Second Sex and Second Thoughts

Because she never wrote her memoirs, we do not know Xanthippe’s side of the story. But now that Force of Circumstances is pub-

Force of Circumstances, by Simone de Beauvoir. Putnam, $10.00 lished, we do know what Simone de Beauvoir thinks of Jean Paul Sartre. Not that she illuminated, or even redefined, existentialism. On the contrary, her memoirs (of which this is the third and apparently last volume) will increase the popular confusion prevailing on that subject; it will also advance the (debatable) contention that everything Sartre’s hand has touched must wither.

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William S. Schlamm

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Because she never wrote her memoirs, we do not know Xanthippe’s side of the story. But now that Force of Circumstances is pub-

Force of Circumstances, by Simone de Beauvoir. Putnam, $10.00 lished, we do know what Simone de Beauvoir thinks of Jean Paul Sartre. Not that she illuminated, or even redefined, existentialism. On the contrary, her memoirs (of which this is the third and apparently last volume) will increase the popular confusion prevailing on that subject; it will also advance the (debatable) contention that everything Sartre’s hand has touched must wither.