. D.) Laing.3

Did you have a big argument with Pontalis ? N o, merely a discussion, a n d he said he cou ld not stand by that a rticle

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[" The M a n with the Tape Recorder"], and q u it [th e editorial board o f Les Temps

Modernes). I d id not pres s u re h i m to q u it; in fact, I said he cou l d write all the rebuttals he wanted. You do have a knack for not alienating the opposition, like those priests, the chaplain prisoners, in your camp. I tried to see Leroy again the other day. But he's in Africa now. He had told me that you were the axis of his life, and that you abandoned him, but then not. He's a strange fel low. In the stalag, h e was very methodical and serious about his role as a priest. Then he bega n to have problems with his vows over women , left the church, and married, and now is separated.

You made him the commentator in your play Bariana. Was that not to anger the Germans ? N ot at a l l . I thought he wou ld make a good actor, and he did. But it wa s n 't the pri ncipal role. That was Bariona of cou rse, who is really Jesus, or J es u s as a rebel. The Germans u nderstood exactly what we were sayi ng, to never give up the fight, but either they cou l d n 't care less, or they thought it m ight give the prisoners a bit of sta m i n a, which cou l d n 't h u rt them consider­ i ng the situation . M aybe they l i ked the fact that Bariona dies with Jesus. They came to see the play when we put it on, and seemed to l i ke it.

And the chaplains ? They loved it. It triggered many hours of co nversations. After l ights were out at 9 p.m., we would gather around a small cand le, a n d argue, pleas­ a ntly.

About what? Everything. I rem e m ber one discussion: Where did Jes u s pop out? Was it from the vagi na, fu l l of blood, tied by the u m bi lical cord? Or did he pop out of the stomach all clea n and rosy? Since neither the Bi ble nor any of the texts go i nto that, the conversation was very h eated, but with no a n i m osity. Actu­ a lly the priests l i ked those "after-hours" sessions, especially any d iscussion over m orality. Like what? Well , as you can i magi ne, the fu ndamental one was, if god is all power­ fu l, how can m a n be free? Ah yes, and that famous one with the cops ? The ones who were re­ sisters ? Which o n e? Re m i n d me. According to Leroy, when they were thrown into your barracks, they

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im m e di ately sai d OK, let's organize to escape. We can, we must do anything ,

to escape. You said: anyth in g? Ye s , th ey replied OK, you s aid, go bugger that .

d is gusting Nazi fat slob over there. He wants it and he needs it. And

while

yo u do it, the rest of us will escape. Ah, non, the cops replied. So morality im­

p os es limits to human behavior, you concluded. I don't remem ber, but I wonder, because ifthe N azi had been young a n d pretty, o n e of the typical German krauts, would they have refused ? If so, the issue seems more taste than eth ics. But it's very possible that we did end­ lessly discuss such problems. Every night? Like a ritual ?

Yep . A n d the priest knew you we re an atheist?

Of course. We had settled that when everyone accepted that I write the play.

And was writing and sta gi ng Bariona wh a t attracted you to th e theater

the rest of your life ?

N o, actually, I was already hooked on various forms of stage works by my second year of high school. I wrote stupid l ittle operettas, and one-acters. I n the same style as your early novels ? The rebel aga in s t the nasty world?

Yep. Why? I me a n , you were a nice little bourgeois kid, more or less granted

all your wishes, adored by your mother catered to by your grandfather Why ,

.

did you rebel? Against what or whom? Perhaps we should go back and talk

about your nonexistent relatio n s h ip to your father. What do you r e me mbe r about him? N othing m uch. Above my mother's bed h u ng a photo of a naval officer, with a small tight beard, I thi n k, who was supposed to resemble me, except that by then I a l ready had o n e eye that was ru n n ing away fro m the oth e r. "That's your fath er," I was told. And there was occasional tal k at the d i n ner table a bout his exploits, but I s u s pected that they were made up. Othe rwise, nothi n g. Did you feel abandoned by your fath e r?

N o, not at all. I n your Flaubert you stress the importance of a person s first six '

months of life. Not true for you ?

