Sartre/ edited by Frank Kermode

A scribbler from childhood, as he tells us in his auto- biography, Sartre's literary output has been stupendous, as much for the originality and variety of its production as for the sheer weight of its many volumes: to have written that much at all is an achievement, apart from so much of it being good or even great. It is difficult to think of a comparable corpus: the dramatic works alone would ensure him a place in theatrical history; novelists have been considered important none of whose works is on a plane with Nausea; the criticism and biographical writings put him in the first echelon of these possibly less luminous genres. And his life has been one of the exemplary lives, a paradigm of commitment and courage, as well as of creativity, full of positions taken and fine causes promoted and hideous ones opposed: an articulated if sometimes futile conscience and moral witness against the outrage of twentieth century history. An attractive personality, generous and decent, ironic and brilliant, sceptical and enthusiastic, Parisian to the core, committed in love and friendship to the values of freedom and fidelity: even as a character, just as a man, Sartre merits memorialization and admiration. But the singularities of his wider literary contribution, his person and his life, are overshadowed, to my mind, by his extraordinary philosophical craft.