ABSTRACT
Jean-Paul Sartre has at last finished the first two thousand pages of the book on Gustave Flaubert, which he began more than fifteen years ago, and they have recently been published by Gallimard in two volumes under the provocative title L 'Idiot de la Famille. In an interview in September 1970 with the ultra-left Idiot Internationale, the masthead of which states that its editorial committee consists of "all the political prisoners of this regime", Sartre spoke of his Flaubert in different, almost apologetic terms. For The Idiot of the Family is in all respects authentic Sartre, actually a summa of his philosophy, though so far it presents us with only a portion of Flaubert's life. Sartre shows that the stupid bourgeois commonplaces that Flaubert ridiculed were reflected in his own way of thinking. Sartre's Flaubert will remain an important work even though, as is inevitable, the critics question a great deal of what the author puts forward as absolute certainty.
