Backlisted - The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

To discuss The Image of Her (1966) by Simone de Beauvoir we are joined by writer and translator Lauren Elkin, whose previous books include Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, Scaffolding and Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir was also a prolific novelist. In The Image of Her—newly translated by Elkin after more than forty years— reads like a dispatch from the smooth surface of a life coming quietly undone. Laurence is a successful advertising executive with a picture-perfect Parisian existence—handsome husband, lover, chic flat, weekends in the country—but when her daughter starts asking difficult questions about injustice, that surface begins to crack.We trace the novel’s shifting reception—from period piece to prescient critique—and consider Beauvoir’s voice as a novelist: ironic, exacting, and unexpectedly funny. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. The book featured in today's show is The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir, the 1966 novel just published in a new translation. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher at Boundless. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we welcome a new guest to backlisted the French and American writer and translator, Lauren Elkin. Good morning, Lauren. Good morning. Thank you so much for having me on. We're very pleased to have you here. Lauren is most recently the author of the novel Scaffolding,

a New York Times editor's choice, which the Observer called both quote, erudite and horny. Erudite and horny. Lauren, we did an event last year about scaffolding. I hope you were relieved that I didn't get on stage and go, Lauren, where'd you get your ideas from for your erudite and horny new novel? Why are they so horny? Yeah well I knew they'd be erudites. They are not so horny. Congratulations you're on the air. Brilliant that's perfect. So good for this novel may I say so. So good for this novel, may I say so? So on message. So on message. What's your son's name?

Julian. Say Andy says thanks, Julian. Andy says thanks. Yeah, okay, great. Her previous books include Art Monsters, Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art in 2023, Number 9192, Notes on a Parisian commute in 2021. And Flaneur's, women walk the city, which was a finalist for the 2018 Penn-Dimonstein-Spielvogel Award for the art of the essay,

a New York Times editor's choice, and notable book of 2017, a Radio 4 book of the week, and has appeared so far in nine languages. Lauren, as a translator yourself, do you scrupulously monitor other translations or do you kind of just let it go depending on who it is and where it is? LW unfortunately, I'm not in a position to scrupulously monitor any of the translations except for the French. The rest, I just sort of shrug my shoulders and hope for the best. Which is in itself a very French response.

As a translator herself, Lauren's work includes Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel. I'm going to say it's called The Inseparable's. Was it called Les Inseparables? It was indeed. Few. As well as work by Colombe Schneck, Michel Perrault, Constance de Bray, Lola Lafont and the book we are here to discuss today another novel by Simone de Beauvoir, The Image of Her, Les Belles Images, just published by Vintage. Lauren has taught literature and creative writing at New York University,

the American University of Paris, the University of Liverpool, and the Université de Paris Denis-Diderot. And we are delighted to welcome her to the show because on the front of her book scaffolding, she has got a quote from, which I asked you about last year, a quote from the great Deborah Levy, which describes you as the Susan Sontag of her generation, Lauren. When that quote arrived, did you insist it went on the cover or did you try to stop it going on the cover? So Deborah said that about Flanners, so I was overjoyed that she gave us that quote for that book. For scaffolding, they wanted me to ask Deborah for a new quote, but she was busy writing and I didn't want to bother her. And so they decided to reuse this quote that they had on, on, on the cover of

Flaunus and I wasn't wild about it. I did say, you know, like in the context of my nonfiction, that's amazing and very flattering, but Susan Sontag is sort of generally believed to have not been an amazing novelist, you know, like great essayist, so, so novelist. I kind of love the volcano. Put that on the cover of my novel when I'm, I had previously been established as a non-fiction writer who was making a foray into fiction. I was like, you know, if you know, you're going to kind of laugh. And if you don't know, you'll just be like, wow, what a great quote.

It is a great quote. Well, as we have previously mentioned, the book that we are here to discuss is the image of her by Simone de Beauvoir first published as Les Belle Images by Gallimard in 1966. It is the story of Laurence, a Parisian woman working in advertising. Lauren is very catchily and cleverly called it a Parisian woman working in advertising. Lauren is very catchily and cleverly called it a Parisian version of mad men, whose apparently comfortable bourgeois life has plunged into a series of existential crises.

First, her 10-year-old daughter is unable to sleep because of disturbing stories she's picked up from the news. Then her mother's rich and apparently ideal husband announces he is leaving her for a much younger woman. And finally, Laurence herself decides it's time to end an affair with a colleague at work. In Laurence's sparkling new English translation, the first for over 40 years, the book is a revelation. In 1966, Simone de Beauvoir was at the height of her powers as a storyteller, a philosopher, and a feminist. This novel draws on all three, as Laurence struggles to engage

emotionally with the problems facing her and the novel unfolds as a sustained inquiry into freedom as we watch her attempt to balance her responsibilities to her family, to society, and to herself. Torn between feelings of guilt and the desire for self-improvement, wanting to make the world a better place but seeming incapable of preventing herself from drifting through it. Laurence is a classic Beauvoir creation and her mid-20th century story feels relevant to the early 21st. Intrigued. It says in my script, intrigued. Intrigued? We hope so, and we'll be back to explore the book in detail after this message from our sponsors.