M aybe, but that would n ecess itate an i ntense an alysis. I tried once with

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Pontalis, b ut we both decided t o stop, a s w e were then too close. There's no d o u bt that a n analyst wou l d focus m uch more on my early relationship with my mothe r, which was q uite incestuous, visually s peaking, that is. When I was eleven or twelve, I ofte n imagi ned her naked, a n d then h avi n g sex with her, without know i n g how. Then my stepfather enters the pictu re, and she sleeps i n his bed. That made me jealous. Or rather, the idea that they had sex h o rrified me. On top, he was m uch older than she, and the idea of that old worn-out body lyi n g on top of that you n g attractive one horrified me. But he spent littl e time with her, he was a ch ief, told people do this or don 't, and that m ade me h ate h i m . But where did I get t h i s class antagonism, I have no idea. A n d at h o m e too, he talked like a chief, givi n g orders left a n d right. Occasion­ ally, he tried to act l i ke a father, but q u ickly beca me a boss aga i n , and my mother often had to i nterven e. Did his behavior tu rn me i nto a rebel? I doubt it. H e never did i m pose h i s values or l ifestyle on me, and if I say I hated him, it's wrong, I j u st had no respect for him. N ow why d i d I scoff at s uccess, be­ cau se he was successfu l d u ri n g that period of my adolescence, I have no idea, especially because I ad m i red Zevaco's h eroes, who were a l l s uccessful. But their s uccess was in savi n g others. M y mother's propaganda about him was that he was savi n g others by givi ng them well-payi n g jobs, but that did n't in· f1uence m e one bit. Yet the end of your traj ectory gets you to be a total collectivist, without

ever having lived a day in a collectivity, besides pris oner-of-war camp, a con­ vinced extreme Marxist of sorts, a position that demands a particular style of life, deep inside a Marxist- Leninist-Maoist interpretation of class struggle, which demands that its adherents be what they preach, that to call oneself a mao, one must be a mao, embedded in a group which, despite its errors, and god knows they make them by the bucketful, expect that you live what you preach, even if they don't, but they want to, and do try. Pierre does, to a certai n extent. Aw, come on Sartre , he lives with his wife, nicely separated from his comrades who don't even have his phone number. He's like you: you both go

to the meetings, argue out your position, or even better state it, period, then go home, and don't answer your phone , work on your Flembert, which will be read and admired by academicians, but contribute nothing to the revolution. So where is your participation in a group-in-fusion? But I 'll grant you that you are a rebel . to the core, always out of sync with the mainstream left, and with the regular Marxist- Leninists . Now, considering that you had a very

J U N E ' 973

pleasant childhood, that your mother loved you, that your grandfather ca· tered to you, even if at times he forbade something, where did the r ebel

·

liousness develop?

I n La Rochelle. Why because you didn't belong? Because the group that was already ,

established when you got there was reluctant to let you j o i n ? That ' s typical of all adolescent groups .

Before La Rochelle I was not only pam pered, but I was awed, as I l ived with a god , who loved me. That tall monster in a white beard, whom everyone respected and feared too, loved me. That was some contrast after that. I mean, that man, when he appeared i n c h u rch to tell the asse m bl ed p a rish. ioners that France had won the battle of the M a rne, was really as if god had s poken, perhaps even made it possi ble. OK, he was perfection, and everyone who thinks rebels against an im·

posed per fecti on Is that the root of your rebellion? Most folks could m ake .

the same statement.

But I knew that Charles was not perfect, that in real ity he was a poseur; he was a buffoon. Then ca me La Rochelle. Where you stole money from your mother to buy cakes in

o

r der to

bribe the gang to let you jo i n? Any kid in that s i tuation might do the s ame,

but not become a flaming maoist. Don't forget my stepfather. N ot only did I not l i ke h i m , the way he treated my mother and me, as a boss, but I knew that he was a boss i n fact, that he gave orders to people who had to cal l h i m "patron," because he paid them to do what he wanted them to do. Not enough to become class conscious and committed to the class struggle. Rebellion is more profound.

I think my rebellion is l i n ked to l iteratu re, si nce readin g was a way of es· capi ng the real to try to find truth elsewhere. That's no way to get an agregation; did you retreat into literature at Normale too ?

\

Yes, but I no longer considered it a retreat. At N ormale I came to the concl u s ion that the whole th i n g was nothi n g more than a gigantic charade. Remem ber that I fl u n ked the fi rst ti m e, because I wrote something absol utely origi nal, which later was published as my Theory of Emotions, so I had to adapt the second time arou nd. I went to the l i brary, deci phered a pattern of those who came in fi rst for the last ten yea rs, did exactly like they i n 60 pages ,

J U N E 1 9 73

then added 240 pages o f q u otes from t h e professors and p h ilosophers who were res pected i n those d ays-that meant not a word on or by Hegel-came in fi rst, then snea ked i nto Normale one n ight and destroyed every copy. No, for me, N ormale, except d u ri n g such stu pid exercises, was my last escape, though I d i d n 't rea l ize that u ntil my fi rst crisis, and I made s u re to enjoy it to the fu l lest.

