On this day in 1964, the existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize for Literature. I have to respect that. The fancy lads in Stockholm were like, “Hey, little monkey, we like your little monkey dance so here’s a big fat monkey treat. Keep on dancing!” And Sartre was like, “You should have given me more time to think about it, but since you didn’t, you can shove your prize.” Now, with that kind of attitude, it’s easy to think that Jean-Paul liked a drink or two. And you’d be right. Have you ever met a French existentialist who didn’t pour it down like there was no tomorrow, because, you know, there just might not be? Sartre drank wine every day, then would crank up his act every two weeks or so, just to clear out the cobwebs, and I quote: “When we decided to go on a binge, we really did, to the point of rolling on the floor, maybe once every 15 days or so, but not out of depression. For me, it was to empty or purify myself, to get rid of all that tension from all that work.” And if that isn’t existential enough for you, here’s something he jotted down in 1956, when defining the Second Ekstases to Nihilation: “To drink or to be drinking means never to have finished drinking, to have still to be drinking beyond the drinking which I am.” Boom! Top that, Camus.