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You can subscribe for that at patreon.com forward slash backlisted and five years of superior book, film and music chat plus ad free early versions of the main show will be yours. Lauren, this is not the first time as we discussed that you've translated Beauvoir's writing. I wonder whether you could just give us a glimpse of when you first read her or became aware of her, about her work or her as a person, or can you not remember? Is it so ingrained in our consciousness now that it's hard to think when you didn't know

about Simone de Beauvoir? No, I remember really well actually, because when I first found out about Simone de Beauvoir, it was in a context where everyone else already knew who she was and how could I have never heard of her. I was a transfer student at Barnard College, which is the women's college of Columbia University. So very feminist hotbed full of fiery young feminists

or feminists in training. And I was transferring in from having been doing musical theatre previously at a conservatory in upstate New York. So I knew my Sondheim inside and out, but the feminist canon, not so much. So we were at the lunch table one day and someone was reading The Second Sex in one of their classes, their gender studies classes, and I was like,

what's that? And they were like, you've never heard of Simon de Beauvoir. Um, and I was like, okay, well, so I, I spent a lot of my time in those years playing catch up, um, to, you know, all these other brilliant young women who were so much better read than I was, even though I was a massive bookworm and, you know, had spent my teenage years with my nose in a book, I wasn't you know on stage or doing ballet so I just felt like there's this like major writer that I know nothing about and in order to be able to show my face in the Barnard cafeteria again I have to you know repair this immediately. I am beyond thrilled to learn the personal detail of your background in musical theatre.

Oh, my next book. It's all about my background in musical theatre. Yeah, it'll be out next year. Amazing. You are pushing on an open door at this podcast. You could not have said anything more likely to make Andy happy, Lauren. You know, we did a show about Sondheim. We did? You did a show about Sondheim? Oh my God, you should, yeah. It's one of my favorites that we ever did. Oh my God, when was that?

How did I miss that? About three or four years ago, I think. Yeah. Oh wow. Oh, I gotta hit the back list of backlisted. Just after Steve died, so. I am actually meant to be going to see the last Sondheim musical tonight at the National Theater.

I'm very envious. I'm very envious. I haven't seen it. Look, it's alright, Nikki. I'm not going to repeat my story about finding a signed copy of Sweeney Todd in a box in Liverpool. But Lauren, afterwards... I feel like I saw that on Instagram, maybe. Yeah, yeah. You just did. Yeah, I just did. Oh, sorry. Oops. Should the custodians of the Beauvoir estate

wish for the image of her to be turned into a Broadway musical, they know who to go to. So that's it. Oh yeah. I am here. I'm here for all your musical theater needs. Okay, so I want to ask you a translating question in a moment, but it seems to me I want to ask you a translating question in a moment, but it seems to me that Beauvoir's reputation

changes all the time, or I'm certainly old enough to remember when it was significantly different from what it is now. And I wonder whether that has been an experience that you've had over a number of years, or perhaps has changed as a result of working closely on her texts? I mean, I will say like years ago

when I was working on Beauvoir, I mean, I wrote about, I've written about her work, I guess since the Nautis, I remember like blogging about her youth diaries when they came out in France in like 2006, 2007, I want to say. There wasn't this sort of, I don't know, people who did not respond to me writing about Simone de Beauvoir, like she was this crucially important feminist. But I think that feminism was in a different place back then as well. I mean, since like, I don't know, 2010 and the kind of rise of like Beyonce-esque girl boss feminism.

Um, there was a real moment when being a feminist was like something you'd put on a t-shirt and wear to the coffee shop. And then obviously, you know, that sort of transformed and become a bit more subtle and more intersectionalist. Um, and so on the back of that, the reception of the inseparable's really stunned me because I was sort

of used to people just sort of taking her for granted and you know, she's this grand dame of the feminist movement and not necessarily super relevant now, but the inseparable did so well. And I mean, you know, there's a, there's a theatrical adaptation on in London as we speak. And, you know, I was just in Milan for the Miu Miu literary salon talking about

Simone de Beauvoir's The Inseparables with all these like actresses and influencers in the audience. So I do think as feminisms fortunes have changed and evolved and improved, so have Simone de Beauvoir's. That's very, very interesting. I think what I'd like to do now is, That's very, very interesting. I think what I'd like to do now is we always read a blurb on backlisted jacket copy, and it might be instructive if we were to compare and contrast the previous English language translation, which was published as Les Belzimages in the late 60s with the jacket copy that's on your translation this new edition. I'll read the 60s one and then Lauren,

you will compare and contrast. Here we go. This is great. I don't think I've ever actually seen this. Okay, here we go. So this is from the UK edition from 1968. This was published by Collins in the UK edition from 1968. This was published by Collins in the UK and it was translated by Patrick O'Brien. Yes, that Patrick O'Brien we are a subject we should be returning to in due course,

but here's the jacket copy for Libet de l'Image. In this new novel, Simone de Beauvoir presents us with a group of people from the very milieu which she has always most earnestly despised. Rich, clever, well-connected and superficially cultured, they preen their perfect images in the mirror of success, anxious above all to avoid unpleasantness of any kind entering their lives. What happens when the image is broken? The pretty picture destroyed by a child's insistent question, why do people live? Why above all do unhappy people live?

Laurence, forced to find an answer, is forced too to admit that the child has seen through the adult gloss. She finds herself fighting a lone battle against a world which threatens to stifle the questioning, caring spirit of her daughter. A world which averts its gaze from the poor, the unhappy, the jilted, the old, the hungry hungry to feast its eyes on the brilliant surface of its own reflection. So that's how they tried to persuade people to pick up the book in 1968. Lauren, please give us, come forward in time to 2025. Okay. How are we describing this book now?

Laurence is a woman who appears to live an ideal life. Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris, her life features all the trappings of 1960s French bourgeoisie. She has money, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though her mind unbidden writes copy while she's at home and dreams of domesticity in the office. But Laurence is a woman whose experience of life has always been overwritten by the expectation of perfection. It is only when her 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, starts to

vocalize her despair about the unfairness of the world, that Laurence begins to act, finally grappling with a life that prizes image over truth. Right. There you go. I'm gonna, right, okay, so we'll go, Lauren, you go first, although it's difficult. What is your impression of the differences or similarities between those two blurbs 60 odd years apart?

