Customer Reviews (2)

a simple, classic existentialist french read
This book is incredibly easy to read in French. It was the first book I ever attempted to read in French, the language is simple, but the ideas bigger. I think that it illustrates how one might live as un être en soi, instead of an être pour soi, as we ought to be. Meursault's existance is an ontological horror, he exists for others. He will write a letter that is sure to cause unjust injury to a woman, just because he sees no reason not to please his friend Raymond. He will marry a woman he doesn't love just to make her happy. This is like hte behavior of a dog trying to please its master.
horrific, contagious thought pattern.
5 stars

Quick and friendly
the book came quickly and it was new as new can be. thanks! ... Read more

Product Description
Albert Camus is one of the iconic figures of twentieth-century French literature, one of France's most widely read modern literary authors and one of the youngest winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. As the author of L'Etranger and the architect of the notion of 'the Absurd' in the 1940s, he shot to prominence in France and beyond. His work nevertheless attracted hostility as well as acclaim and he was increasingly drawn into bitter political controversies, especially the issue of France's place and role in the country of his birth, Algeria. Most recently, postcolonial studies have identified in his writings a set of preoccupations ripe for revisitation. Situating Camus in his cultural and historical context, this Companion explores his best-selling novels, his ambiguous engagement with philosophy, his theatre, his increasingly high-profile work as a journalist and his reflection on ethical and political questions that continue to concern readers today. ... Read more

Product Description
On October 16, 1957, Albert Camus was dining in a small restaurant on Paris's Left Bank when a waiter approached him with news: the radio had just announced that Camus had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Camus insisted that a mistake had been made and that others were far more deserving of the honor than he. Yet Camus was already recognized around the world as the voice of a generation--a status he had achieved with dizzying speed. He published his first novel, The Stranger, in 1942 and emerged from the war as the spokesperson for the Resistance and, although he consistently rejected the label, for existentialism. Subsequent works of fiction (including the novels The Plague and The Fall), philosophy (notably, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel), drama, and social criticism secured his literary and intellectual reputation. And then on January 4, 1960, three years after accepting the Nobel Prize, he was killed in a car accident.

In a book distinguished by clarity and passion, Robert Zaretsky considers why Albert Camus mattered in his own lifetime and continues to matter today, focusing on key moments that shaped Camus's development as a writer, a public intellectual, and a man. Each chapter is devoted to a specific event: Camus's visit to Kabylia in 1939 to report on the conditions of the local Berber tribes; his decision in 1945 to sign a petition to commute the death sentence of collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach; his famous quarrel with Jean-Paul Sartre in 1952 over the nature of communism; and his silence about the war in Algeria in 1956.

Both engaged and engaging, Albert Camus: Elements of a Life is a searching companion to a profoundly moral and lucid writer whose works provide a guide for those perplexed by the absurdity of the human condition and the world's resistance to meaning. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Art's nobility is rooted in "the refusal to lie about what one knows, and the resistance to oppression."
That is from Albert Camus's speech in Stockholm upon being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.To me, it exemplifies the man.

For anyone interested in Albert Camus and his thinking, this is a very worthwhile book.It is NOT, however, a biography, as is alluded to by the word "elements" in its subtitle and as is expressly stated by author Zaretsky on the second page.(Just two indicia of how the book is not a biography:there is no mention whatsoever of Camus's first wife Simone Hié, nor is there any mention of his closest friend Michel Gallimard, who was driving the car that ran off the road into a tree taking the lives of both him and Camus).Instead, Zaretsky sets out to explore three different popular "ideas" or conceptions of Albert Camus: (a) the thinker who probed the notions of freedom and justice and how they might be reconcilable; (b) the "outsider" who wrote about exile, both from one's homeland and from a world overseen by a god; and (c) a 20th-Century guru of silence.Zaretsky traces the ways these ideas weave through four distinct episodes of Camus's life, which correspond to the four chapters of the book:(1) Camus's tenure as a journalist in Algeria in the late 1930s writing about the oppressed and impoverished conditions of the local Arabs; (2) his decision in 1945 to reverse his position on capital punishment as appropriate "justice" for the worst of the Nazi collaborators; (3) his famous quarrel with Jean-Paul Sartre over communism and whether, in politics, the (theoretical) ends justify the means; and (4) his self-imposed silence, beginning in 1956, over the war in Algeria.

