Les existentialistes
It all started when …
I walked into one of my favorite bookstores in New York city, lured by the book that was in the window entitled "At the Existentialist Cafe." To say this book was going to change my life is an understatement. It completely shook my life upside down! How can a book speak so intimately about the things you so intimately think about?
And hello Sartre and hello Beauvoir ... nice to meet you too!
Naturally as with all things I obsess over I make sure others are also obsessing over. So I shared it with my dear friend Alice, an incredibly imaginative writer and out of the box thinker with whom I pass endless afternoons dissecting life, love, books and feelings.
She, of course, was having a panic attack at the thought of the book ending as she was devouring it as slowly as possible to prolong the sense of connectedness she was feeling, a feeling I know oh so well!
And now here we are, having the urgent need to share and discuss this incredible new discovery called phenomenology and existentialism.
Salander
The Book!
I must admit that I read very little, but listened to most of THE BOOK. One habit I got hooked on this year (audible), but regardless of that I should add that over the years, I've developed a deep trust for Salander's book recommendations. You see she is my kind of reader. So when she said "this is the book you have to get" I obeyed at once. Then a couple of weeks later, one morning, as I was walking home from SoHo and while trying to keep my head down and my hood up so that no one would notice I was in tears, (Sartre had just died in the book and for me), a click interrupted the narrator's voice. Oh noooo! Such a trivial ... I thought, now Sartre is dead and my stupid phone is … And then I saw 'hi". It was Salander. Without even reading the next line, I replied: "You know, Sartre is dead." "I know," she wrote, "I know ..." She was feeling me. Such a relief! And then she asked: "Are you around? Let's meet."
That meeting came and another arrived and then another one and another and during each one of them we found ourselves going back to THE BOOK and to Beauvoir and Sartre and Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and all the boys and the few girls of the time. So here we are now at LES EXISTENTIALISTES. The discoveries are daily and simple as life itself. Or not?
Alice