Well, the new one is much more pithy and much more conjuring up the sort of image of who these people are and what they're doing in order to sell the book. Like, oops, 1960s Paris, there you go. The other one is longer and feels more like a book report, but it also seems like it, for me anyway, it goes more to the heart of what the book is doing. That's interesting. That's very interesting. Mitch? I think you've got actually the blurb for the contemporary book and the whole look and feel of the contemporary book is placing it in a intelligent women's fiction context. It feels very contemporary,

doesn't really feel like the 1960s. Whereas the Patrick O'Brien makes me think rather nostalgically of where books used to be kind of described almost as sort of philosophical treaties, that there's a sense of it being placed within that kind of… My first experience of reading Samandabhavah was like a lot of people who are gender desire, through reading the work of Sarcha as a student, as a sort of 18-year-old excited about Camus and Sartre, and then suddenly discovering that there was this other voice that was... And I feel that Patrick O'Brien

blurb feels to me like it places it in that kind of 1960s French existential tradition. It makes it sound a lot more... a lot less obviously a book that people would pick up and read for the story. Well, I have, okay, that too is very interesting. My observation is, I think, pretty straightforward, which is, I think those two blurbs are very similar to one another. What's different is the emphasis that's put on what John has typified as what would have perhaps been presented as a human experience in the 1960s, and in the contemporary era is being presented as a woman's experience. And when we come on to looking at some of the reviews from the time, that for me is profoundly instructive

about how we read. Lauren, when we did our event about your novel, Skaffolding, which I love. I remember we had a conversation about the idea of ideas rising and falling, coming round again and again, but the context changing the meaning of those ideas. And reading this book, The Image of Her, I saw the extent to which scaffolding is in conversation with the image of her. I wonder if you could say a little bit about that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I hadn't read Les Belle Images when I wrote scaffolding, but I think that because I do have a background

in French, well, 20th century French literature, especially mid-century or, you know, sort of second half of the, but the Beauvoir century, let's say, Beauvoir's 20th century. I think that these questions about how women are meant to behave and comport themselves and live their lives and that the choices are the non-choices that they are meant to make when Beauvoir is writing. And I think this is a little parentheses. There's a kind of real shift in Beauvoir's thinking with the rise of the feminist movement in the early 1970s. So this she wrote, she published in 1966.

So this is still sort of the bovar of the second sex era, which came out in 1949. Obviously there's a big difference between 49 and 66. And she's really thinking about the failures of socialism to solve the problems for women. She sort of ends the second sex, putting all of her faith in this idea that once the class struggle is resolved and everyone has, you know, the right to work and have a meaningful existence,

you know, have their working conditions be sort of respected and improved, etc., that that will automatically solve the women's, the problem of women. But in the 1960s, the late 60s, as we get closer to the birth of the women's movement in France, you see her sort of moving away from that position and starting to think like, no, there are actually structural problems in the ways in which women live their lives that need to be addressed directly, that can't be solved through solving the class struggle. She moves from a Marxist to an explicitly feminist position. And I think in my own writing and writing scaffolding, I said it in two different time periods in 1972, it's sort of the heart of the French feminist movement and 2019 to compare the ways in which those issues are sort of the same but different. You know, Anna in 2019 is a sort

of post-feminist millennial. She just assumes that all of those questions have been resolved, and it's only in meeting this young, Gen Z feminist activist who's very inspired by these women of the 1970s to actually take action and go out into the streets and put up these feminist collages to call attention to violence against women, that Anna begins to understand the importance of direct action, the ways in which psychoanalysis, which is her own domain, has to be reconceived in a collective, I guess, what's the more political sort of perspective. Anyway, I don't know if any of that makes a whole lot

of sense. Yeah, totally. Quite a big subject. No, but it does, but what I'm interested in is that, so you're already thinking about that stuff when you're writing Scaffolding, and you come to this novel and it struck me that one of the challenges

for you as a translator is already what you've articulated about the jacket copy. How much do you wanna make this a period piece? How much is this, do you wanna make this like boutiques and discotheque? And how much do you want to make it speak right now to issues that people and which women are living with right now. Was that a choice you had to make or did it come naturally? It came very intuitively, but I will say that that's one big difference with the

Patrick O'Brien translation. And now I'm shifting from sort of issues of like positionality and marketing to like the translation itself. Patrick O'Brien's translation does something which a lot of translations used to do conventionally which is transform the French present tense into an English past tense. And so what that does for the image of her is it makes it sound like a story that's happened already

and is over. Whereas Beauvoir's writing is in the present tense, it's contemporary, it's happening right now. She's interested in the way women live right now. And the issues that she's describing in the image of her are obviously still very much with us today. And so, I mean, as a translator, I tend to be, I tend to hew closer to the French rather than transforming it into something that would be conventional in English, because I'm less interested in conventional novels and more interested in sort of giving the feel of what the writer gave us.

She taxed between present and first person and third person. She does. Which I think is, and sometimes even in the space of a paragraph, it's really, really interesting. Yeah, it can be really disjointing as you read, but I think it's so crucial to what this book is. And to the character delivering the kind of the struggle and the division in Laurence's own, her own kind of, right?

It's one of the things that really, really struck me. It's really cleverly done. Lauren, you're going to read a little bit to us in a moment. Can I just pick up, though, this idea of whether, as a translator, you approach the text as though it were a period piece or a contemporary text or you feel your way somewhere between the two. I mean, I had not read this novel before. I found it very interesting for all sorts of reasons, one of which is my own fields of expertise in the 1960s which I can see Beauvoir's novel as part of that. There's the scene in the novel with the car crash, or close call car crash, where her husband thinks she should have gone ahead and hit the person, because it would have saved on the...

800,000 francs. Yeah. Yeah. Really reminded me of the bit in Goddard's Weekend where the car explodes and across the bottom of the screen, if you're watching in English, comes the subtitle, My Hermes Handbag. Right? It has that kind of, there's a French intellectual mid-60s mistrust of American consumerism. They really don't like that stuff at all, do they?

