The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

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With her youth and good looks, she permeates much of the novel with a sense of loss—the ageing characters accept their 20s are gone, with the result being they seem to view Ivich as fragile and precious due to her youthful vulnerability. In a pink room within a female body, there was a blister, growing larger… There was no time to lose, for the blister was expanding at that very moment: it was making obscure efforts to emerge, to extricate itself from the darkness, and growing into something like that, a little pallid, flabby object that clung to the world and sucked its sap. An idle, unresponsive fellow, rather chimerical, but ultimately quite sensible, who has dexterously constructed an undistinguished but solid happiness upon a basis of inertia, and justified himself from time to time on the highest moral grounds.

Once Sarah leaves, the two argue, with the young student finally breaching the kiss Delarue had forced upon her.

In the book, I must point out, Daniel often says one thing to his friends to make him appear moral, likeable, and supportive. Daniel suggests the pair head off for a drink, but even young Boris has picked up on the archangel’s dangerous air. In this chapter, he’s introduced as the good looking student who’s dating the much older Lola—a singer in Parisian clubs.

It was joined immediately by The Reprieve, the writing style of which uses simultaneity as events unfold at the same time, with Sartre considering numerous characters at once as they jostle for position on page. He is forlorn because he is devoid of God and thus only himself responsible for his actions (as well as inactions, inaction also being an action). Starting to age, she’s found a picture of herself from 1928 (the timeline for Age of Reason is the summer of 1938), in the picture she’s dressed in a man’s jacket and remarks to Delarue: “I was a scream in those days. Among the others in his circle is his acolyte, Boris (who is having an affair with the nightclub entertainer Lola); the young student from a wealthy family, Ivich, facing her final exams and worried (with good reason) about failing, uncertain about what she can do when the inevitable happens; and the more established Daniel (who would also have the money Mathieu needs, but isn't willing to give it to him).I didn't read this as an exemplification of Sartre's philosophy, but rather as a study of the philosophy of the characters in the story.

He has a huge amount of admiration for Mathieu, but still doesn’t fancy achieving any grand age of any sort. Boris, meanwhile, is having an affair with Lola Montero, the ageing (well, 40 makes her ageing in this book) nightclub singer. With early morning setting in, and Ivich happily admiring her bandaged hand, Mathieu reflects on a feeling of content as Lola takes to the stage and begins to sing. Next up, Delarue visits his brother Jacques in a desperate bid to wrest money off him, but is almost humiliated (and, for the first time, shows considerable annoyance) by his brother’s savage indictment of his life.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. All he need do is take 4,000 and he will have the fee for the high class abortion and ensure Marcelle’s well-being. It’s at this point he makes a bizarre, seemingly deadly mistake during a taxi ride to the latest museum exhibition.

On and on it goes, as Mathieu reëvaluates his life, his situation, and his relationship with Marcelle. The New York Times review stated "There is, indeed, something more in The Age of Reason than an exciting novel and a philosophical problem. Daniel had flung himself backwards, and was looking at him with amazement, his eyes sparkingly with anger.The novel is a fictional reprise of some of the main themes in his major philosophical study Being and Nothingness (1943). Reading The Age of Reason felt like navigating the dark recesses of my subconscious and coming face-to-face with my innermost anxieties. It is also about this guy name Daniel who realises that he is a homosexual, but still wants to marry a woman whom he is in love with because she wants to have children (strange attitude for a homosexual to take – I thought that would be what we would consider bi-sexual, but then again this is 1945 so the intricacies of the modern sexual system sort of did not exist back then).