Tim Black reviews a new book on Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Andy Martin's "The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre Vs Camus":
Even before they physically met, personal and professional antagonism permeated their relations. In 1938, a then 24-year-old, not to mention little-known Camus was busy writing the ‘Reading Room’ column for Alger Républicain. As he told his confidantes at the time, he was in awe of a brilliant new novel called Nausea, written by a rising intellectual star called Jean-Paul Sartre. Some of that enthusiasm comes through in the subsequent review: ‘The natural suppleness in the way he explores the extremes of conscious thought, his lacerating lucidity, reveals limitless gifts’, he said. But Camus, a man with literary aspirations himself, also had to define his idea of literarture against Sartre. So Camus looked, with justification, for fault, too: ‘[Sartre’s] remarkable fictional gifts and the play of the toughest and the most lucid mind are both lavished and squandered.’ There is simply too much philosophy in Nausea, Camus argued. ‘Theory’ has eclipsed ‘life’.
Four years later, Sartre, confronted by Camus’ now burgeoning reputation, took his quiet revenge in a 20-page review of The Outsider and The Myth of Sisyphus. So while praising the works’ literary qualities, he was dismissive of their theoretical value: ‘M. Camus has the affectation of quoting the works of Jaspers, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, without, however, fully understanding them.’ This time, it seems, life had eclipsed theory. ‘Most of the criticisms are fair’, noted Camus, ‘but why that acid tone?’.
There was no acid when the two finally did meet in 1943, at the opening of Sartre’s new play, The Flies, a reworking of the myth of Orestes into an anti-Nazi allegory. Afterwards they went out for a drink with Simone de Beauvoir, which led to Sartre suggesting they go back to de Beauvoir’s hotel room to read his recently written play No Exit. A play about three people set in a single room was thus performed for the first time ever by three people sat in a single room.(Image source)