Were Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre's lives mostly similar?

No. Sartre was born in Paris and his father died immediately after his birth. He and his mother moved into his grandparents house in Paris and where, for the first 10 years of his life he lived a bourgeois lifestyle. His mother remarried a man (whom Sartre detested) and they moved to Southern France. They were not particularly poor but the neighborhood was rougher than what Sartre was used to. Given his grandparents wealth Sartre was able to go to fine schools in Paris without holding a job (except the occasional tutoring).





Camus on the other hand was born in Algeria to a poor agricultural family. His father died when he was young. Camus went to University in Algeria on the good will of a teacher who recognized his talents (Camus later dedicated a book to this teacher). Camus got sick (TB I think) and was unable to pursue his studies as seriously as when he started.





Before the war Sartre was uninterested in politics believing that they did not capture the flesh of man. His life-mate, Simone de Beauvoir, agreed. It wasn't until the war that Sartre (escaping from a prison camp on the basis of a disability) became active in the resistance and politics.





Camus joined the communist party before the war. He was an anti-colonialist and though his relationship with the commies was never a comfortable one, he remained politically active his whole life.





Another difference that Sartre made more of a big deal about than Camus. Sartre was ugly. Camus was handsome. Sartre, as a young man, had difficulty seducing women, as a result he turned to words and thoughts as tools of seduction.





There are some similarities (outside of the early death of a father). Camus and Sartre both disregarded marriage as bad faith and as unnatural. Camus was married twice, Sartre was never married but continued a lifelong relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. They both were communist leaning, but never truly "fit in" with the party forming part of the spectrum of the "New Left" or the "third way". However, given their different backgrounds, it is no wonder that they had a falling out. Furthermore it makes sense that this was a public exchange of letters, that is how they met. Sartre read the Stranger and wrote a glowing review, Camus read The Wall and wrote a glowing review (he said that Sartre was someone to keep an eye on as he was creating something new on the literary scene).





Cheers!|||Sartre and Camus were both French thinkers who lived through the second World War and their respective philosophical positions were a direct response to it. Both were existentialist thinkers in that each claimed we have to create our own paths in the world. Both were atheist and rejected organized religion.





I don't know enough about their actual lives to know whether they lived similar lives. Actually, I don't really know what you mean by your question. In any case, they shared many similar experiences and were philosophical allies, even if they weren't really friends. Sartre was a hard guy to be friends with. Besides, why befriend someone who thinks that "Hell is the other person"?





Cheers.