Did M aheu , Guille, Nizan, Aron, think the same way? I d on 't th i n k they thought of it i n the same way, as the end of the good l ife, so to s peak. Aron was much too serious. He never joi ned us when we went whori ng a n d d ri n ki n g. But M a heu certa i n ly d id; he was very fu n ny, and as I told you was always fu n to be with u ntil he started goi n g u p the ladder at U N ESCO. I told you, I think, that when I interviewed him, he was incredibly nos­ talgic, and while he refused to talk about his affair with Castor, and he knew that I knew he had been her first lover, still when he remembered scenes in which she appeared, his eyes became moist. I liked him a lot. Did your gang

change its complexion when Castor j oined in? For me, no, but M a heu was not happy when she told h i m that Stepha h ad i ntrod uced u s to her. Actually, Stepha and Castor were very close, always studyi n g together, and si nce s h e was l iving with Fern ando, it was perfectly normal that the fou r of us started goi ng out together. When we all i ntermin­ gled , it d i d n 't really work. Fernando and Castor d i d n't get along too well at the begi n n i n g; s h e was put off by h i s arroga nce, well, at fi rst, u ntil s h e learned that it was Fern a ndo's cover-u p for h i s i n security, his e n dless q u est for a god he knew d i d n 't exist, but as you know we a l l eventually beca me very close and M aheu sort of lost out.

Did Fernando and Castor end up having an affair? You s h o u ld ask her, but you know you r father, he had to sed uce every wom a n he l i ked , but he went after Castor's sister, Pou pette, fi rst.

What about Stepha and Maheu? I asked Maheu, but he dodged the question. Everyo ne was in love with Stepha, and certai n ly so M a heu. But as you know, Stepha m ay n ot h ave cared who Fernando slept with but would refuse all su itors on her side.

Do you know the story o f N oiditch ? I don't know his full name, but he had been Stepha's lover in Vienna, before she met Fernando. One day, he came to Paris , absolutely broke, and Stepha was really anxious and pleased to see him. Fernando gave him money to take S tepha out in style so as to

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alleviate his guilt. Whe n they met a g a in , Noiditch gave Fernando back his money, saying she had insisted that they go to a student restaurant and reo

fused to sleep with him, s ayi ng that she was hooked on that "tyrant." She then apparently added: "Oh, give him back his money; he's also very poor. "

H a-ha ha. Everyone loved Stepha. You, too?

And how!

Did you manage to seduce her? N ope . No one did. So the two groups s tayed separate, the foursome on one side, nice reo spectable bourgeois couples , and the trio on the other, laughing, carousing, whoring , ge tting drunk, right? No, fi rst of all, you r parents may have come from bourgeois back· grounds , but they were consta ntly b roke. Fern a n do rarely sold one of his painti ngs, and Stepha made a living by giving her rich, or better-off, acquain­ ta n ces facial massages. And the trio was not what you th i n k: M a heu was arou nd but he was married and went home in the evenings. No, the trio was N iza n , G u i l le, and me. And then N izan went off to Aden, and the trio d i sap­ peared, but M a heu was not in it.

Guille was hooked to someone then too , but he stuck around. Was it that Maheu, coming from a peasant family, felt uneasy with your guys ?

Peasant fa mily? Where did you get that? H is parents were u n iversity teachers.

He told me. That's becau se they owned a farm. Ha! He conn ed you. Wel l , you have to be a con m a n to ru n U N ESCO. And Aron, who claims he came up with the idea of contin gen cy and introduced you to phenomenology?

Yep, another con man. As I told you , "conti ngency" was a n idea I had since adolescence. It accompanied my notio n that necessity does not exist except in math, but Castor and I ignored that when we made o u r pact. As for phenomenology, you r father talked to me about H usserl for two years before Aron we n t to Germany. I even had read a book by [Emmanuel] Levi nas a bout it. No, what Aron made me wa n t to do is go to G erma ny, all expenses paid, to have a good ti me. The problem is that everyone had to i nvent stories, i nclud ­ ing me, because I went the year the N azis were fighti ng the Com m u n i sts i n the streets o f Berl i n , a n d I was danci n g a n d whoring i n cabarets . Did you at least study some ? How about H egel?

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Are you crazy? Who goes t o a new cou ntry, fu ll of h istory and cu lture, to read Hegel, of a l\ people? S o where did you get, or get and change, your notion of in-oneself and for-oneself? In my own bra i n . You never read Hegel' s Phenomenology oISpirit back then? S u re, after the war, i n ' 945.

What? 4 5 ? After you wrote Being and Nothingness? Yep. And what I did n't k now, I learned later from Hyppolite's book. I didn 't have access to h i s work while a prisoner.4 But when I read it I added some chapters to Being and Nothingness. The real Hegel I got to know after read ing M a rx, who made Hegel k nown throughout the world. Which explains why in the Critique you seem very close to Hegel, but not in Being and Nothingness. Exactly.

