There is an internet myth circulating that the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre supposedly used to drive a Dodge Dart. Granted, it’s an amusing thought, but he didn’t.
The Frenhman is one of our time’s greatest thinkers, and he is quoted in many places for having written the following otherwise quite lovely text:
“In my journey to the end of night, I must rely not only on dialectical paths of reason. I must have a good solid automobile, one that eschews the futile trappings of worldly ennui and asks only for basic maintenance. My Dodge Dart offers me this elemental solace, and as interior parts fall off I am struck by the realization of their pointlessness. I might not know if the window is up or down. It is of no consequence.”
It’s a perfectly good text. And it might well sound like Sartre, who loved to not care. It is, of course, in English, although Sartre was French. And ViaRETRO is Danish. Amusingly, even if you are a hardcore Sartre fan with a tendency towards all things French, you would not be able look it up in French, because the thing is that it is satire and English IS the original text. Some might say “just” satire, but I think it is important satire which has subsequently had the huge effect of making countless Americans believe that Sartre actually DID drive a Dodge Dart.
Before anyone writes off the obvious fact that a French philosopher obviously cannot drive around in American iron, they should remember Sartre’s contemporary, Albert Camus. He enjoyed (a sort of wrong word for a man who was anxious to drive cars and far preferred the train, but you know what I mean) one of America’s most powerful cast iron greats, namely Chrysler’s big Hemi. Sure, in was wrapped in French couture from Jean Daninos, for the motor was installed in a Facel-Vega. The two, i.e. Sartre and Camus, were once friends, by the way, but fell out – not, as committed ViaRETRO reader might assume, over a car discussion of the more bitter, but about something professional / political / social. They are probably both considered to belong to the existentialist school of thought today, but both also denied it. It is well known that they were both communists too – to begin with, at least.
Tragically, Camus died in his Facel. Together with his publisher, he was in January 1960 part of a terrible accident which killed all three of them. The car got some of the blame in the public myth, as the great Excellence had a reputation for being very weak in the body: It had no B-pillar. But I’d say it was mostly the publisher’s fault, because it was he who drove. And then it was not an Excellence at all, but an HK500. A magnificent carriage which I have seen described in French as “de luxe pistonnage“, in itself a splendid term. The practical difference between being in an Excellence or a HK500 probably does not matter in this context anyway, as the publisher drove first into one tree and then into another mighty large tree.
Well, back to Sartre and his Dart. After Camus’ death, he wrote a kind of obituary and the enmity was over. After learning of this true story I stumbled upon the amusing idea that this great thinker drove a 1961 Dart, which IS rather thought provoking and he did of course enjoy being just that. It was the first generation of the Dodge Dart, and while it was chronologically entirely possible, it would still be weird. Sartre was significantly more communist than Camus, and in that light the choice of a Dodge Dart seems decidedly perverse. That, on the other hand, could in itself justify the choice, as Sartre was known to be very free in the sexual realm and experimented a lot. Also with drugs; why it should perhaps have been him involved in an accident. While that did not happen, it might have been because the whole Dart story was fabricated and Sartre probably did not drive cars any more than Camus did.
The thing is that the initial quote stems from the American magazine “Magic Bullet” from 1984. The magazine is actually worth a story in itself: Michael Norris wrote, published and distributed quite a few of these magazines, which were made more or less by hand and photocopied in the shop where he worked. The name “Magic Bullet” originated, among other things, from a communication theory which essentially makes the point, that if you simply fire off a message without either direction or recipient, then it would probably arrive somewhere with someone anyway.
The origin of the myth is the above snippet from Magic Bullet. Showing that it is not only a brilliant text, but a great context too. Genius, isn’t it?
A few years later, Magic Bullet became the first magazine to be released with Desktop Publishing technology on an early Macintosh and with graphics from an Amiga. You can also see that Norris’ original copies already had a surplus of some nerd humor – unbelievable that thirty years later I had never heard the joke with “cursor”.
On the other hand, I had never heard of the story with Sartre’s Dodge Dart either. The “Magic Bullet” theory here, paradoxically, has thus proved its worth: Some thirtysix years later, the message has arrived somewhere. What it exactly means and what to put up with it now is the next good question. But since Sartre was both a nihilist and is dead, he most certainly does not care…
