@guigus,
Quote:Assuming of course you consider Sartre an author of acceptable quality.
I can't say I do guigus. Imagine the human brain as a vessel in which something is being cooked. The fundamentals are given. Protein, fat &Co but with a pinch of this and a pinch of that. My taste buds find the Sartre spice vaguely unpleasant. But that's just me. My flavourings have more--I almost said "gaiety" but I remembered that homosexuals have ruined that word--more fun shall I say. Which gaiety once was but now seems its opposite.
There seems to me that there are some authors who one ought to have read to be thought intelligent. Sartre is one of them. One has lost all acceptable quality when one succumbs to temptations of that nature. Especially considering that the great books are being ignored during the reading of those sorts of authors. And goodness knows there are enough great books to last anyone ten lifetimes. Such is the eagerness to embrace books which one ought to have read in order to be thought intelligent, if only to be an acceptable member of social circles in which books are read for the same reason, that even the titles of many great books are unknown.
Take Tristram Shandy for example. I consider that anyone who has not discovered that book by the time they are 40 must not have an authentic sense of humour. A sense of humour in the literary world would lead directly to it. There is a sort of trail through the maze. Stages drop away like they do on a space mission launch. Only the books that are famous over time matter.
I had Proust sitting on my shelves for 10 years waiting for the right opportunity to read it.
I would say Sartre is not acceptable quality because a familiarity with it speaks of an attraction to cleverness rather than to the absurdity of the condition of the pointedly intelligent person. The absurdity being a fact.