Le Document – Issue Four
“Everything has been figured out, except how to live” observed Jean-Paul Sartre. Here at Le Document we may not have all the answers but we definitely have half a dozen questions. Bon Chance to everyone who takes part in Le Document quiz. Even if you don’t score that much, you’re not a loser, because you have access to the latest and greatest issue of Le Document which, for this month only, has a French theme.
Vive Le Document
Le Grand Quiz
Part One: The Multiple Answer Round
Question One
In 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre tried to refuse the Nobel Prize in Literature. Did he do this because
A) He claimed that recent winners had been such flawed people the prize now seemed no big deal?
B) He claimed that a writer should “not allow himself to be turned into an institution”?
C) He claimed "that a prize couldn't combat loneliness let alone cure cancer"?
D) He claimed he didn't need one as he had an Aunt who had one already?
Question Two
According to Sarah Blakewell, the author of At The Existentialist Cafe, although Sartre and De Beauvoir were partners for 50 years they both had many other lovers and that De Beauvoir would pass on her young student conquests on to Sartre. In 1945 J.P. tempted young women to his room by...
A) Offering them any book from his shelf to keep forever?
B) Offering them a sniff of his Camembert cheese?
C) Claiming that he had an extremely long tongue and that he could hold his breath for almost ten minutes?
D) Claiming that he could impersonate the Hollywood actor James Cagney?
Question Three
In 1945 Sartre published a journal. Was his publication called,
A) “Le Temps Modernes” (after the Charlie Chaplin film, Modern Times)
B) “Le Document” (a kind of monthly round-up of what was happening in Paris)
C) “Les Mots” (a reference to the fact his journal was just words and no images)
D) “Nothing and Everything Forever”
Question Four
Which of these statements did Sartre write in a letter in 1944:
A) “I wish, above everything that I could own a horse that I could ride around Paris.”
B) “Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.”
C) “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”
D) “We were never so free as under the German Occupation... each thought was a conquest; as an all powerful police sought to silence us, each word became as precious as a declaration of principle; as we were pursued, each gesture had the weight of an engagement.”
JPS on a book cover …
Answers
Q1: the answer is B
Q2: the answer is B
Q3: the answer is A
Q4: the answer is D
The True or False? round
Statement A
Napoleon may well be the most famous French person of all time but he wasn't actually born in France?
Statement B
The term, ‘A Napoleon Complex’ is a description of an inferiority complex whereby short men attempt to over achieve because they are hung up about their lack of height. However Napoleon Bonaparte was actually 5 foot 6 inches tall and therefore wasn't “vertically challenged”?
Statement C
Marcel Duchamp didn’t own any souvenirs. He had a bed to sleep in, a chair and a packing crate that served as a table, but no souvenirs”?
Statement D
The word ‘souvenir’ doesn't appear in the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare or in the novels of Charles Dickens. Souvenir is a modern French verb that means to remember.
Statement E
According to the Guinness Book of Records, Bridget Bardot has been on the cover of more magazines than any other person alive today?
Statement F
In the U.K. the percentage of people who are vegetarian is about 8% which is roughly the same percentage of vegetarians you’d find in Belgium, Italy, Austria and Poland, but in France the percentage of vegetarians is quite a lot less?
Statement G
The French consume 162.5 million bottles of Champagne every year?
Statement H
Aretha Franklin said Charles Aznavour was France’s only soul singer. The man who wrote the lyrics to his big hit ‘She’ was called Herbert and he also came up with the words of Peter Sellers song, Goodness Gracious Me?
… Bridget Bardot on the cover of Le Document
Answers
Statement A is true
Napoleon came from Corsica.
Statement B is true
There was a misunderstanding that arose from the fact that at the time of his life a French inch was smaller than an inch elsewhere in the world.
Statement C is true
The info is based on a letter sent by his first wife Lydie Sarazin.
Statement D is true
The whole concept of a tacky souvenir shop is a modern thing invented by British and American tourists.
Statement E is true
Statement F is true
— only 5% of France are vegetarians.
Statement G is true
Statement H is true
The words to She were written by Herbert Kretzmer who also wrote the lyrics to Les Misérables.
Cover image Vive Le Document by Chris Tosic
web: www.christosic.com
instagram: @chris_tosic