Although the book is not a work of literary criticism, Zaretsky nonetheless discusses several of Camus's more famous literary works - especially "The Stranger", "The Plague", "The Myth of Sisyphus", and "The Rebel" (his take on "The Stranger" is both distinctive and provocative).He also draws upon some of Camus's more obscure writings, including some that have not been translated into English.As a result, the student of Camus finds many statements of his that are not widely available.Example:"All I can hope to do is show that generous forms of behavior can be engendered even in a world without God and that man alone in the universe can still create his own values."

I personally am intrigued by Camus, by his anomalous idealism (as reflected in the preceding quote), by his fundamental decency and honesty, and by his courage and willingness to go it alone as an intellectual, to refuse to kowtow to the liberal intellectual elite of Paris led by the likes of Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty.This book corroborates or reinforces that rather heroic image of Camus.I sense, however, that it is not the ideal book for a newcomer to Camus.I really don't have a book to recommend to a newcomer, though I am in the midst of reading a number of books by and about Camus and his thought, and when I have finished that project I hope to post a comment to this review with any such recommendations.

In the meantime, I found ALBERT CAMUS: ELEMENTS OF A LIFE a valuable contribution to the literature on Camus, although I don't agree with (or comprehend) Zaretsky on several of his more philosophical digressions.The book reflects considerable scholarship but it is not unduly "scholarly" or "academic" in tone and style.It is relatively brief (160 pages of text) and relatively easy to read.Four-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

A scholarly and insightful tome
"Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will." - Goethe

One of Algeria's greatest sons, the late Albert Camus, is back where he rightfully belongs--center stage! Thanks to Elizabeth Hawes' delightful and vibrant book, "Camus, A Romance,"Camus, a Romance and Robert Zaretsky's scholarly and insightful tome, "Albert Camus: Elements of a Life."Camus, a talented writer and philosopher, has again risen from the literary ashes. His clarion call for "limits" in the pursuit of otherwise laudable causes; and for truth-telling in the realm of political injustice and social inequities, is as relevant today, as it was during his turbulent lifetime.

Camus was a French-Algerian. He was born in 1913, and raised in the city of Algiers, in a run-down neighborhood. His father, whose ancestral roots were French, was killed fighting in WWI for France against the Germans; while his mother, of Spanish stock, was half-deaf, uneducated and rarely spoke. Is the latter, the origin of the importance of "silence" in Camus' persona? Zaretsky thinks it played a relevant part and I agree with him.

Algeria, in Camus' days, was a French colony, although its Arab population, was in the majority. Life was hard for the budding writer and for his family, but for many of his Arab contemporaries,discrimination, starvation and illiteracy were often their lot.

When I was in high school, at Calvert Hall, a Christian Brother institution, in downtown Baltimore, I remember mostly counting the bricks on a wall located across the street, I was so terribly bored! One of the exceptions was in my "literature" class with Brother Gregory at the the helm. He truly loved what he was doing and it showed. When he read something aloud from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens or Washington Irving, the room lit up for me. Brother Gregory, bless his memory, was an inspiring teacher.

Enter into Camus' life, one Louis Germain. He was an elementary school teacher. Hawes labeled him as Camus' "first surrogate father." Both authors detailed Germain's importance to Camus' eventual career and to his intellectual development as a philosopher. Not only his mentor, Germain became Camus' life long friend and trusted advisor. He helped get him into the "lychee," and later accepted at the University of Algiers.

After graduating from the university, in 1937, Camus became a reporter. In 1939, he documented a famine in the mountainous area of Kabylia, Algeria, not too far from its capital city. His damning report for the "Alger-Republicain" newspaper, was entitled, "Misery in Kabylia." Camus' editor was Pascal Pia, another mentor and significant figure in his success as a literary icon.

Both biographies highlighted incidents such as the above in Camus' experiences. Why? They seemed to have shaped, and, in some cases, reaffirmed, his political and philosophical views. Seeing first hand the evil effects of French colonialism, and the world's indifference to it, left an indelible mark on the psyche of Camus. Later, that influence would be revealed in his books, like: "The Rebel," "The Fall," "The Plague," and "The Myth of Sisyphus."

