The Words: The Autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre

Author:  Sartre, Jean-Paul.

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: A Fawcett Crest Book. (1964)
• Language English
• Price: $8

This review is from: The Words: The Autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre (Paperback)

Sartre writes about his very early life. He writes about things that as an adult you aren't even conscious of anymore. How reading a book about horses and armies can bring those things to life. Sartre talks about his grandfather, his mother, his absent father. He is pretty dispassionate about them. The main thing about the book is Sartres' keen observation and reckless honesty. In the usual autobiography you get a lot of bluster, the secret to my success type stuff. Someone, I think it was Martin Amis, said, all autobiographies are success stories. You see that all the time. How I rose from my humble background to be a rich and famous such and such. Well you don't get that here. This is Jean Paul's life before he ever did anything noteworthy. Astonishing level of honesty. I look at memoirs differently after this.

The Words to Say It

Author :  Cardinal, Marie.

• Paperback: 221 pages
• Publisher: Picador by Pan Books Ltd. (1984)
• Language: English 
• Condition: Good
• Price: $6
  

This review is from: The Words to Say It (Paperback)

This book is one of the best novels I've ever read. Cardinal's struggle to find herself in the mysterious depths of the unconscious is not just a story about psychoanalysis, it's a book about the ordinary processes that occur in our minds when we experience things we cannot handle growing up. It's about forgetting and remembering. It's about making discoveries and letting things go. Reading her story will make you think about how fragile our understandings of ourselves really are. I admire this book not just for its honest and captivating prose. I think it accurately portrays some of the most valuable ideas behind Freud's psychoanalytic theory.