by Jean-Paul Sartre, Keith Gore
As a function of pure entertainment, Sartre's No Exit is brilliant. Ironically, Sartre uses almost-pure dialogue to "show not tell" the dilemma faced by Garcin, Inez, and Estelle, three "absentees" (a euphemism for "the dead") locked into a room, condemned to be together for eternity. Each has arriv...
Brilliant! The hell as we have probably never imagined it. Perhaps the first piece of existentialist writing that didn't literally give me a headache. Really, something to get back to every now and then.
I think all teens should go through a existentialist stage. Who doesn't think "hell is other people" sometimes? Now that I'm older, I realize the importance of modifying "other" with "some". Sartre, for example, strikes me as a difficult person to live with.