Laura Cumming
Too Soft on this Monster of Egotism
Five things you didn’t know about Simone de Beauvoir:
- ‘Over the moon’ was one of her favourite expressions.
- She kept a plaster cast of Sartre’s hands on the living roomtable.
- She referred to herself and Sartre as ‘the elves’.
- Lover Nelson Algren’s American phone number was listed under her name to tease the FBI.
- Forget fashion: she first wore the famous turban to conceal an ill-executed bob cut.
I was hoping to offer the customary twenty, but seven hundred and fifty pages of Deirdre Bair’s biography didn’t yield anymore, despite the clearly effortful labour of ten years’ research. The reader emerges from confinement etiolated, weary, possibly reluctant to read another word by or about Simone de Beauvoir and yet with no clearer impression of the woman than that supplied by Elliott Irwitt’s photograph on the jacket.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad