Letters to Sartre

Belying her public persona of the liberated woman, de Beauvoir's epistolary outpourings to longtime companion Jean-Paul Sartre reveal an obsessive, compulsive need to record for him the minutest aspects of her life. She relates in almost clinical detail numerous affairs with both men and women, including a passionate liaison with Nelson Algren and an intense triangular relationship among herself, Olga Kosakiewitch and Sartre. The correspondence, which runs the gamut of moods, reflects her love-hate relationship with the United States; her friendships with Jean Genet, Raymond Queneau and Violette Leduc; travels in Mexico, Trieste and Algeria. Especially touching are the frantic, anguished letters she wrote when Sartre was held prisoner by the Germans during WW II. In his introduction, Hoare portrays de Beauvoir as ``a validly heroic figure'' who managed to resolve her contradictory needs for freedom and closeness. (Feb.)