Yeah, I think that that's a really interesting thing to pick up on. Yeah, the husband is like, you probably would have only broken his leg. He probably would have been fine. Yeah, and we would have saved the money. Yeah, exactly. No, I think that, you know, it's clear that this is what 1968 was revolting against. Yeah. It's very like technocratic, like progress will solve everything. Don't worry.

You're pretty little head. Soon machines will be running entitlement. Yeah, exactly. The sense of entitlement and like we're in charge because we're the ones who can think the deep thoughts about nuclear disarmament and the end of history and you know, the way that people should live in their, in their, in the buildings that

we're going to build for them. Yeah. Um, yeah, that is exactly what, you know, the workers and the students were rising up against. And what do you think is Beauvoir's opinion of, you made a comparison to Mad Men, what do you think de Beauvoir feels about the skill of writing advertising copy. Given that her protagonist is very good at doing this, what do you think the author thinks?

I think it's clear that it's satire. She's really good, Bouvard's really good at mimicking the thought process or the quote unquote creative process by which an advertising copywriter gets from the product you have to sell to the blurb that you use to sell it. But I think as is the case with so much satire, it's close enough that it passes for the thing it's trying to replicate or mimic, but there's enough daylight that you can

tell that it's an attack, it's a critique. So yeah, I think Beauvoir is interested in this woman's life and her problems and in her relationship to her children and this idea of how she's going to bring them up, what their future is going to be. But she's very hilarious. I mean, I don't think Beauvoir gets enough credit for how funny she is at like mocking the kind of work that Laurence has to do to have her financial independence. Yes, there's also a sense in which I think was very contemporary of by allowing Laurence to define the terms of the objects around her, she's also able to indicate that those are the limits. That's as good as something can get, the surface.

Everything she touches turns into an image. I love that line, you know, that she's kind of that thing of taking her work home. You know, that- It's so contemporary. Yeah. I mean, God, like I feel it myself. I, you know, would like to be like some big critic of social media and influencer culture and the way that we're forever kind of, you know, performing our lives to camera. But, you know, to get ready for this today, I took a little picture of myself with my headphones and I was like, I'm going to go record a podcast and here's the book I'm going to do it about.

Like we're no longer, well, I'm no longer living my life sort of, you know, as if no one's watching. Now there's this forever sense of like making a picture out of what I'm doing today. Podcasting is a mask that eats into the face. It's so true. Apologies to Updike. It's so true. Apologies to Updike. Well, didn't you think that on that though, the father is such an interesting character in the book as this kind of, until without spoiler alert, obviously, till the end of

the book, but he stands as this kind of, that thing that we're always looking for that authentic person standing outside the influencer culture who's plugged into older, more deeply rooted cultural mores. It's so contemporary. At one point, I think he says he's against sectarianism. If everybody tried a little bit, really tried, Lawrence thinks with regret, it wouldn't be so difficult to get along. Which is everybody on the social media all day at the moment, isn't it? Come on, can't we all try and get over these divisions? I just wish we could all get along.

That's it. That's the tone. Why can't. Yeah. Why can't we? That's Instagram to 2025 everybody. So when we come back, we're going to hear an extract from Le Belzimage, the image of her. But first, here is a word from our ruthlessly consumerist commodified sponsors. What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart

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Lauren, I asked you for a section of the book that you think highlights some of the special qualities of it. What have we got? Okay. So this is a scene from, I'm going to say it's sort of three quarters of the way in, but it doesn't have any spoilers. Don't worry. Where there's a, there's a New Year's Eve party and the various members of Laurence's family, minus the children, have come together and are sifting through some of the events of the book. Laurence's mother, Dominique, is one of these women whose entire life is a performance. Several times in the novel, Laurence looks at her and wonders who she's imitating today. She has very little sort of internal sense of self.

She's very wealthy, very well dressed. Doesn't wear Chanel because she thinks Chanel makes it look like you got dressed at the flea market. She wears like much more kind of soigné and sophisticated clothing. She's recently been broken up with by her very rich boyfriend for a much younger woman, like a 19 year old woman. So Dominique sort of lays out some of the main issues in this book around, um, women and aging and beauty. Um, and how we raise, how women raise their daughters.

Yeah. Cause she's like 51, right? I mean, it's, yeah, I know. Oh my God. She's only a few years older than me. Like that's daughters. Yeah. Cause she's like 51, right? I mean, it's- Yeah, I know. Oh my God. She's only a few years older than me. Like that's crazy. Crazy. She's actually like an occasion for some of the best humor in the book, I think.

Okay. So I'll just get to it. Usually they spend New Year's Eve at Marz. Housewives prerogative, I have all the time in the world, she says smugly. Hubert and Jean-Charles split the costs, though there is often friction between them, as Hubert is a cheapskate, it's true he doesn't make a fortune, and Jean-Charles doesn't want to have to pay more than his brother-in-law. The previous year the dinner was pretty pathetic. Tonight it should be alright, Laurence concludes after examining the loaded buffet in the corner of the living room, which Marte has Christmasified with candles, a small Christmas tree, a sprig

of mistletoe, some holly, tinsel and coloured lights. Their father brought four bottles of champagne given to him by a friend from Reims and Dominique an enormous foie gras from Perrigord. So much better than foie gras from Strasbourg, the best foie gras in all of France. With the beuf en daube, the rice salad, the nibbles, the fruit, the petit four, the bottles of wine and whiskey, there's more than enough to eat and drink for 10 people. The other years, Dominique spent the Christmas holidays with Gilbert. It was Laurence's idea to invite her tonight. She asked her father, you won't be too put out.

She's so alone, so unhappy. It's all the same to me. No one knew the details, but everyone knew about the breakup. The Dufresnes were there, brought by Jean-Charles, and Henri and Thérèse Villeneaux, friends of Hubert. Dominique was family party ready, dressed like a young grandmother in a simple honey-coloured jersey dress, her hair more white than blonde. She smiled sweetly, almost timidly, and spoke very slowly. She's been taking too many tranquilizers, which makes her seem so numb.

