“The Mandarins” by Simone de Beauvoir – The Wrap-up

“The Mandarins” by Simone de Beauvoir (1954) – 610 pages

After being immersed for several weeks in post-World War II Parisian night life and home life as well as the political and journalistic intrigue and infighting of that time, I have finally completed “The Mandarins” by Simone de Beauvoir.  It has been quite a ride.  This passionate, psychologically acute story held my interest throughout, and I now have a vivid picture of French life after the war.  Simone de Beauvoir’s writing is straightforward and appealing. 

“The Mandarins” is a good novel, not a great novel.  In this book I read more about the details of the political situation in France then than I ever needed or wanted to know.  My opinion is that this novel could  have been considerably tightened up.  “War and Peace”, “Ulysees”, and “Middlemarch” are also long books with many pages, but all three of these novels are at their appropriate length. I wouldn’t shorten any of these books at all.    I think the story of “The Mandarins” could have been tightened, shortened by about two hundred pages without losing anything. 

One story in the novel is the romance between the Simone de Beauvoir character in the novel and the Nelson Algren character.  When someone talks about their mostly happy love affair incessantly, they risk sounding insipid.  This love affair in the novel does not entirely escape this problem.  There are too many romantic sunsets and locales.  The sad truth for novelists is that details of unhappy romantic affairs are more interesting than details about happy affairs.

Still there are some fascinating stories in this book.  At one point, the Albert Camus character’s play is being produced, and he helps choose the lead actress for the play.  After choosing the woman to be the lead actress, he starts dating her immediately.    Later he finds out that this woman’s mother had all her hair cut off by the Resistance after the war for cavorting with the Nazi officers during the Occupation.  Then he finds out that the lead actress herself had a serious relationship with a Nazi officer during the Occupation.  This information about the actress is about to be released to the public, thus destroying her career.  Only by lying to the investigators does the Camus character stop the information from being released.   If there is a hero in “The Mandarins”, it is the Camus character, so for Beauvoir to include this compromising story shows the complexities that Beauvoir deals with here.

Simone de Beauvoir is not a natural-born fiction writer.  You get the sense that she doesn’t make anything up.  Instead she always relates things that actually happened.  Thus it is difficult for her to shape her stories by changing what happens. 

Earlier I read “When Things of the Spirit Come First”, an early work by Beauvoir.  I was completely enchanted by these stories.  That book is one of my favorites for the year.  I got the impression that these stories were also taken directly from real life by Beauvoir.  However there in order to fit those stories into the short story format, she had to really take control of her material and mold it.  “The Mandarins” could have used more of this molding and shaping.