When I read somewhere recently that Albert Camus was influenced in writing
The Stranger by James Cain's
The Postman Always Rings Twice, I decided to circle back and see how much I might have missed in the classic existentialist text when reading it as a 20-year-old. Among Camus's novels, I had much preferred
The Fall and especially
The Plague, but mostly his work left me cold, particularly when I took a run at
The Myth of Sisyphus, more of a philosophical treatise, for a college class. I can't say much has changed for me. The 1988 Matthew Ward translation in the Everyman's edition of
The Stranger seems at least as opaque and unyielding as I remembered. There is a deceptively concrete lucidity to the language of this very short novel, to the way events are described and in how they unfold, with numerous short declarative sentences and straightforward exposition. But the events remain largely puzzling and inscrutable. Meursault, the narrator and main character, seems more like a reluctant psychotherapy patient, masking his sullenness at being forced to communicate with a certain mannered stoicism and willful refusal to respond. "Maman died today," the novel opens. "Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday." He never goes deeply into his experience of his mother's loss, and indeed the kinds of suspicions that this engenders for the reader (why is he writing this text if he has no interest in communication?) turn out to play no small part in the suspicion with which he is regarded by others within the novel. He could simply be a man going his own way—in fact, he almost certainly is—but when he overkills an Albanian native with whom a friend has been in conflict he is just as uncommunicative about that, beyond vague statements about the heat and the glare of the sun bothering him. The densely argued introduction to this edition alone points to some of the intellectualized levels at play here, with its sociopolitical background of European colonialism and the more immediate one of Vichy France and World War II, and literary/philosophical currents such as absurdism, naturalism, stoicism, and of course the big kahuna it came to represent, existentialism. But I am left disappointed by
The Stranger, alienated by its refusal to engage on an emotional level (when that is the one it is expressly operating on) rather than what seems to me a purely intellectualized exercise altogether too cute by half. On the other hand, it does deepen my appreciation notably of what Cain managed with
The Postman.
In case it's not at the library.
(Illustration from
Masterpiece Comics.)
Albert Camus is my favorite writer ... not sure why, but I feel obliged to note, in translation, I don't read French. The Plague is my favorite book ever. But I definitely connect with The Stranger, as well, and since my dissertation was on hard-boiled detective fiction, I liked Ward's more recent translation, which took that fiction into account for his translation.
ReplyDeleteI've always found Meursault's comments about the heat and the murder being precisely on target; it is that, and it is vague at the same time, I can see where you're coming from there, but to each his own, I find myself thinking about Meursault and the heat quite often in my regular life. I agree that Camus' fiction often seems like a philosophical exercise, but you seem to contradict yourself with that statement: if, as you also note, Camus refuses to engage emotionally, why is that the level "it is expressly operating on"? I think that refusal to engage is entirely appropriate.
But then, I am someone who, if such a thing really happens, had his life change one night when the reality of the Myth of Sisyphus hit me in a particular way. If you ever wonder where my stuff comes from (and I don't know why you would!), know that I think Sisyphus and his rock exemplify human life, and think I understand what Camus means when he says we must consider Sisyphus to be happy.
Or, to put it another way, I've always aspired to being Dr. Rieux, but when I am being honest, I know I am a lot more like the man who keeps rewriting the first sentence of his novel.
I thought the two central events of the story -- the death of a mother, and a murder that in true-crime/police procedural argot would be practically a textbook example of a crime of rage -- were highly emotional almost by definition and that the narrative was cheating a bit by denying us the emotional interior of its first-person narrator. I understand on some level that may be the point, and I'm missing it. I never got the sense that Meursault is any more "sociopathic" (to use another overworked true-crime term) than Frank Chambers, but I always felt connected to Chambers in a way that I never did with Meursault.
ReplyDeleteAnyway you have made me think that I really should make a point of revisiting The Plague too -- I don't remember much about it now except that I came away very impressed.
Thanks as always for your comments, much appreciated. I wondered if I might hear from you, based on some more recent things you've written. Most of my blog entries as it happens are mapped out weeks and even months ahead (not sure I'm doing this right yet), so your recent Camus revelations were an interesting coincidence!
The death of his mother did not affect Meursault emotionally. He knew it was supposed to, so he tried to act the part. Nor would he ever admit, in court or after, to any particular emotion regarding the murder he committed. Ultimately, he is executed not because he murdered someone, but because he didn't show the proper emotions when his mother died. He accepts his punishment for the murder; he likely doesn't think he should be executed because he wasn't emotional enough at his mother's death. But that's pretty much why he is condemned.
ReplyDeleteThe narrative doesn't cheat by denying us the emotional interior of the narrator. It is there in every page. His interior may not be what we as readers expect, and so we condemn him (and the novel) not because the writing is bad, but because it doesn't give us what we think it should.
The Plague is rather formulaic in some ways ... the characters are as much archetypes of certain French people during the Occupation as they are living, breathing humans. But Camus is kinder to his characters (and thus to us) than he is with Meursault. Even the worst of them have something better than the worst about them. The hero, Dr. Rieux, lives a life that is unattainable; even though it is pretty exemplary, there's no way any of us is good enough to live as he does in every respect. (My wife in frustration once pointed out with a bit of fire in her voice that I needed to quit trying to be like Rieux ... "he's a fictional character!")