So the myth that Aron stimulated you into writing the concepts you elucidate in Being and Nothingness is just that, a myth ? He himself claimed that he was the originator in my interview with him. He had a bsol utely noth ing to do with Being and Nothingness or my p h i losoph ical views. I d i d n 't d iscuss anyt h i ng with h i m . One can 't: he i m me­ d iately i nterjects h i s ideas about a nyth in g you tal k a bout. No, i ndeed , I re­ m ember very wel l how I bega n to develop my ideas i n ' 940 i n the army, before becom i n g a prisoner. I remem ber that d u ring the Phony War I was given a leave and cal led Castor; she met me at the statio n , and I i m med i ately started telling her about my ideas. We talked , or I mostly talked , for hours, w h i le we h ad a long b reakfast. H e r com ments were i n cred i bly hel pful. She would say, You j u m ped too fast to a concl usion there, or That's not very clear, or You bet­ ter widen th at deductio n . One could never do that with Aron; he wou l d im· m ed iately tel l you how h e would make that argu ment and go off on tangents, wh ich you d i d n 't give two hoots about .. I suspect that all the myths about Aron have been created by the me­

dia, which loves his pro - United States and conservative political positions . Absolutely. And of cou rse because he is totally, completely, systemati­ cally second.rate, fu nda menta l ly a stupid jerk.5

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November I 973

G E R A S S I : In

Being and Nothingness, you had two goals, to get rid of

determinis m so as to affirm our freedom, and to s tress the fullness of that freedom through the creativity and contingency in our actions, and our con­ sciousness of them, which you define as active and call praxis . SART R E :

N ot yet, that's i n the Critique. I take i t you have read t h e notes

I gave you last year of both my ethics and vol ume two of the Critique. Don't forget, neither is ready yet, and won't be for q u ite a w h i le. In Being, you relied on Hegel' s notion of master-slave without giving him credit, and now I know why-you hadn't read him. But your interest was mainly psychological , to show how the master is dependent for his iden­ tity on his relationship to the slave to give him validity, thus rendering them both obj ectified, what you later would define as practico-inert. In your notes for an ethics , which by the way I liked a great deal and hope you decide to publish, I and volume one of the Critique, your interest has switched from the individual to the group, or rather you argue that for the individual to be­ come intentional, that is historically meaningful, he or she must create a group, that is, become part of a group-in-fusion. But since the individual's need to have meaning remains, Marx's "objective class interests" are not enough to explain historical movement. As a result, there is no guarantee, no inevitability, hence no historical materialism, though class war remains

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the primary explanation of historical movement and evolution, as you show through your analysis of the French and Russian revolutions. OK, go o n . OK. There's n o guarantee that we a r e going t o win, ever. But w e are un· wittingly given the tools to try by the enemy that oppresses us. Like your sort of "collective, " which charges the Bastille, and unifies into a cohesive and co­ h erent group-in-fusion by intentionally, that is consciously, or to use your term, in praxis, defying the officialdom' s actions . O K, the Bastille is seized, what then? A " mediating" party arise s within the group creating a dynamic that you call " fraternity-terror" because it is both a threat (by giving orders) and a potential solution to an impasse (by offering solutions ) . It also allows the individual to better understand his or her position by colliding the self and other. That leads to both the individual and the group redefining their freedom as an act, and therefore organizations and institutions as degrading and alienating, or to use the terms of the Critique, as serializing and atom­ izing. Which means that if we win, or are winning, we can move to condi­ tions where material scarcity is eliminated. But the most important con­ clusion for me in all that is, no one can be free unless we all are , that our struggles must be through groups-in-fusion, which come from the base, from the people, even if they suffer temporarily from your "fraternity-terror, " and that history remains , perhaps not materialistically determined, but in­ tentionally defined as a class struggle . And that struggle-and here is the link between your early work, like in Being and Nothingness, and your l ater opus, like in the Critique-frees not only the slave but also the master, hence humanizes both. What do my n otes for Critique 2 add to that?2

What I got out of that incredibly difficult to decipher scribble of yours is a few precisions, which helped me understand the stuff I j ust said. Like "totalization, " though we've talked about that before. I liked your example of the artist-painting, the combination of an imagination with bits of paint, canvas , pebbles , whatever, a combination that is a social entity, a thing-for­ itself, which when finished, of course , is then merely a: piece of inertia, and begins to deteriorate. It is now a bit of "worked matter, " which has been to­ talized by human activity, and becomes institutionalized by alienating orga­ nizations . It's a good way to explain my bus example, the group-in-fusion seizing the bus, then becoming serialized after leaving it, but being perma­ nently changed, thus affecting the state of things . As you said, the group has

N OV E M B E R 1 973

expressed creative subjectivity expanding its intentional-freedom . So even if it becomes serialized again, it is not a defeat, merely a hiatus in the end­ less stru ggle in which freedom expands. I also liked your definitio n of that fraternity-terror entry, what becomes the "pledged group," which generates that "moment of the trap, " causing the passage from creative freedom to in­ stitutionalized inertia. Nothing comes easy, does it? In politics as in our con­ sciousness, we are a mixture of in-itself, the sturdy, inert, identity, and the for-itself, the moving, active, dynamic explorer, a perpetual dialectic be­ tween our "facticity" and our "transcendence," resolved by plunging us "in­ situation" where we are " more," because we are the praxis that seeks to es­ cape constraint and express our freedom. That's what you mean, in the

