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Explorations: A Journal of Language and Literature, 5 (2017), pp. 90-93

REVIEW

Sarah Bakewell. 2016. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot

Cocktails. London: Chatto & Windus.

Tomasz Sawczuk (University of Białystok)

DOI: 10.25167/EXP13.17.5.10

With her most recent book, Sarah Bakewell presents us with a comprehensive and

wonderfully readable cultural biography of existentialism, which has much to offer to

both the familiarized and the unfamiliarized with the oeuvres of Sartre, Beauvoir,

Heidegger and a host of other think-alikes. The handful of information distributed

through fourteen chapters paints an insightful picture of a philosophical movement which

left an everlasting stamp on the human perception of the eponymous ideas of freedom

and being, and whose relevance, as strongly held by Bakewell, protrudes well into the

twenty-first century. The author offers a journey from the beginnings of classical

Husserlian phenomenology and the emergence of Heidegger and Jaspers, through the

heyday of Sartre-Beauvoir collective, up to reinvigorations of the existentialist

philosophy by American, British and Czechoslovakian thinkers in the 1960s and

onwards. Bakewell displays a masterful command over the facts, figures and contexts

that constitute the subject matter of her study, just as when she swiftly shifts from

investigating into Richard Wright‟s Parisian existence to the discussion of the 1960s

reception of Beauvoir‟s The Second Sex (280 – 281). What also deserves merit is the

language and form of her study. Shaping much of her book as a guide to existentialism,

she succeeds in explicating major concepts and terms with great clarity as done with the

often impenetrable thought of Heidegger. It is frequently made clear to the reader that the

discussed philosophies inform her own craft. Bakewell‟s paraphrase of Heidegger‟s

phenomenological reductions might well constitute modus operandi of the book:

"disregard intellectual clutter, pay attention to things and let them reveal themselves to

you" (3). In the same vein, the heterogeneous style of Bakewell‟s study, simultaneously

critical and anecdotal, (auto)biographical and affective, appears to have been marked by a

truly Sartrean imperative of choice and freedom in writing, as evident in Existentialism

and Humanism or Being and Nothingness.

Forging one‟s philosophy, Bakewell seems to suggest, can be likened to preparing a

dish or mixing the eponymous cocktail. The author finds the brilliance of Sartre above all

in his ability "to turn phenomenology into philosophy of apricot cocktails … of

Review: At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails (Bakewell 2016) 91

expectation, tiredness, apprehensiveness, excitement, a walk up a hill, the passion for a

desired lover, the revulsion from an unwanted one, Parisian gardens, the cold autumn sea

at Le Havre" (5). It is also the tactics of the her book; Bakewell prefers to have "the

masterworks chopped in shards and mixed up like a chocolate chips in the cookie" rather

than to handle them "by the whole bar" (32). The discussed existentialists‟ oeuvres are

thus presented as self-penetrating rather than resonating in isolation. Each theoretical

voice, Bakewell observes, is always at the intersections of other voices, just like in the

eponymous café, where "there are so many conversations to overhear" (33) and retell.

Accordingly, apart from handling the legendary reciprocity in the philosophical and

personal partnership of Sartre and Beauvoir, the author illuminates on Nausea and its

theme of oppressive, entrapping being as influenced by Heidegger‟s "What is

Metaphysics?" and Levinas‟s "On Escape" (105). She also supports her reading of The

Second Sex with Husserl‟s idea of "the encrusted theories which accumulate on the

phenomena" (210) and Sartre‟s concept of "bad faith" (215). Perhaps more than any other

intellectual milieu, existentialists attest to philosophy being a domain of particles,

constantly colliding and incorporating each other‟s energies.

Even if frequently divergent in their philosophical standpoints (as evident from

chapter 14), all of the existentialists, as underscored by Bakewell throughout the entire

book, lived by the rule of "inhibited philosophy," a concept of the English philosopher

and writer Iris Murdoch which denotes the ways in which one‟s life experience attests to

certain philosophical ideas and the ways in which philosophy inhabits life. All the

theoretical disparities cease to exist, Bakewell seems to suggest, when looking at

existentialism as stemming from childhood experiences and never venturing beyond the

influence of everyday life. Thus, Heidegger‟s home town of Messkirch, a world of rustic

crafts, shapes him forever "as a humble Swabian peasant, whitt ling and chopping at his

work" (53). As believed by the author, living among woodcutters and coopers made it

impossible for the German philosopher to turn away from the world where "[p]ractical

care and concern are more primordial than reflection. Usefulness comes before

contemplation, the ready-to-hand before the present-at-hand, Being-in-the-world and

