Sartre in a Jiffy
Alternate Title: “I Spent Too Much Time Reading the Essay and Now I Only Have Ten Minutes Before I Need to Leave For a Meeting So Don’t Read This One As Typical of My Work, Because It Really Isn’t All That Good At All.
Ack! Not much time today! This blog post is a rushed job. Topic: Jean-Paul Sartre. Essay: “Why Write” from “From What is Literature?”
A writer, according to Sartre, cannot write “for himself” (1338). “If he re-reads himself, it is already too late. The sentence will never quite be a thing in his eyes.” I concur. Not much on this one.
One of our major questions in class is “what is reading?” Well, according to Sartres, reading is “the synthesis of perception and creation.” It is what the reader does in his head, both reading the text as well as projecting what comes both before and elsewhere in the text. We read on, but are always just a bit ahead of the text, as well as off to the side. We see possibilities, which are either realized within the work or not, at the writer’s discretion, but we are always just a bit away from what we’re reading. Good call, Sartre.
The writer needs to write to the reader, because they have freedom and he needs them to use it, since he cannot write simply for himself. (Aside: Yes, masculine pronouns. Deal with them, I’m in a hurry today). Look, I don’t get what Sartre is saying here. The reader is important because they aren’t the author? OK, I guess this builds off of the earlier thing about writing for himself. But still, doesn’t it seem kind of baseless? Sartre goes on with a bunch of what he would probably consider proofs or whatever, but they’re really not all that interesting or persuasive.
Yeah. That’s it. This is a poor post, and I apologize if it just happens to be the one you turned to. Read a different one, you’ll feel better.
