Still, Pouillon reminds him in this interview, it wascontingency, not
violence, that was the capital experience of Sartre’s childhood. Sartre
responded that he mentioned the experience of contingency for the first
time among his entries in a blank notebook that he discovered in the
Metro advertising “Midi Suppositories,” probably intended for distri-
bution to doctors. Because the sections of the notebook were alphabet-
ized as in a directory, and perhaps recalling his systematic reading of the
Larousse Encyclopedia in his grandfather’s library (as well as presaging
the project of the self-taught humanist inNausea), the young student
systematically arranged his thoughts alphabetically, thus giving us some
inkling of the topics that interested him most at the age of 18. Curiously,
however, one finds under C no listing of “contingency” but two entries
for “cinema,” one of which is relatively long and probably provides notes
for his essay “Apologie pour le cine ́ma,” written several months later.^34
Sartre may simply have associated the experience of contingency with
other entries in this notebook, or, just as plausibly, with his childhood
movie-going. Recall that inWordshe speaks of his love of the cinema and
of his mother’s taking him to watch silent films. For in his interview with
Beauvoir he mentions an entry on contingency in theCahiers Midiand
recalls that his first experience of contingency occurred as he left the
movie theater with his mother. It was the contrast with the necessity of
the unfolding of events in the film that struck him with the contingency
of events on the street, including the superfluity of his own existence –
shades of Roquentin inNausea. He calls his entry in theCahiers“the
beginning of [my] thought about contingency” (Ce ́r 181 – 182 andWords
79 ). “In the streets I found myself superfluous” (surnume ́raire)(F 108 ).
During his third year at the ENS, Sartre even wrote a “Hymn to
Contingency,” which began “J’apporte l’oubli et j’apporte l’ennui” (Ce ́r
182 ). In effect, we have uncovered one of the basic insights/themes of
the future existentialist.
In the film interview Sartre clarifies the nature of his “neurosis”: “the
idea that, since the real was given to me by books, I would touch the real
and would give a deeper truth to the world if I wrote books myself ”
(^34) Jean-Paul Sartre,E ́crits de jeunesse. As the editors of Sartre’sEJobserve, a portion of the first
entry for “Cinema” is missing. It is possible that the entry on “Contingency” was on the
missing page (EJ 549 , note 1 to page 445 ). On the controverted dating of both the “Midi”
and the “Apologie” inEJ, see 439 and 385.
Four accounts of Sartre’s childhood 15