Being-with-others before Being-alone" (65). Levinas‟s turn to the Other echoes a

particular prison camp memory of an affectionate stray dog, owing to which the

philosopher and his fellow prisoners "were reminded each day of what it meant to be

acknowledged by another being" (196). Likewise, as claimed by Bakewell, Jaspers‟s

serious heart condition and emphysema made him focus on border situations (82),

Sartre‟s being bullied at school engendered "his [later] desire for extremism in all

things" (275), and the most fortunate survival of Husserl‟s late manuscripts is "a

reminder of the role contingency plays in even the most well-managed human affairs"

(133). As claimed by Bakewell, the thinker whose life proved to be the greatest

demonstration of "inhabited philosophy" was Simone Weil, who, in the act of radical

commitment and out of her own will, was capable of making ultimate sacrifices (for

instance, she deprived herself food on encountering those who lacked it), thus displaying

"a near-infinite degree of duty and obligation to the other" (198). Given all of the above,

philosophers‟ life experience may be well considered as preceding the essence of their

bodies of work, Bakewell successfully demonstrates.

However, as concurrently proved, existentialists did not evade living their

philosophies far too much than was sensible. This was the case of Sartre and his 1948

visit to Germany, when his radical axiom to act regardless of the surrounding conditions

92 TOMASZ SAWCZUK

did not stand confrontation with the disastrous condition of the country and its citizens

after the end of the war. As might be predicted, Bakewell allots most space in this respect

to Heidegger and his ties with Nazism, a matter given new life after the 2014 release of

his Black Notebooks , journal entries written between 1931 and 1941. Scrutiny offered to

the German philosopher constitutes the most critical parts of Bakewell‟s venture and

offers many insights. Most interestingly, being more than sure that the concepts presented

in Being and Time were deliberately envisioned as political, the author wonders whether

Heidegger‟s philosophical apparatus could have been interpreted in a different way.

Bakewell holds that his "ideas of resoluteness and the acceptance of mortality could have

formed a framework for courageous resistance to the regime" (88). Much as the author of

Being and Time firmly believed in the "demands history was making upon Germany,

with its distinctive Being an destiny" (87), notions such as Dasein, seen by Bakewell as a

call from one‟s true unideologized self, should have been read in defiance of

totalitarianism and Heideggerian das Man. Thus, ambiguity, a key feature of both

Heidegger‟s personality and his philosophy, offers clear proof that the most stimulating

concepts can also happen to be the most dangerous ones just as "the passages [from

Being and Time] calling us to authenticity and answerability" (91).

In the final parts of her book, Bakewell searches for and identifies existentialist tropes

in plenty of global concerns of the most modern times. The oeuvres of Sartre, Beauvoir,

Merleau-Ponty and their like, as she observes, vastly informed and laid the cornerstone

for the post-war liberation struggles, such as decolonization, civil rights, women‟s rights,

and gay rights movements. Existentialism also affected post-war psychotherapy and

psychiatry as evident by the then-emerging trends of existential psychotherapy,

Daseinanalysis, anti-psychiatry, logotherapy, all helping to find "more personal forms of

liberation" (282) and channeling "a more general desire for meaning and self-realisation

among the young" (282). As firmly believed by Bakewell, it is also today that

existentialist body of thought is relevant, perhaps more than ever. In the wake of, on the

one hand, exponential discoveries and advances in neuroscience, biotechnology and

genetic engineering, and, on the other, the massively increasing state of surveillance,

where "basic ideas about freedom … [are] assailed and disputed in radical ways" (318), a

return to existentialism with its concerns over human status and agency offers "a certain

refreshment of perspective" (28). Bakewell indicates particular existentialist concepts

worth reconsidering; she reminds us of the need to be engaged and constantly think

against ourselves (Sartre), to reflect on ecological and technological matters (Heidegger),

to embrace ambiguity in our lives (Merleau-Ponty), or simply to exercise an appetite for

living (Beauvoir). The most significant message to the reader, however, aligns with the

philosophy behind the book and advocates addressing two problems: "„what are we?‟ and

„what should we do?‟" (30), questions to be asked to oneself anywhere and anytime.

REFERENCES

Bakewell, Sarah. 2016. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails.

London: Chatto & Windus.

Review: At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails (Bakewell 2016) 93

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

AUTHOR‟S BIO: Tomasz Sawczuk holds a PhD in literary studies and teaches at the

Institute of Modern Languages, University of Białystok, Poland. He has published

articles on American literature, especially Beat Generation writers, and co-edited

Visuality and Vision in American Literature (2014). His doctoral dissertation establishes

the links between the works of Jack Kerouac and Lacanian psychoanalysis. His current

research interests revolve around North American concrete poetry.

E-MAIL: fru7(at)o2.pl

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails

  • Sarah Bakewell

Bakewell, Sarah. 2016. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails. London: Chatto & Windus.