As soon as she's alone, her face falls. Laurence goes to her. How was your week? Not too bad. I slept fairly well. Mechanical smile. It looks as though she's pulling up the corners of her mouth with two little strings. Then she lets them go. I've decided to sell the house at Feuvreul. I can't keep a big operation like that going all by myself. That's too bad. If only we could figure something out. What would be the point? Who would I have over now? All the interesting people, Houdin, the Tyrrion, the Verdelais, Gilbert's the one they came to see. They would come to see you.

Do you believe that? You still don't know much about life. In social terms, a woman is nothing without a man. Not you, come on. You have a name. You are someone. Dominique shakes her head. Even with a name, a woman without a man is basically a failure, a kind of outcast. I see how people look at me now. Believe me, it's nothing at all like before. This is one of Dominique's obsessions, abandonment. A record is playing. Thérèse is dancing with Hubert, Marthe with Vianot, Jean-Charles with Gisèle,

and Dufresne extends a hand to Laurence. They all dance very badly. I'll stop there. Thank you so much. So good. Yeah, pleasure. I would find it very difficult to pin that to a particular era. Yeah, definitely. But stylistically as well, right? Yeah.

Does that feel of its time? It doesn't really seem to me. Not really. There's a bit in the dialogue that's a bit stilted or kind of sixties-ish, especially in the exchange with, um, Laurence's mother with Dominique. I was trying to make it feel very kind of fluid, but I also wanted to keep an element of that feeling like, you know, these are not people who are living today.

Like it didn't, didn't want it to feel too comfortable and slangy. Well, it has that kind of universal quality that, you know, when Bunuel writes, shoots those, those kind of French middle-class, there's, there's just enough about it that's slightly unnerving as well, I think, all the way through. I don't know whether that's there in the French novel, but you feel that they are all to some extent playing bourgeois family roles, and it's all underneath the surface, it's all beginning to fall apart. I don't know.

Oh yeah, completely. There's a Benioir reference at one point in the book as well. You can tell Beauvoir has been watching his films. Lauren, is Beauvoir a writer who has a characteristic style, or does she change significantly from book to book? Does the subject matter dictate the style, or do you always know it's de Beauvoir?

Sorry Beauvoir when you when you pick one up? I'm not sure her style is notable enough that you'd be like, okay I know whose voice this is but I do think that you can put her books together and see that they belong to each other it's something about the kind of perspective the like they belong to each other. It's something about the kind of perspective, the anti-bourgeois, but deeply ensconced in bourgeois life. You can tell she's been raised in this milieu, but loathes it. And that is something that you see across her novels and a kind of insistence on freedom and action. And people are always studied in terms of how

free they are or what they need to do to become more free. This book is a departure in the sense that, as John was saying before, it's very experimental in terms of its voice, the way it switches between the third and the first person. And there's been some suggestion that she was dabbling in a nouveau roman, which she generally was not very interested in because it tended to be not political enough, not engagé enough. But I think that, you know, like you could, you would never look at like the work of Marguerite Duras and be like, this isn't political enough. So I think that there's sort of a false opposition in some narratives of 60s French writing that, that sets them on either side, the

Nouveau Roman and the Roman Engagé. But this is, Beauvoir is kind of nod at like doing what's trendy at the time. And she's in her late 50s, of course, at this point. She's born in 08, isn't she? And so this is published in France when she's 58. It's interesting, the contemporary reviews make a lot of her as the voice of a previous generation. Interesting. Why do we need somebody from the 30s and 40s to tell us now that we live in the age of youth and we know what's what's sorted.

This is what brings scaffolding back to mind, Lauren. The extent to which problems tend to recur, but ways of thinking about them change, depending on who's around to do the thinking. Can you just confirm for me, you do quite like the Patrick O'Brien translation. Yeah, I think it's fine. I mean, it needed updating, but it's fine. I don't, I was just rereading The Woman Destroyed yesterday. That was actually the first Beauvoir book I ever

read. That was the one that I started with because we did it in my French class, but we'd read it in French. So this was my first time looking at it in English. And it's, it's good, but you can tell it's, it's of its time. It's dated. It was done at the same time as the books. It's very interesting to read as a kind of document of, you know, translation imperatives of the day and, and, you know, what Beauvoir would have sounded like to an English speaking person back then. But yeah, I mean, it's not certainly not the last word. I was not aware that Patrick O'Brien, yes, that Patrick O'Brien, I'm saying again, was her translator into English of choice for the latter part of her career. I think I'm right in saying, I think he translates and she's, she works with him,

I assume on at least half a dozen books. LS Yeah. I mean, she had had such a bad time with the second sex translated into English by a zoologist. So I think she wanted someone who was a little more on her wavelength. CB Patrick O'Brien went on to be the creator of the Aubrey Maturin series of nautical novels, such as Master and Commander, which are lauded for their historical accuracy. So your translation removed all references that he put into Simone de Beauvoir to rigging and mane braces, which was an excellent... It was just very distracting.

But although the translation needed updating, she was read, wasn't she, in English-speaking countries from the second sex onwards. Her novels and her other books are published relatively contemporaneously, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, I'm not as familiar with her reception in the English-speaking world. I know that in France, it was a big scandal. She was a very scandalous figure. They called her a lesbian and a troublemaker. So it took a while for her to gain respect in France. I'm not sure how it was here or in the States.

Well, there's a review of Les Belzimages from 1968 by Anthony Burgess that I'm not going to read out because it's, I can't be arsed honestly. It's like the all the usual old bluster from Burgess, I can't be bothered with it. But I do have a review by somebody else that I will share with you because I thought this was quite a good review and we normally tend to slightly roll our eyes when this gentleman appears on backlisted. But he's got it right here I think. I'll just read the first couple of paragraphs, see if you can name him. In the Times in 1968, reviewing Le Belzimage by Simone de Beauvoir. One associates Madame de Beauvoir with massive tomes of sociology, but her account of her mother's death in her autobiographical A A Very Easy Death, and her novel, The Mandarin's, have shown her as equally at home in the world of feeling.