Critiques as well as in Being and Nothingness, by your statement that we are "condemned to be free. "

Good. Arlette w i l l give you the rest of the Critique-well, I haven't finished it-but the n ewly corrected manuscript when she fi n ishes transcrib· ing it. Actually, she corrected it, though she kept asking me to be more precise and tel l her what to write. It may be that I s h a l l never work on it agai n. I am too blind r10w to write. What? All I 've been doing since I got back is read what you did since I left, all those articles, the speeches. You didn't stop for a moment.

That's not the same. Articles, speeches, even if one writes them down first, and for major political or philosophical conferences one has to, are one thing. Writi ng is another. They're done mostly by form u la. I cou ld even dictate them. But to write . I don't u nderstand the America n s who use typewriters. .

.

I have to write longhand. But the American writers I know use a typewriter as you use a pen. They're not trained as secretaries who can type sixty, eighty words a minute without looking at the keyboard. The writers didn't go to school to learn how to type. They use two fingers, like I do, and see every letter they strike.

Still, to me, the s hape of words, their configuration, h ow they look on a page is i mportant. And now with my one eye goi n g to pot, it's getting harder and harder. I end up scribbling. You have always put them down in such a manner that very few people in the world could decipher them anyway.

Ha! Well, Arlette transcri bes what I write, Castor can read it, and so can you , no? With pain. I remember family sessions at home when Stepha received

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a letter from Castor, whos e handwriting is even worse than yours . We would sit around and say, That's an "f, " No it's a "p," and so on. It would take a long time to figure out her letter. But you can read m i ne, no?

To tell you the truth, the hardest part of my work with you now is read­ ing your unpublished works , like your 1 9 64 Morale. What a job. I ' m glad I did it though, because Gallimard's transcription is full of mistakes. You have a n advantage, that you 've been around us, even a s a child, so you know how we express ourselves, and can guess, too.

But you've tried dictating. The book of exchanges between you, Pierre, and Gavi is all on tape , which Arlette in transcribing. Why not write that way? N ovels?

Sure, like [Georges] Simenon.3 N ovels maybe, but certai n ly not carefu l an alyses where every word i s cru cial. Plays are O K, though. You speak the dialogue out loud as you write. But I don't write plays or novels anymore. And for the rest, it's really too h ard, as I ' m now basically blind. What can you see? The TV? Cars coming at you? You still go down in the morning to have breakfast alone at the cafe-how are your eyes for that? I look at the TV two eveni ngs a week with my daughter. I don't see the people, just vague shapes, but I hear the dialogue, so I can still enjoy some of it. Cars a re a problem: I d o see motion , but I can't be sure until it is less than ten meters away, and then it could be too late ifit's a fast·moving car. As far as writi ng is concerned , well , as you see I scribble, sometimes one line over the other since I can 't see what I write.

What about your Monday column for Liberation?4 I do it as an i nterview. That is, Pierre asks me questions on the s ubject I want to write about, then puts my a nswer i nto a colu m n form. How does Stepha deal with her affliction ? Can she see a nythi ng?

Like you, motion at ten meters . She now walks with both a walker and a white cane attached to it. And she still cooks , feeling the ingredients with her fingers. She refuses to stop teaching, so she gets help from two students, one a Russian young woman, who helps her prepare her Russian class, and a guy who helps her with her history classes. She knows the subjects so well that it works . She told me, I love teaching so much, if ! have to stop I 'll com-

N OV E M B E R , 973

mit suicide. She asked my advice, explaining herself so calmly, I said yes, I understand.

I t h i nk you were right. What I find amazing is the responses of her students. I sat in on some

of her classes , without telling her, and the students didn't know who I was .

They tell her i f they come i n late. They identifY themselves if they talk. They're totally different than they are in different classes. And she is still a fascinating teacher. Do you continue to refuse to have someone share your apartment with you, to help you?

Wel l , this studio is too small, but yes, I h ave l i ved alone a l l my l ife, ex· cept on vacations, of course, and I am u sed to that. But bei ng without a tele· phone, that was scary. How did they fix it so quickly? Took me five months to get a phone. G isele Halimi talked to Edgar Fau re, and I got it yesterday. 5 Faure ? That reactionary crocodile ? D i d you know him personally? I n ' 958, we were s upposed to have l u nch together, I don 't remember why, when s u ddenly the alarm went off that Paris was goi ng to be i nvaded by the m utinous generals com i n g in from Algeria to seize power. He cal led me to tel l me every able French man was to go sit on the tarmac to stop the general s from landing there. A n d w e d i d , by t h e thousands. Why did that stop the generals ? Generals have no respect for human beings-why didn't they plow right through you all?

