★ 01/04/2016
Bakewell (How to Live) brilliantly explains 20th-century existentialism through the extraordinary careers of the philosophers who devoted their lives and work to “the task of responsible alertness” and “questions of human identity, purpose, and freedom.” Through vivid characterizations and a clear distillation of dense philosophical concepts, Bakewell embeds the story of existentialism in the “story of a whole European century,” dramatizing its central debates of authenticity, rebellion, freedom, and responsibility. Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty all strut and fret across the stage, with cameos from Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Iris Murdoch, among others. Casting his shadow over all is Jean-Paul Sartre, perhaps existentialism’s most famous face, and beside him Simone de Beauvoir, whose feminist masterpiece The Second Sex, was as “revolutionary in every sense” as Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Heidegger’s Being and Time. Bakewell illustrates how existentialism contributed to “almost all the great liberation movements” of the 1950s and ’60s, arguing persuasively for its continued relevance. This ambitious book bears out Bakewell’s declaration that “thinking should be generous and have a good appetite,” and that for philosophers and the general reader alike, “ideas are interesting, but people are vastly more so.” Photos. (Mar.)
Brisk and perceptive…A fresh, invigorating look into complex minds and a unique time and place.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Bakewell brilliantly explains 20th-century existentialism through the extraordinary careers of the philosophers who devoted their lives and work to 'the task of responsible alertness' and 'questions of human identity, purpose, and freedom.' Through vivid characterizations and a clear distillation of dense philosophical concepts, Bakewell embeds the story of existentialism in the 'story of a whole European century,' dramatizing its central debates of authenticity, rebellion, freedom, and responsibility." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Bakewell follows her celebrated study of Montaigne…with a lively appraisal of existentialism and its leading thinkers… [At the Existentialist Café] focuses upon key individuals—Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Martin Heidegger—and on their interactions with each other and with the historical circumstances of the harsh twentieth century. With coverage of friendship, travel, argument, tragedy, drugs, Paris, and, of course, lots of sex, Bakewell’s biographical approach pays off… The result is an engaging story about a group of passionate thinkers, and a reminder of their continued relevance.” —Booklist (starred review)
“In her sweeping and dazzlingly rich At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails, Sarah Bakewell introduces us to those most closely associated with existentialism by approaching ‘the lives through the ideas, and the ideas through the lives.’… Bakewell… sees her cast of characters engaged in a ‘big, busy café of the mind.’ Their ideas remain of interest, not because they were right or wrong in their decisions, but because they dealt with real questions facing human beings. This wonderfully readable account of one of the 20th century’s major intellectual movements offers a cornucopia of biographical detail and insights that show its relevance for our own time.”—BookPage
"Tremendous...rigorous and clarifying...Highly recommended for anyone who thinks." —Library Journal (starred review)
“Existentialism has come to be seen as something of a young person’s game, intoxicating and fresh in spirited youth but shallow and pretentious in sober maturity. Historically it also seems past its prime, having gone from being a radical new philosophy to just another movement in the history of ideas. No wonder, then, that Bakewell says: 'It has become harder to revive that initial thrill.' Yet that is exactly what she has managed to do in a book that is a kind of collaboration between her exhilarated younger self and the more measured, adult writer she has become. These co-authors are as generous with each other as they are with their subjects, resulting in a work that is both warm and intellectually rigorous…Bakewell made her name with her brilliant How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. At the Existentialist Café is an even more ambitious attempt at interweaving life and thought. Not only does it have a cast of characters large enough to merit their own appendix for reference, their writings are usually opaque at best and obscurantist at worst. Despite these obstacles, Bakewell has done it again and made it look effortless… Although biography provides the narrative momentum of At the Existentialist Café, much of the meat comes from the philosophy…She has a knack for crystallising key ideas by identifying choice original quotations and combining them with her own words…Perhaps the aphorism that best captures the book is one of Bakewell’s own: 'Thinking should be generous and have a good appetite.' Her hunger is infectious. Bakewell is fond of Heidegger’s image of a mind as a clearing in a forest, and her book is a clearing in a dense philosophical thicket few of us have the ability or inclination to navigate alone.”
