Alongside Nausea this is Sartre’s great achievement in fiction; a collection of five stories and a novella that smell of life, Sartre’s intense life of endeavour and engagement in which he ended up as an eternal rebel. Rebelling against the respectable politics of both the Left and the Right; against conventional partnerships, and finally against the ageing process itself.


Sartre’s intellectual spark was kindled in the hot dry air that lay between two ghastly furnaces; the extermination of youth called World War I and the extermination of minorities and liberty that started up shortly after its end under the names of nationalism, fascism, communism and (finally) World War II.


Although Sartre through his philosophical works and individual political activism is famous as a (sort-of) Marxist the theme of the title story Intimacy is entirely unlike the work of what one thinks of as a Marxist writer in both its theme and its outcome. Going beyond the common structure in literature and life of ‘the eternal triangle’ of three lovers here we have four because the narrator of this story, a woman called Rivette, participates too as an emotional voyeur and in a way it seems she participates more profoundly than the other ‘active’ lovers (who in her view aren’t taking the whole business seriously enough). This is a story that seems to have the cruel ring of truth about it. In the second story about relationships, The Room, another unhealthy but intense love is explored, bringing more than realism, bringing honesty in considering the desperation that can force the continuation of a couple’s coupledom where everything except that desperation would end it.


Erostratus is the story of an outsider, of ‘a little man’; a man isolated, vengeful and afraid, a powerful and troubling story although quite short. The longest piece here is the novella The Childhood of a Leader, which is a kind of mini Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man (James Joyce) but far more sardonic and political. There are similarities to this early masterpiece of Joyce though in the accurate capturing of childhood obsession and how that sometimes develops into determining factors of adult personality. Amongst the pleasures of this novella are the cruel vignette of a Surrealist called Bergère, shown as a pretentious chancer exploiting youth for sexual ends. The hero of The Childhood of a Leader ends up in the ultra-conservative organisation the Action Française, his soul full of blood and earth mysticism and a desire to kick the weak, hang the Jews, purify the French nation etc. It is really the devastating story of a pitiful type who seeks a feeling of strength and self-assurance through hate of others — a fair reflection on some of this century’s many willing butchers and bullies who have cloaked themselves in some ideology or other.


Perhaps it is Sartre’s fiction (apart from the rather mechanical Roads to Freedom trilogy) and his powerful works of theatre that will be his real heritage as a writer rather than his philosophical work which seems to have few defenders today.

‘What particularly surprised Lucien was the enormous quantity of practical jokes Bergère had accumulated on a shelf; solid liquids, sneezing powder, itching powder, floating sugar, and a bride’s garter. «These jokes,» Bergère said, «have a revolutionary value. They disturb. There is more destructive power in them than in all the works of Lenin.» Lucien, surprised and charmed, looked by turns at this handsome tormented face with hollow eyes and those long delicate fingers. Bergère spoke often of Rimbaud and the «systematic disordering of all the senses.» «When you will be able, in crossing the Place de la Concorde, to see distinctly and at will a kneeling negress sucking the obelisk, you will be able to tell yourself that you have torn down the scenery and you are saved.» p169 (Childhood of a Leader)