The morning news not too long ago informed Austrians that Simone de Beauvoir had been awarded the $11,000 Austrian State Prize for Literature. The announcement did not send shock waves rolling through the land; her name means nothing to the majority of Austrians.
So the commentator provided an introduction, in the form of a lengthy encomium. He explained that Mme. de Beauvoir is the “companion” of Jean-Paul Sartre, the Marxist-Existentialist; that she had courageously broken with her bourgeois heritage; that she was among the first women to boast publicly of having had an abortion; that she was a fervent opponent of U.S. intervention in Vietnam; that her books have sold millions of copies and have been translated into many languages; that she has publicly proclaimed that she does not believe in marriage; and that she is generally “prominent.” It was the most moving testimonial since Leonid Brezhnev was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. Men wept. Women sang hallelujah.
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