Books like Les Jeux Sont Faits

Hope dies last... or doesn't die at all... ... as evidenced by the fact that I started to read a novel by SARTRE and found myself hoping for a happier end than the sad, murderous beginning (I was going to exclaim: "What was I thinking?" only to realise that the answer must be: "Not that much!"). Hoping for Sartre to give me hope is the most hopelessly optimistic thing I can do, I guess. So of course I will be disappointed. Sartre, after all, never disappoints in that respect. Can you get your life right if you are given the chance to live again? Nah!But living means trying against all odds, hoping and hoping from one disappointment to the next. As long as there is life, there is hope. How true, and how sadly unhelpful as long as life keeps letting hope down for no other reason than because it can. We want to be wound up and suffer from the suspense created by hope and and its stepsister fear, apparently. Why else do we go on like we do, meddling with our happiness in HOPE of something else? Doom is in the fact that happy can be turned into a comparative and a superlative. Happier and happiest make happy look undesirable.Les jeux sont faits, I close my eyes and hope ... hope ... hope ... And then, when the die is cast, life turns into: "if only..."Sartre knew his game, and his imaginary life in the underworld means eternal repetition of human folly for no other reason than that time does not end.