SOURCE: "'La Faccia da cameriere': An Existential Glance at Two of Moravia's Waiters," in Homage to Moravia, edited by Rocco Capozzi and Mario B. Mignone, Forum Italicum, 1993, pp. 97-111.

In the following essay, LeBlanc explores the existential significance of two waiters in Moravia's "Pensatore" and "Le Sue giornate."

Jean-Paul Sartre has left us some memorable characters. There is the ontologically stricken Roquentin of La Nausée, the existentially redeemed Mathieu of Les Chemins de la liberté, and the disturbingly condemned trio of Garcin, Inès and Estelle who appear in Huis clos. But in addition to these fictional heroes and/or anti-heroes who inhabit the world of Sartre's belles lettres, there is another figure who may be nearly as well-known and certainly as important in terms of the overall perspective of Sartrean thought, although he appears only briefly in one of the author's non-literary, daunting and difficult philosophical...