Le Belzimage is little more than a long short story, or perhaps seems no more because of its consistent readability. It is a book for one sitting, which will disappear if another member of the family picks it up. The theme is the impact of the real world, the world of hunger, cancer, Vietnam and loneliness, on a successful little group of rich bourgeois who are determined to keep it out. The infection enters through

a child of 12, it says here, Catherine, who asks her mother awkward questions under the influence of an older school friend, a Jewish orphan. Catherine's mother, Laurence, is sitting pretty at the heart of this heartless society, with a conventional and attractive husband, Jean-Charles, an architect, and a lover, Lucien, who works with her in an advertising agency. Laurence's mother, Dominique, a well-known radio personality, has for long been the mistress of Gilbert, an electronics tycoon. Laurence's father, discarded by Dominique, is outside the group. He is a cultural fossil of the 20s, who lives alone and likes it. A mild version of Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle left behind by the barbarous modern world. It's a very positive review. It's

a very thoughtful review. It's a very English review of a terribly French novel. Who was it for five points? No idea. We've mentioned him, but we mentioned him often on this show. If an important novel was reviewed in the 60s and 70s, it was often by... Yeah, but it's not Burgess because we've already discounted him. So who else can it be? It was, it was, it was not Graham Greene. It was the patronizing saint himself, Cyril Connolly. Cyril Connolly. Yeah. Yeah. And that, but that review is very interesting, Lauren, because once again, it approaches the novel from a different cultural and ideological perspective than we would deal with it now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, patronizing is absolutely right though, isn't it? It's kind of... I don't understand. It's a very curious thing that if you put it down,

somebody picks it up, you'll never pick it up again. Is it sort of like... No, it's nice. It's nice. No, he's being nice. He's saying, don't leave it lying around. Because people will get, it's a page turner. Yes. I'm not sure that's true, but, but, um, Lauren, I asked you if you would be kind enough to share a passage in French. Uh, and then I will attempt to translate it. But I promise you

in advance it's going to be a car crash, but anyway, we'll give it a go. And then Lauren, could you talk us through what the issues were with this passage? I think that would be really interesting. Okay. All the anxiety disappeared when a little later, Lauren is sitting in front of her table. She's just a little tired, stunned by the big air, ready for these vague abominations that Dominique has taken on. Don't stay there, Revassé, do something! And that she forbids herself now.

I have to find this idea, she says, as she uncovers her pen. Il faut que je trouve cette idée, se dit-elle en dévissant son stylo. Quelle jolie image publicitaire promettant au profit d'un marchand de meubles, d'un chemisier, d'un fleuriste. La sécurité, le bonheur, le couple qui marche sur le trottoir, l'engin le parapet dans le débrouissement des arbres, contemple au passage l'intérieur idéal. in the misty trees, contemplates in passing the ideal interior. Under the lamp, the young and elegant man in his Angora sweater, who reads a magazine of a careful air. The young woman sitting at her table, a pen in her hand. The harmony of blacks, reds and yellows, so well brought out, by chance, to the reds and yellows so well out, lucky luck, to the red and yellow of Dalia. Earlier, when I picked them up,

they were living flowers. Laurence thinks of this king who changed everything he touched in gold, and his little girl had become a magnificent metal doll. Everything she touches changes in image. With the wooden panels, you allied to the elegant citadine all the poetry of the forests. She appears through the foliage, the black clappiness of the river, a boat passing by, looking through the reefs with her white gaze. The light shatters the windows, it brutally lights the saddened souls. Image of the past for me that follows the image of their tender future,

with the children who are sleeping in the rooms in the back. Children slide into a hollow tree and they find themselves in a beautiful room with natural wood panels. Idea to follow. It has always been an image. and she is in a charming room with natural wood panels. Idea to follow. She has always been an image. doing this, if we have the opportunity on Backlisted, it's so good to hear the pros in its original form, right? So that we can hear the rhythms of it. I mean, in terms of what you've just read, I want to reassure listeners that I've certainly got the word

pullover covered, but I'm not terribly confident. But anyway. And also the quote that I'd pulled out of your translation was buried in it. It was everything she touches turns into an image. Well, we will get we will ask Lauren to read her translation this bit. But I will just I mean, I'm going to give you. So the opening is. All worry disappeared when a little later, Laurence installed herself at the table.

She is just a little tired. Et tu dis, I don't know, by Le Grand D'Air. Vague bandage is one of those words I feel I ought to know. It's already falling apart, Lauren. That's why I'm saying, that's why they didn't commission me to do this. What could you, so tell us, what are the challenges of that particular passage

or the challenges of this novel in terms of the changing of tenses and first and third person for a start? Well, for one thing I had to figure out a way to do her like French advertising speak in English. That's probably the biggest challenge is I had to channel my own inner Don Draper. How to do that. Do you want me to read the translation so people know what that all meant? Yes. Okay. A little while later, all her anxiety fades away when Laurent sits down at her table.

She's just a bit tired, dazed from all that fresh air, the kind of state in which her mind begins to wander, which Dominique used to interrupt briskly, don't just sit there and de-dream, do something. The kind of mood that lately she had forbidden herself from indulging in. I have to come up with an idea, she says to herself, unscrewing the cap from her pen. What a pretty picture all this must make, promising to the benefit of some furniture designer or shirt maker or florist. Security, happiness. Okay. And now this next bit is where I did have to kind of go through a couple of drafts.