—Financial Times
“At the Existentialist Café takes us back to pre- and post-Second World War Paris when it was the exposition of ideas that earned the fame – when philosophers and philosophy itself were sexy, glamorous, outrageous; when sensuality and erudition were entwined, and entry to chic nightclubs guaranteed if you had a book under your arm...Bakewell, a prize-winning biographer whose last book brilliantly expounded the ideas of Montaigne and how to live by them, shows how fascinating were some of the existentialists’ ideas and how fascinating, often frightful, were their lives. Vivid, humorous anecdotes are interwoven with a lucid and unpatronising exposition of their complex philosophy...This tender, incisive and fair account of the existentialists ends with their successive deaths, leaving me with the same sense of nostalgia and loss as one feels after reading a great epic novel.” —The Telegraph
“Sarah Bakewell was, like many of us, a teenage existentialist, but her engagement with the movement’s thought was rather more substantial. She has now written a surprisingly sparkling book about its history and principal figures, which is, happily, more concerned than many philosophical texts…Bakewell’s interesting and amusing book… succeed[s] in making [existentialism] relevant by showing how those ideas developed into questions over racial politics and the rights of the individual…a pleasant and entertaining [read]."—The Spectator
“[E]ngaging and wide-ranging.”—Prospect Magazine
“[An] invigorating book.”—Tablet
"Don’t let the breezy title put you off. At the Existentialist Café, Sarah Bakewell’s group portrait of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, and the other 'Continental' philosophers who flourished before and after World War II, is a work of deep intelligence and sympathy, reminding us how exciting those thinkers can be. And it’s a page-turner. I was so sorry to finish the last chapter that I almost—almost—ran over to the Strand to see what they had by Merleau-Ponty." —Lorin Stein, Paris Review Daily
"It's not often that you miss your bus stop because you're so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that while immersed in Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café. The story of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger et al is strange, fun and compelling reading. If it doesn't win awards, I will eat my proof copy."—Katy Guest, The Independent on Sunday
"A riveting narrative." —Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller
Praise for How To Live
Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
“This charming biography shuffles incidents from Montaigne’s life and essays into twenty thematic chapters . . . Bakewell clearly relishes the anthropological anecdotes that enliven Montaigne’s work, but she handles equally well both his philosophical influences and the readers and interpreters who have guided the reception of the essays.” —The New Yorker
“Serious, engaging, and so infectiously in love with its subject that I found myself racing to finish so I could start rereading the Essays themselves . . . It is hard to imagine a better introduction—or reintroduction—to Montaigne than Bakewell’s book.” —Lorin Stein, Harper’s Magazine
“Ms. Bakewell’s new book, How to Live, is a biography, but in the form of a delightful conversation across the centuries.” —The New York Times
“So artful is Bakewell’s account of [Montaigne] that even skeptical readers may well come to share her admiration.” —The New York Times Book Review
★ 02/15/2016
"What is existentialism anyway?" asks Bakewell in her tremendous new work, and you're wrong if you find that question irrelevant to your life. As articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre and his confreres, existentialism is so wound up in contemporary culture that we think it, speak it, and encounter it daily—consider, for instance, those moody existential film heroes and the angst driving our self-improvement schemes. After completing her National Book Critics Circle Award winner, How To Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Bakewell ambitiously launched on a project to revisit this passion of her youth. Along with her rigorous and clarifying explanations of existentialism as project, sensibility, and evolution from the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger (finally, you'll understand what all these philosophers were talking about), she offers refreshing reaction and context that make this book a journey for the reader as well as the writer. Though she focuses on the philosophy, Bakewell also probes biography, detailing the relationship between Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, for instance, and taking Heidegger's Nazi associations head-on. There's humanizing cheekiness, too; after explaining how each philosopher fell out with a predecessor, Bakewell adds, "Arthur Koestler fell out with everyone and punched Camus in the street." VERDICT Highly recommended for anyone who thinks. [See "Editors' Spring Picks," p. 29.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
★ 2015-11-29
Days in the lives of influential philosophers. In this brisk and perceptive intellectual history, Bakewell (Masters of Studies in Creative Writing/Kellogg Coll., Univ. of Oxford; How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, 2010, etc.) focuses on a diverse cast of men and women who, beginning in the 1930s, worried over questions of freedom, authenticity, anxiety, and commitment, creating the movement that came to be known as existentialism. Their antecedents were Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, who "pioneered a mood of rebellion and dissatisfaction, created a new definition of existence as choice, action and self-assertion, and made a study of the anguish and difficulty of life." Dominating Bakewell's narrative are Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, lovers and "compulsive communicators" of every detail of their work. Sartre, appealingly fun-loving (he played piano and sang jazz hits) in his youth, became "monstrous" as he aged: "self-indulgent, demanding, bad-tempered. He was a sex addict who didn't even enjoy sex, a man who would walk away from friendships saying he felt no regret." Bakewell was surprised at how much affection she felt for him despite his faults. Certainly he was more likable than Martin Heidegger, who "set himself against the philosophy of humanism and…was rarely humane in his behaviour." As the author reveals historical context for the philosophers' work—prewar Paris; the Nazi occupation; postwar debates among internationalists, pro-Americans, and communists—she explains the significance of cafes: "they were the best places to keep warm" for those who lived in cheap, unheated hotel rooms. Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, Iris Murdoch (Britain's first popularizer of existentialism), James Baldwin, actress Juliette Gréco, and Emmanuel Levinas are just a few featured in this well-populated book, whose hero, Bakewell writes, is phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "the happy philosopher of things as they are." A fresh, invigorating look into complex minds and a unique time and place.