There's stil l a lot of debate about that day, who started the ru mors, a n d why. Was i t a way t o bring de Gaulle t o power? Fau re joined h i m eventua l ly. Anyway, two guys came and fixed my telephone. For me to be without it is very risky. What about the papers ? Does someone read them to you?

Castor reads me Liberation and parts of Le Monde. So you're up to date on the events in Chile?

Exactly as you predicted. The comm u nists refused to arm the people u ntil it was too late, and now they're all going to get executed. So will the socialists, the M I R [Movement of the Revolutionary

Left],

all the left-wing groups, even some of the good Christian Democrats , though most followed that bastard Eduardo Frey who supported the Pinochet coup. Tell me, are you still keeping that old schedule of yours?

Pierre most morni ngs. That's how my politics are kept to date. Then as usual, except I never go to movies anymore. J ust the TV with Arlette.

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NOV E M B E R ' 973

And still Wanda and Michelle a s usual ?

Yep, and my l ittl e Greek friend too, she's i n Pari s now. How about Lena ? S he's also in Paris now. O h yes, I see her qu ite often. How many years is it since you last saw her?

Ten years m aybe. I really enjoy seei n g her, though you k now, the old feeli ngs are dead, killed by time I guess, for both of us, but we real ly do enjoy each other's company very m uch. Do you speak of old times?

N o, not at all. How about old friends ?

The only real old friend was E h ren b u rg, and he's dead. Did you like her when you saw her? Very much.

Did you ask her about those old times? Sort of, but I felt she didn't want to say too much, except that you had been the most fascinating man in her life. I got enough out of my talk to re­ alize that for her, too, it had been a very intense and very deep relationship.

Certa i n ly. For me too. How does s h e look now? She looks very good, very classy, with allure. She's up to date on every­ thing, very well read, and very hip.

Castor told m e that she is the most i nteresti n g woman she ever met. N either was i nti m idated by the other. And Castor can be intimidating, not like you?

Me? Let me tell you about Catherine. She was intimidated in advance. Oh my god, I ' m going to meet the great Sartre! But she said, fifteen minutes af­ ter our first get-together, she was perfectly at ease, j oking, even semi-teasing, semi flirting with you.

I sort of felt that. It was very n ice. N ow you know why I l i ke to spend ti m e with the you ng.

OK, but Lena was not that young when you met her. That was n ot a flirti ng, that was serious. What age wou ld you give her? I 'd say forty-five or so. I 'm going to see her again next week. I really look forward to that.

H ey n ow, don't grab her away fro m me, l i ke you did with M ichelle.

O h my god, Sartre ! You're getting possessive in your old age?

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Ha-ha ha. And when are you goin g back to America? Just after Lena leaves. Ha ha hal In a few weeks.

With Catheri ne? Yes. But she may not stay if I join the Weather folks. If I don't I 'll see you in a year.

Good luck.

November 1 9 74

S A RT R E:

H ow is Fern ando feeling?

G E RA S S I : I

think he knows he's going to die. He asked me to tell the

surgeon that he does not want to come out of the operation if he cannot go through to the end of summer without morphine. He can't paint with mor­ phine, he says.

Did th e doctor agree? He called me for a meeting yesterday morning, just before I left the University of Pennsylvania hospital, to go to the airport in New York. There were six of them in the room, the anesthesiologist, his helper, another sur­ geon, and two other doctors. They asked me all sorts of questions, very prob­ ing, very serious ; they obviously wanted to know ifhe meant it. Then when I went to say good-bye to him, he asked Stepha to leave the room, and grabbed my hand and said, " Please forgive me for my whole life with you, forgive me for not telling you that I loved you, for not congratulating you when you did well, like when you were first at the bac, or when you published your books, or when you refused to pay your fine and went to jail. Don't ever do that with your children. Tell them how marvelous they are whenever they merit it." H e had tears in his eyes , first time I ever saw that, and so did I , of course . I

As I presume you have n ow, too, but I can 't see, though I do see better t h a n last year.

N O V E M B E R 1 974

Yes, Castor told me when I called this morning from the airport, and you're planning to go to Portugal, she said.

I wanted to ask you about that. You were there long? Go everywhere? Did you see Otelo [Saraiva de Carvalho]? Yes to all your questions. I was there in August and all of September, and would have stayed longer if Stepha hadn't sent me a telegram about Fernando. Otelo is wonderful, funny, easygoing, not at all ai\ I imagined a military officer. [Carvalho was one of the leaders, with General Antonio de Spinola, of a left-leaning military coup that overthrew the right-wing author­ itarian government of Portugal in April 1974.]2 We drove together to Al­ garve, where he is living now that he is sort of out of it and S pinola is in charge . I told him you wanted to see him, and he's delighted at the possi­ bility.

