The Refusal

On October 22, 1964, the Swedish Academy announced that Jean-Paul Sartre had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Within hours, Sartre released a statement that shocked the world: he was refusing the prize. At fifty-nine, he was the most famous intellectual on the planet—philosopher, novelist, playwright, political activist. Now he was rejecting the highest honor literature could bestow.

In his apartment on rue Bonaparte, Sartre sat at his cluttered desk, pipe smoke curling around his head, his one good eye (the other had been blind since childhood) squinting through thick glasses at the statement he was drafting. Around him were the tools of his trade: ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, empty coffee cups, sheets of paper covered with his cramped handwriting, bottles of Corydrane (the amphetamine that fueled his superhuman productivity).

"A writer," he wrote, "should refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution." The Nobel Prize would make him a monument, and monuments were for the dead. He was still alive, still thinking, still capable of being wrong. To accept the prize would be to accept that his work was finished, that his ideas had crystallized into dogma. But existence preceded essence—he was still becoming, and would be until the moment of death.

Simone de Beauvoir entered without knocking—they had long ago dispensed with such formalities. "The press is going mad," she reported. "They're calling you ungrateful, arrogant, a publicity seeker."

Sartre laughed, his troll-like face creasing. "Good. If they understood, I'd worry I was being too clear. The bourgeoisie should be scandalized by a man who refuses their money and their honors. It proves I'm still dangerous."

But there was more to his refusal than political theater. Sartre understood that literature wasn't a career but a commitment. Every word was an action, every book a way of being in the world. The Nobel Prize would fossilize him into "Sartre the Nobel Laureate," when what mattered was remaining "Sartre the Question." He had spent his life arguing that humans were condemned to be free, that we must choose ourselves at every moment. Now, with the world watching, he was choosing: not the comfort of recognition but the discomfort of continued engagement.

As night fell over Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Sartre returned to his writing. Tomorrow there would be new controversies, new positions to take, new ways to disturb the peace. The prize money—250,000 Swedish kronor—would have been useful. But freedom, as he never tired of saying, was priceless.