Book excerpt: Cumming also shows that conversion is not merely a personal predisposition of Sartre's--further manifest in his later conversions to Heidegger and to a version of Marxism. Conversion is also philosophical preoccupation, illustrated by the "conversion to the imaginary" whereby Sartre explains how he himself, as well as Genet and Flaubert, became writers. Finally, Cumming details how Husserl's phenomenological method contributed both to the shaping of Sartre's style as a literary writer and to his theory of style.