Um, cause it was hard to understand. There's a lot of back and forth between what Laurence is imagining and what we're actually seeing, and then it shifts very quickly to that advertising speak. So I'll continue. A couple walking below along the parapet as the trees whisper overhead will be able to look in on this idealized interior. Lamplight, a young elegant man in an Angora wool jumper, attentively reading a magazine. And a young woman sitting at her her desk a pen in her hand. The harmony of blacks, reds and yellows nicely complimenting, oh happy chance, the red and yellow dahlias.

So I'll stop there just to reflect on this a little bit. There's that parenthetical in French, it says heureux hasard. And then I've maybe sort of over-translated there in saying heureux hasard, which is like just, you know, totally by chance. I've said, oh, happy chance. In that over-translating, I'm sort of inflecting it with Laurence's sort of happy little joy that these things go so nicely together. So that's not necessarily in that oh isn't in the French, but it's me sort of giving us a bit more voice. Earlier when I cut them, they were living flowers. L'orance thinks of the king who turned all he touched to gold, even his daughter, who became a resplendent metal doll. Everything she touches turns into an image.

Wood paneling, where urban chic meets the poetry of the forest. I had so much fun with that. I didn't keep my drafts, but it was a lot of fun. Yeah. That's brilliant. Yeah. L'Elegance Citadine. Um, yeah, like, so it's elegance, not chic in

English, but you know, I thought urban chic was something that, that you might hear in an ad. Through the leaves, she glimpses the water, blackly lapping. Oh, I was so proud of my blackly lapping. That's funny. Um, so in an ad. Through the leaves, she glimpses the water blackly lapping. Oh, I was so proud of my blackly lapping. So in the French, it's le noir clapotis du fleuve. So I tried to keep the clapotis of the blackly lapping that like, a boat passes by searching the banks with its white gaze. It's light splashes on the windows. So there in French, uh, where is that?

La Lumiere Eclabousse. Eclabousse is a kind of splashing. And I like the way she sort of keeps the, it could be an explosion or a splash. And I like that kind of the way that the light is like water, brutally illuminating. And then that's a very different register. She says, like a light has been shown too

brightly on these lovers, um, walking arm in arm, a flash of the past for me, just as I am now the tender image of their future. That's right. So that also was an interesting kind of back and forth between looking at them and then looking at herself as they would see her. Um, with the children, they might guess are asleep in the bedrooms at the back of the flat.

Children will feel as though they've climbed into a hollow tree in their delightful bedroom with natural wood paddling. Wood paddling, right. Idée à suivre. Um, and that in the French, idée à suivre is like, like note to self, like it's very short and dry, but I've given it an idea worth considering. And then it just ends on she has always been a picture. That's so fascinating.

I'm sure everyone listening to this will be absolutely fascinated by that. Can I ask you Lauren, like we talked about Sondheim a bit earlier. Now Sondheim would approach, often approach a lyric like it was a puzzle. You know, what was the bits that he can shift around? What word can he use? He's got to find the right word, the right rhyme, all that. But he said it would also drive him slightly crazy. As a translator, do you find this a stimulating exercise or do you have to stop before it becomes an infuriating one? I don't think I've ever been infuriated by a translation. I do really like doing it.

I used to do it in the evenings, so I'd work all day, take care of my kid and then translate at night. But the last couple of years, I've, I've just like very tired or something. So I need to give my like daylight energy to it. It's taken much more. It's taken up more place now in my work life than it used to. And so I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if that's fatigue or just translation has become more

important to me as a practice, but yeah, it's, it is like a great, I love that Sondheim reference. It is like a great, I love that Sondheim reference. It is like a great puzzle, trying to, I don't know, I think, as I said before, I do like to stay close to the French in terms of the feel of it and the tense and the voice. Um, but I also like it to work in, on its own terms.

So I take certain liberties, um, that I hope don't depart too much from where the French is. And sometimes if I'm working with a living writer, they're happy for me to do that. And they're like, just, you know, go, go for it. But when you're working with the text like this, which is, you know, by this canonical author and it's already appeared in English once, there's

much more of an obligation to do it true to the text, but then there is also another translation. So, you know, that, that can be the sort of translation of record that both are approved. And then I can maybe do something that feels a bit more, um, contemporary. So interesting. Do you, do you feel, you know, we mentioned Susan Sontag earlier and, uh, Susan Sontag known obviously as an essayist and a thinker, more than perhaps as a novelist. How important do you think fiction was to Beauvoir? Because I mean, I suppose if you know that somebody is also, who's written The Second Sex and is kind of identified with as a philosopher, there's always a slight tendency to think that they are

using fiction as a series of formal exercises in which to explore their philosophical themes and you could definitely say this book is a lot to do with choice and freedom. But I think I feel that she's a better novelist than that. Yeah, I agree. There's something about the fiction that sort of she can't do in her prose, however intersectional she tries to be and inclusive in kind of signing up, you know, Marxism and quite extreme forms of Marxism in the later 60s and early 70s.

But there's something in the fiction that really feels really true. And also, the other thing I was wondering is why this had been out of, had not been, had sort of languished on Batlist, why it hadn't been brought out sooner, and indeed the previous book that you translated. Yeah, I think, you know, I do, I agree with you that Beauvoir is actually a wonderful novelist and she saw herself really as a fiction writer. I mean, not that that took, like, preeminence for her over her nonfiction writing, but she did feel that she had thrown her lot in with fiction. And she thought that Sartre should have done more

fiction. She thought that that was like just a very, what's a good word, like fertile place for the working out of their ideas. And not that the novel has to be like a laboratory for the nonfiction, but you know, these, she was really interested in real people and how they lived. And I mean, I think part of that was having seen what happened to her friend Zaza, who was her best friend throughout childhood and then was part of, you know, the story she tells in the inseparables was just belonged to this very fancy upper class French family. And they basically, in her view, they killed her. I mean, she, she died of, you know, a kind of virus, like chance virus that she happened

