Sartre’s name drags behind it, for most people surely, the idea of hatred of America. As a child, Sartre read with passion
The Adventures of Nick Carter, the American detective, and so many other stories of this country. It does not mean anything. Childhood reading reveals nothing except the tasteless voracity that we can have at this age. We absorb everything because it’s ink and it’s our favorite food. It is after this age that our taste is formed by rapprochements and estrangements. It can, moreover, be dangerous: as it is our taste, we believe it to be true. It is often just a habit.
In 1945,
Jean paul Sartre spent two months in the United States with seven French journalists, at the invitation of the American State Department. His essays on New York, collected in
Situations I, are among the most original. A sensitive man doesn’t have to come back and check to feel; because yes, in these pages, Sartre writes, not for knowledge, but with feeling. Unlike those who are attached to verticality, he feels that
New York is, in reality, “a city in length”. That its immense parallel avenues connect it to all American space. He speaks very well of his sky.
The Journal of Philosophy
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