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Pop Culture
Mar 18, 2014, 09:07AM

You Smoke Crack

A 1975 New York Times Review of Books interview with the late philosopher/author Jean-Paul Sartre vs. a 2004 AV Club interview with comedian/actor Chris Rock.

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Jean-Paul Sartre: The amphetamines gave me a quickness of thought and writing that was at least three times my normal rhythm, and I wanted to go fast.

Chris Rock: I got in, I got out. The whole thing is like a blur.

Sartre: There you exaggerate.

Rock: It's very subjective.

Sartre: Why? This simply represents what it means to write today.

Rock: Instant gratification.

Sartre: To tell the truth, for them, too.

Rock: They're just kids. I didn't have to explain shit.

Sartre: That is what I did with my solitude.

Rock: It kind of told me who I was, kind of insulted me, but at the same time helped me.

Sartre: It is no longer interesting then.

Rock: Maybe it is, I don't know. Who gets all the money?

Sartre: No, no one has ever asked me.

Rock: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sartre: But what can you do?

Rock: You smoke crack. Are you fucking insane?

—Raymond Cummings is the author of several books of poetry, including Crucial Sprawl, Seven New Poems, and Assembling the Lord. He infrequently blogs at Voguing to Danzig.

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