Alexandra Schwartz on Joan Acocella's "The Frog and the Crocodile"

"Acocella's essay deals with the improbable five-year affair between the Left Bank philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and the tough-guy Chicago writer Nelson Algren-its title comes from their pet names for each other-and was occasioned by the posthumous publication of Beauvoir's love letters. Acocella begins with a block quote from one of the letters, a rarely attempted flex that may be the critic's equivalent of opening a song with the bridge."

""The Frog and the Crocodile" was published in 1998, in an issue whose theme was private lives. This sounds fun, and it is. Beauvoir's letters show a softer, surprisingly endearing side of the pioneering feminist, and Acocella mines them for the delightful and the dirty. The same formidable woman who produced " The Second Sex" and " The Ethics of Ambiguity " also declared herself Algren's "own little love token," enthusing over his "peculia"

Joan Acocella balances sophisticated thought with plain, humorous language that makes criticism pleasurable to read. She earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature and left academia for magazines, joining The New Yorker in 1992 during Tina Brown's editorship. Acocella's essay 'The Frog and the Crocodile' examines the five-year affair between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren, prompted by the posthumous publication of Beauvoir's love letters. Acocella opens with a block quote of a Beauvoir letter and offers blunt interpretation, noting 'He will hate her.' The essay highlights Beauvoir's unexpectedly tender and bawdy expressions alongside her major philosophical works.

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