Dead Frechmen redux: Dead Frenchwomen

Simone de Beauvoir who was famed for her relationship with Chicago novelist Nelson Algren...alright Sartre was more famous, but that dude was an asshole.

La série des français morts continue... This time, we balance the ticket with a dead Frenchwoman, as promised. Simone is a very apropos choice in this attempt to gender balance. Simone de Beauvoir was an influential existentialist and feminist writing The Second Sex, a book which has a pretty good claim on being the greatest of feminist texts. She also chronicled the literarteurs of her age along with their triumphs and foibles in The Mandarins. She carried on a life long affair with Jean-Paul Sartre, and your humble blogger has heard that those two were real assholes when they got together. But then again, I've heard through third-hand literary gossip in the New Yorker and Harper's as all dilletantes must. So take that with a grain of salt. Seriously though, check it out...Simone de Beauvoir wrote some really good stuff, I think she was much more lucid and deffinately a better writer than Sartre.