Robert [Gallimard] tells me you picked u p the finished copy of the con­ versations with Pierre and Gavi [published as On a raison de se rellolter]. What do you think? A lot of reservations. First of all, those two come across as hating each other.

Ha, well, yes, they don't like each other. But Pierre is much softer now, more malleable. Now that he's unemployed, so to speak, I mean now that the GP has been dissolved and that La Cause du Peuple is dead.

It's now dead; they will reissue it, you'll see. But in the book he comes across as very hard, unpleas ant, as does Gavi, for that matter. Both of them talk about I this and I that. Where's their collectivism?

B ut still, does it not come through fro m our conversations that we hope that a new movement without leaders, spontaneous, emanating from the base, can emerge in fu ll freedom, where all agree . . . Sure, until a crisis occurs, like you're all agreed to demonstrate against such a law or action by the government, peacefully, but then the cops charge, and some want to fight back, others want to run, who says what to whom? Who leads, who convinces all to do what?

No one. Each does his th ing. Ha! And that's going to get a real movement going? The road to revo­ lution?

Be serious! You want centra l i s m ?

N OV E M B E R ' 974

How else are you going t o get a unanimous response when the situation changes unexpectedly? That's o u r task, to fi n d efficient freedo m . N a t in this book! Don't be n asty. We were tryi ng to set up the decentralized, gro u p-in­ fus ions category fi rst, then the man ner i n wh ich they can be coord i n ated in action. Now we h ave to find how to constitute the man ner in which goals, or tactics, can be c h a nged with freedom, rather in freedom, when the circum­ stances dem a n d it.

Without leaders ? I for one, and, I would venture to say, most of the maos who are my friends , would not want to be led by Benny, by Pierre as you prefer to call him . I think he u ndersta nds that. H e wants to do another book with me, a di­ a logue preci sely to find h ow we ca n act as a collective absol utely freely, s i nce the concept of col lectivis m changes when one takes it from the poi nt of view offreedom. And for that you first need a theory. Yet you yourself have claimed that theory comes out of practice. That's what Pierre and I will try to work out i n the next vol u me)

Forgive me for saying so, but you'll have your work cut out for you, be­ cause what is important, it seems to me, is that Pierre gets rid of his intellec­ tualism. It's easy to get down to the level of the group as far as content is con­ cerned. Just a little self-control to say nicely '' I ' m confused about that," or " I now realize that I don't know how w e can d o that," and so o n . But t o stop the style, the air, the swagger, the handshakes, the walk, the looks of a superior being, which all intelle ctuals exhibit consciously or unconsciously, is ex­ tremely hard. That's why we need cultural revolutions. It's not enough for the maos to seize power, if they could; it' s even more important that they reflect the angst, the inner doubts , the hopes and aspirations, the genuine expression of real freedom of the masses . More important than content­ ment, than the good life , than all the slogans invented by all politicians, the left must offer a program of personal and collective dealienation. Can your maos offer that? N o . But u n like the rest of the classic left, they know that's what they must do. But wait, you ' re taking notes fu l l blast. let's go back to my flat and use the tape recorde r. You 've got to get stuffdown for your i nterview for Play­

boy a nyway.

N O V E M B E R 1 974

What do you think your influence has been on France today, on its ideas , its p olitics, and what effect do you think it will have-in other words , what do you see as your legacy?

I don't know. I don't even know if l wi l l leave any mark at all. Surely in philosophy . . .

O h yes, on p h ilosophy. And the theater?

'

M uch less. No, what I hope defines my journey on this planet has been my com m itment to freedom, that everyth i ng I have written or every action I have partaken has always been i n my drive to stress the i mporta nce offree­ dom, real freedom, not the su perficial kind that your govern ment and mi ne, you r com m entators and mine, claim we have-that is, the freedom of the rich to say and do anything they l i ke i n the media they buy, or of the vote, which is l i m ited to a rigged system they set up, or the equ i valent u nder cen­ tral com m ittees, i n s u m , the kind of phony freedom that l i mits, or indeed eli m i n ates us as free agents. Such free agents, if we can create a collective i n which they flou rish, would b e totally u nalienated. That kind of free agent cannot exist under capitalism or Stalinism, and your definition of philosophy fits into that perfectly, since you insist that the task of the philosopher is to understand the human being in his era, not to find truth, correct?

To i nterpret man in his times. But the times are defined by the freedom at the base .

Exactly. Which is why your statement "we were never as free as during the oc­ cupation" is not a contradiction.

