A House of the Dead

By Scott McLemee. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre involves three characters who are condemned to spend their afterlives together in a shabby but not especially uncomfortable room -- “condemned” because it’s the Devil himself who brings them together. Evidently some kind of infernal algorithm has been used to select the group, designed to create optimal misery. Sartre’s dialogue is quite efficient: we soon learn the broad outlines of their time on Earth and how it was shaped by wishful thinking and self-deception. Read more...