The Age of Reason (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Most people prefer to sip their Sartre-lite via his half dozen plays (including Huis Close with its famous line ‘Hell is other people’), his début novel Nausea, or the Roads To Freedom trilogy, three novels about France just before World War Two – The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, and Iron In The Soul.

Even if he let himself be carried off, in helplessness and despair, even if he let himself be carried off like an old sack of coal, he would have chosen his own damnation: he was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate: to marry, to give up the game, to drag this dead weight around with him for years to come. In this chapter, he’s introduced as the good looking student who’s dating the much older Lola—a singer in Parisian clubs. 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. Alternatively, the young student Bruno – who hates being described as Mathieu’s ‘disciple’ – has his own, rather immature definition of freedom.

Towards the end of the story, Mathieu sneaks back into Lola’s apartment with the key Boris gave him and this time does steal 4,000 of her Francs. My dear old chap, look yourself in the face: you are thirty-four years old, you are getting slightly bald – not so bald as I am, I admit – your youth has gone, and the bohemian life doesn’t suit you at all.

Back in the day, educated people agonised about how to find meaning in a world stripped bare of religion and the old certainties, and threatened by Nazism and totalitarianism. All is going well until it becomes apparent he can’t receive the loan immediately, which leads him to try and chase down Sarah again. He first tries his wealthy friend Sarah, although bumps into the communist Brunet in the process (who later invites Mathieu to join the party, but he declines). The sense of general foreboding in the tale suggests he’s likely to fail in some way—or he has to accept he’s a member of the bourgeoisie and his life has been a lie. I’m contemptible,’ he thought… They walked in silence, side by side, immersed in sunlight, and in mutual detestation.He had a warm, attractive laugh, and Boris liked him because he opened his mouth wide when he laughed.