Monthly Review Press is going to publish a new and expanded edition of Istvan Mészáros' remarkable study of Sartre.This is a work of the first rank. The reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement said of the first edition: "The whole oeuvre is used to cast light on each part of it. In the future no one will be able to write on Sartre without first studying Mészáros." In the fine Introduction, Mészáros quotes Sartre as follows: “The most beautiful book in the world will not save a child from pain: one does not redeem evil, one fights it. The most beautiful book in the world redeems itself; it also redeems the artist. But not the man. Any more than the man redeems the artist. We want the man and the artist to work their salvation together, we want the work to be at the same time an act; we want it to be explicitly conceived as a weapon in the struggle that men wage against evil." I'd be interested to know what you think of this.
D