That's correct, because we had very clearly defi ned choices, to fi ght back one way or another or to collaborate. In those ti mes, our freedom defined our choices perfectly. And the fact that there were more collaborators in France than in any other occupied country changes nothing. It demonstrated that the collabos chose to collaborate as their free choice. But that clear-cut situation does not exist today.

Com m itment of oneself as a totality is sti ll the issue, it always is. But the choice of what kind of commitment entails doubt today.

Doubt does not stop decision.

But there was no doubt in 1 942. When you told that man who wanted

N O V E M B E R ' 974

your help in deciding whether he should stay i n France t o help his aging mother or go to London to fight with the Free French, that he was free to choose, it was an easy answer for you. Today, the situation, hence the choices, are much more fluid. To decide what to do is much harder. True, i n 1 942, a choice to fight the Nazis entailed one's whole l ife, even if one cou l d i m agine or hope that the Germans wou ld eventually withd raw. Today there is no such clear-cut s ituation. But one's com m itment is total, i n each situation. What that means is that t h e choices come u p faster. B u t al­ ways with i n that com m itment. OK, let's use our previous example, the group made up of folks who are totally committed and who decide as a collective to go to the demonstra­

tion together, and who bring their children because they have defined their participation as peaceful. But the cops charge, flailing their vicious clubs every which way. Some decide to run, some stay and fight back. The una­ nimity, the collective stand, is lost, and those who decided to fight, feeling a bandon ed, lose some of their verve and are crushed by the cops. Yet you say, each made a free choice, as a collective ? A contradiction, no? No. The free choice as a collective to oppose the govern ment's what­ ever action by joi n i n g the demon stration was right. What went wrong was to th i n k, as i nd ividuals, that the col lective cou ld determine the character of the enemy, and hence they m i s read what would happen. Whether a demon stra­ tion ends up peacefu l or n ot is n ever, never, decided by the demonstrators. Yes, of course, the press always blames the hooligans, because they throw the fi rst rocks, or whatever. That's because the press n ever u nderstands, or never wants to s how that they u nderstand, that govern ments are by their very essence violent. Cops are never sent to protect l ives. Their job is to protect property and defend the status quo, hence are violent in their very nature. The violence of those without power, the poor, the oppressed, the occupied, is cou nterviolence. G overn ments and their media always cal l the opposition terrorists if they resort to violence. But they have to choose agai n st the vio­ lence ofthe govern ment, which is violent even ifit is not exerted. The fact that govern ments have police forces a n d armies makes them violent by defi n ition, even if they never u se the cops or the armies to i m pose their will. Those who oppose that wi l l have n o choice but to be violent, even if they i n turn d o not use it. So in you r exa m ple, the collective decis ion to oppose the govern ment i m plied thei r counterviolence, even if they never used it. And the govern-

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ment's reaction to the demonstration was violent, even if their cops never once struck the head ofa demonstrator with his baton. And to get back to our origi nal issue, the task of the philosopher today i s to make that clear, by ana­ lyzing the contradi ctions, the essences of governments, the choices that the people have, l iving in and under such situations. Does today's youth understand that?

I th i n k so, not all of course, but those who fo V ght i n '68, especially the older ones who remember what France was like twenty years ago. It was then, i ndeed fifty years ago, thirty years ago, but also when they rebelled , i n many ways, i n the center ofthe world, and they know that. Pari s was the m ost sti m­ u lati ng city i n the world, with its painters, its writers, its energy, its cafe life en­ vied everywhere. As great as that was, it made it easy for the alienated to bury themselves i n that cultu ral paradise, to ignore the future, to forget that they were alienated because everyone was. Today, that's a l l gone. No o n e has the i l l usion that we are the center of the world. Worse. Not only is French culture today derivative, but the French seem to hate each other, making life here

.

.

.

. . . mediocre. Absolutely. And that makes you an optimist?

Because it has made it clear to our youth, and it will be even more so to the next generation, that France doesn't count anymore, that we a re part of one alienated and alienating world, which must be transformed, and that the process of transformation is itselfdealienating. Yet, except insofar as you can barely see anymore, your life as a Parisian is unchanged.

I am a Parisian out of habit, but I have long been convinced that any rev­ ol utionary act anywhere is a move to change the whole world . But your revolutionary commitment i s relatively recent. Do you re­ nounce the past?

No, n ot at all. In fact, the book I feel closer to is stil l Nausea. Yet back then, and in that novel, your interest was the lonely and alone individual, who asks himself, What is the meaning of life ? And that ques­ tion, ultimately, was your task to answer in philosophy. Now your question is, What is the meaning of action? A tremendous difference.

Actio n is what carries life, only action. My life i s a given, in a situation i n which I grow u p alienated . The alienation is man-made. I can n ot d o a nything

N O V E M B E R ' 9 74

against the given: that is my h u ma n cond ition. The al ienation I can and m u st fight