[amazon_link id=”1847394256″ target=”_blank” ]The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus[/amazon_link] by Andy Martin was recommended to me by somebody commenting on this blog, I remember not when. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable book, using the soap opera of French intellectual life in the mid-20th century to illustrate the philosophical debates.

[amazon_image id=”1847394256″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Boxer and The Goal Keeper: Sartre versus Camus[/amazon_image]

I particularly liked the personal touch here. Andy Martin writes about his own intellectual discovery, starting out as an alienated small town teenager who happens upon a copy of Sartre’s [amazon_link id=”2070293882″ target=”_blank” ]L’Etre et le Néant [/amazon_link](in fact, he shoplifts it), and from there progresses to university, the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and academic life. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in a small town (Ramsbottom) in Lancashire where many people, including my dad and aunts and uncles, then worked in the cotton mills. Occasionally we visited Manchester  – once, I went to London. Our holidays were spent in Blackpool or Filey. From an early age, though, I dreamed of leaving and leading an entirely more glamorous life. Many small town young people do of course, but for in my mind glamour involved philosophy and abroad.

I particularly fixed on philosophy after our French teacher (Mme Sandler, I salute you) started us on Sartre’s [amazon_link id=”2070368068″ target=”_blank” ]Les Mains Sales[/amazon_link] and told us to read up on existentialism. My entire being came to be focused on becoming a philosopher and spending my career writing books while sitting in a Parisian café. Then I read Simone De Beauvoir’s [amazon_link id=”009974421X” target=”_blank” ]The Second Sex[/amazon_link], which was an enlightenment.

[amazon_image id=”2070368068″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Les Mains Sales (Collection Folio)[/amazon_image]

Initially, Sartre and Beauvoir seemed more enticing, but before long it was obvious that Camus was more appealing as a person and as a philosopher. [amazon_link id=”1847394256″ target=”_blank” ]The Boxer and the Goalkeeper [/amazon_link]reinforces that. In particular, Sartre’s political calls post-war look highly morally dubious and I for one am all with Camus as their friendship turned to antagonism. But make your own mind up – read the book. There are some taster extracts here.

A footnote: an entirely different story about leaving behind the north of England, this column by Adnan Sarwar in this weekend’s Financial Times is absolutely beautifully written and thoughtful.