Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

Writers born under the sign of the crab, the strongest and most feminine of the water signs, reveal an emotional sensitivity hidden under a hard shell. The tension between outer toughness and inner vulnerability in the nature makes Cancers masters of the art of passive resistance, or in literary terms, of a rhetorical persuasiveness masked either by overt simplicity of style (Hemingway) or by defensive complexity like that of Jean Paul Sartre (pictured here). Sartre is known as the founder of the existentialist philosophy in modern culture.

-- The Literary Almanac

Pub Date: 7/05/98