October 7th, 2009
Simone de Beauvoir and the Cold War : a difficult relationship with the United States : the AfroAmerican condition and Richard Wright, Nelson Algren’s USA
in
Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modernité et engagement, Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modern and committedClaudine Monteil, Ed L’Harmattan ISBN 978-2-296-10025-1)
Beauvoir’s work was very popular in the United States after World War II.
Academics, philosophers and writers were acquainted with existentialism, the philosophy of freedom. Sartre, as a man and as writer (no women writers were invited at the time) had gone to the US and met writers and the media. Beauvoir had travelled to the U.S. before she finished writing The Second Sex. In my essay, I analyze how her relationships with her intellectual companion and lover Nelson Algren, and the AfroAmerican writer Richard Wright (whose writings she published in translation in Les Temps Modernes) made her both an intriguing and puzzling figure during the Cold War.
Ironically, the United States was the literary market in which her work was the most popular. Her book, The Old Age (La Vieillesse) sold hundreds of thousands of copies in a few weeks. In the context of the Cold War, I also analyze Beauvoir’s essay, “A Transatlantic Affair: letters to Nelson Algren”” a collection of day-by-day letters to Nelson Algren.
Further, I quote diplomatic reports mentioning how Beauvoir’s popularity surprised French diplomats in embassies abroad. And, having been a friend of hers, I explore how her relationship to the United States became less contentious and more serene as a result of her connections to the international women’s movement.