to catch, but she thought that her family kind of wore her down and broke her spirit. And so I think because she'd seen this kind of life or death experience firsthand, it never left her. And so she wanted to write about women's lives and she was a wonderful and prolific researcher, but she also wanted to just like inhabit them from within and try to think her way through their circumstances. In terms of why the book kind of languished, I wish I could tell you, I really think that there's a sense that she's appeared in

translation and we can go to those translations if we want to read her and that's fine. Um, but there, but then you actually go to those translations and you say, these are not quite what they need to be. I think you need a woman, you need a feminist, you need someone who has the experience of being a woman that was so important to Simon de Beauvoir in order to like

bring these books fully into English. They're fine, the Patrick O'Brien translations, but yeah, but they're not enough. That's great. Could I read just a little bit because I think one of the things that so stands out about this book for me is, although it's set in 1966, there's something, and it may be in the way that you translated it, but it feels very contemporary because this is a bit about when she's looking at the books that her husband in one of the, as I say, this sort of mansplaining theme that runs through the novel had given her, and this idea of the future that they've all bought into. Because I think with AI debates raging around at the moment, I think this is reading this from 1966. It's over 50. It must be getting on for 60 years ago, isn't it,

when it was written. But I just think Lawrence scrutinizes the books Jean-Charles has recommended. He laughed. So you've made up your mind. That makes me so happy. You'll see that all the same we're living through a fairly extraordinary period. She flipped through them. She looked at their conclusions. So good. They said the same as Jean-Charles and Gilbert. Everything is better than it was before and everything will be better in the future. Some countries are off to a bad start, sub-Saharan Africa for instance. The population boom in China and the rest of Asia is worrying.

However, thanks to synthetic proteins, contraception, automation and nuclear energy, we can assume that by 1990 we will be seeing a civilization marked by abundance and leisure. The earth will be united, perhaps even speaking, thanks to automatic translations, a universal language. Men will eat when they're hungry. They will work a tiny percentage of the time. There'll be no more pain or illness. Catherine will still be young in 1990, but she wants to be reassured today about what's going on all around her. They need other books with other points of view. Which ones?

Froust can't help me, neither can Fitzgerald. Yesterday I stood in front of the window display at a large bookshop. Crowds and power, the color curtain, the social pathology of enterprise, psychoanalysis of the sexual functions of women, America and the Americas, towards a French military doctrine, a new working class, a new class of workers,

the space adventure, logic and structure, Iran. Where to start? And this is the killer. I didn't go in. It's just a wonderful, very funny pat. I mean, it's, I think, I think, I think she means us to laugh. As you said, Lauren, I think that's one of the things I really, really loved about this book. And I think your translations, you've, you know, the humor really, really comes

out of it. Lauren, when you were translating, you were talking about the humor in Beauvoir's work. Were you thinking, oh, this is fun. I get to try and land these gags on her behalf. So those book titles were funny. We were all laughing, but you must have thought, you know, I have to find the way to let people know that I think this is funny because I believe she intended it to be funny. Oh yeah, a hundred percent. And it's all in the timing and the pacing.

So you have to make sure it's like tight and almost like you can imagine it being in a film or a television show or something. Like you have to hear it in your ear, the way that it's funny and the way that it lands on the page. Good to know that comedy is rhythm in translation. That's good to hear.

That's great. John, why don't you take us out? That's, I'm afraid, where we must wish. Laurence and her powerful tale, à bientôt. Thanks to Lauren for joining us and bringing back such an important and relevant novel and to our producer, Nicky Birch, as ever, for turning our disparate sounds into très bon mots.

If you would like show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 238 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. If you wish to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our bookshop at bookshop.org and choose backlisted. And do subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash backlisted. Remember, if you subscribe at the lot listener level, you'll get two extra podcasts every month. The next one will feature Andy, Nick and I talking about this show and recommending other books, films and music we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. People who subscribe at this level

also, I'm afraid, get their names read out like this. Jacqueline Brance, thank you. Paul Decombas, thank you. Lindsay Hanley, thank you. Thanks Lindsay. Yeah, Bob Jeffries, also known as Chris Chibnall, former guest. Thank you. Thank you Bob. Bob. Thank you too. Adrian Fry, Hannah Raskin. Thank you. Anna Twigg. Thanks, Anna. I don't know what Anna Twigg's other half, what their name is, but a subscription at Lock Listener level was one of Anna's birthday presents this year. So thanks, both of you. And thanks to Maggie Hughes. Thank you so much. Before we go, Lauren, is there anything else

you'd like to say about the image of her or Simone de Beauvoir or anything, any message you have for potential readers of this book that we didn't cover in the show? Just that it's a really wonderful book and the more I talk about it in settings like this, the more proud I am of having done it and you know the more I realized like it's just a very special novel and so please pick it up. You don't have to read it all in one sitting, Contra Cyril Connolly. You can take your time. It is a work of erudition,

but we shall leave the question of its horniness open to debate. Thank you. Oh, I love, also, yeah, I have to say it's full of really good one-liners. I was, I just, one that struck me, which I, as you know, Andy, I've seen your post it notes all through the book, but I love this one when she's reflecting it.

I think it's just after the car accident, the car being totally, the car hasn't been, you know, it's totally wrecked, it's a write-off. But she looks at her husband and says, the real reason, the only reason is that love is tedious if you're no longer in it all that wasted time. I just thought that's such a brilliant little mid-marriage kind of observation. Love is tedious if you're no longer in it all that wasted time. I just thought that was such a brilliant little mid-marriage kind of observation. Love is tedious if you're no longer in it all that wasted time. Also you kind of, Lauren, you'd kind of know it was a French novel from that. Oh yeah. Oh wait. Very, very good. Lauren, thank you so much. So much brilliant. It's absolutely fascinating to get a translated perspective as well. And listen everybody, we'll see you in a fortnight.

Cheerio, bye bye.