The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

Product Information

The story is about Mathieu and his mistress Marcelle whom he had been seeing for seven years with a mutual agreement against marriage and child. Meanwhile, left at the table together, Ivich and Mathieu spend some time loathing each other – why on earth did he kiss such a plain pasty prickly young woman, thinks Mathieu. By 1937, the Empire of Japan was already in full-blown war with the Republic of China, but Europe in 1938 (as a reminder, the setting for Age of Reason) was largely unconcerned about proceedings. Sarah attempts to get Mathieu to reconsider, but ultimately suggests a renowned, but expensive, doctor he can turn to. Fiction and philosophy inextricably and ‘entertainingly’ combined almost rendering it a page-turner.

As he retrieves Boris’ letters, he also notes a large amount of francs that will easily cover Marcelle’s abortion—he doesn’t take the money. This is opposed to the embarrassing situation he finds himself at the start of the story; his initial foray into securing an abortion ends in dismal humiliation.He explains that being a member has given him a sense of purpose and brotherhood with other members all round the world. Whereas Delarue offers Ivich’s brother Boris fatherly advice and encouragement, Ivich and Mathieu are something of a misfit. Daniel had flung himself backwards, and was looking at him with amazement, his eyes sparkingly with anger. Each name springs up in mind in a color and the association with that color is complete, character and the color inextricable from each other.

This abandonment is of their own choosing or unavoidable because they are conscious, disgruntled and bored individuals, committed to denouncement of bourgeois and the lives they lead. The New York Times review stated "There is, indeed, something more in The Age of Reason than an exciting novel and a philosophical problem. You despise the bourgeois class, and yet you are bourgeois, son and brother of a bourgeois, and you live like a bourgeois. He thought: ‘A married man messing about with a young girl in a taxi,’ and his arm dropped, dead and flaccid: Ivich’s body straightened with a mechanical jerk, like a pendulum swinging back to equilibrium. Sartre was one of great cultural icons of the mid-twentieth century, the popular face of French existentialist philosophy which he wrote about in countless essays, articles, books and plays, and summarised in his epic and impenetrable treatise, Being and Nothingness.Misanthropic, narcissistic, and aloof, his actions are seemingly based on a desire to disrupt peoples’ lives.

Boris stopped laughing, eyed him, muttered something, then subsided and stood quiet, his mouth agape, and still with a stupid air. Ivich was not precisely a flirt, but from time to time she assumed an affectionate air for the pleasure of sensing the heavy, fruit-like sleekness of her face. With alcohol in his system, Delarue begins to opine over the nature of Ivich, remarking: “I love that girl for her purity. All I want is’ and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame ‘to retain my freedom. I first read the Age of Reason in early 2005 aged 19 and it transformed my view of literature—it’s at once a gripping and brilliant story, but it also deals with Sartre’s complex philosophical concepts.I admit, it is good way to show how people around Europe felt at that time, but even if I forget the plot, even ideas are very difficult to follow in this style. With its cast of highly memorable characters, Age of Reason delivers a philosophical novel that doesn’t bore as it’s so heavily entrenched in a very real and humane perspective. Daniel Sereno is the extremely good looking gay friend of Mathieu, although they don’t appear to get on particularly well. As you can see there’s a fair bit of toing and froing among this cast of deadbeats and losers, but the ‘plot’ is mostly beside the point. As always, my reviews comprise about 5,000 words and merely scratch at the surface of a full-scale novel like the Age of Reason.