Friendships

This chapter explores how friendships had always mattered a great deal to Nathalie Sarraute and points out how it constituted the emotional focus of her life. It recounts Nathalie's feeling of enormous loss when Lena Liber died in March 1961, just as she was emerging from tuberculosis (TB) and her own brush with death. It also mentions how Nathalie took Lena's spectacles with her to the United States in 1964 and wore them to deliver her lectures as a kind of talisman. The chapter details how Nathalie was capable of offering a sympathetic ear to friends who found themselves in emotional distress. It references Tina Jolas, who described Nathalie as mysteriously benevolent and consoling.