Three Existentialists in Search of America

In April 1947, Simone de Beauvoir wrote from New York to Jean-Paul Sartre in Paris with the glad tidings that she would soon be returning to France and was looking forward to a joyful reunion. Maybe they could go away somewhere together, just the two of them, in May, by way of rapprochement after several months apart? Sartre wrote back hastily to the effect that he was having a lovely time with another woman and could “Beaver” kindly delay her flight to enable him to extend the tryst.