  The condemnation of “art for art’s sake” applies to all the arts and has important repercussions for aesthetic critique and the conception of style. The existentialists take great pains to note that their rejection of formalism, purism and autotelism in the arts does not amount to advocating a crude version of realism (Camus 1951, 268–270; Sartre 1948a, 44). As we have noted already in the case of theatre, the classical aspect of existentialist aesthetics impacts on the choice of stylistic means: “One is not a writer for having chosen to say certain things, but for having chosen to say them in a certain way. And to be sure, the style makes the value of the prose. But it should pass unnoticed” (Sartre 1948a, 15).