Camus championed the notion of the "absurd" in his writings. The novel, "The Stranger," his first acclaimed work of art, which catapulted him to fame, is probably the most cogent example of what exactly that concept meant to him. This made Camus' death in an automobile accident, in 1960, even more poignant.

Hawes described Camus' fate of dying in a car crash, "the ultimate absurdity for the man who named the absurd. [He] had in his pocket a round-trip ticket travel by train with his family, but he had been persuaded at the last moment to drive to Paris." The driver was speeding, the car went off the road, striking one tree and then another. The impact broke "Camus' neck," and killed him.

One of Zaretsky's book best strength is how he takes "The Stranger," and the other major literary efforts of Camus, and brilliantly dissects them for the reader. While doing so, he lets you know exactly what was going on in Camus' life at the time each of them were written. For example, when "The Stranger" was published, in 1942, WWII was raging in Europe, and huge parts of France were occupied by the German Army. Camus joined the "French Resistance" and was also the editor of its legendary news organ, "Combat." He was then only 29 years old.

Nevertheless, Camus remained an "outsider" in France, as both Hawes and Zaretsky showed. He was an "outsider" to humanity itself, also. Why? He'd contracted a killer disease--tuberculosis!

Camus' experience of French Algeria, where the Arab is the "other," also impacts his views. The themes: "outsider," "the other," and "separate," runs through Camus' thoughts and are reflected in many of his novels, essays and plays.

Zaretsky sees this, particularly, in Camus' short story, "The Guest." It was published, in 1957, only months after he won the "Nobel Prize" for literature, and around the same time that he hadbriefly addressed the horrific events then raging in Algeria. Nationalists were violently responding to the French heel on their neck. That conflict, where some of the male victims had their "genitals cut off" and stuffed in their mouths, and "women's breasts were sliced off," by the enflamed nationalists, lasted from 1954 to 1962. Tens of thousands of "Arabs and Berbers were killed" in retaliation by the French military. Zaretsky said the slaughters, on both sides, were perpetrated, "in a grisly fashion."

With respect to "The Guest," Zaretsky wrote: "Yet Daru [the protagonist of the story and a French Algerian] discovers he is also a `stranger' in what he always believed to be is own land. He had spent his life feeling like an `outsider' anywhere but in Algeria but is now also `exiled' from his native land. And awful truth dawns on Daru: the historical, cultural, and linguistic division between the `pied noirs' [the settler class of which Camus belonged] and the Arabs [the indigenous people]--both of whom are simultaneously hosts and guests to each other--is too great to bridge."

Getting back to Hawes. What I loved about her chronicle of Camus is how she gets so very personal, indeed, intimate, about his life. Her book is, in a real sense, about her love affair, her "crush" on a man, that she only knows from a distance--from his writings.

Hawes' book is passionate, enlightening and terrific fun to read. She even tracked down Camus' surviving children, Catherine and Jean, and interviewed them about their father. Hawes ended her ode to Camus--visiting his grave, at Lourmarin cemetery--not far from his last home, in France. I say: Take Hawes' book with you to the beach for a read this summer. You won't regret it.

There is much more in both of these fine books: Such as the many writers that influenced Camus' craft, namely: Saint Augustine, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Balzac, Synge, Mann, along with the Greek Tragedies; the fact that Camus' first wife was a drug addict; his love of soccer and his womanizing; Camus' visit to New York City; his love of acting, directing and the theatre; his brief membership in the Communist Party; Camus' views on the Hungarian Revolution; his take on the bloody dictator Josef Stalin, the Soviet Labor Camps and the Purges; and of course, Camus' earthshaking break with another literary titan--Jean-Paul Sartre.

It is on this controversial subject, where Zaretsky shines again. I think it's the professor in him. During the frantic days of the "half-liberated, half-occupied Paris," Sartre was assigned the "task of protecting the vacated "Comedie Francaise." When Camus went there, he found Sartre, "napping," and jokingly cracked to him: "You've placed your seat in the direction of history."

In 1952, the two clashed openly over a scathing review of Camus' book, "The Rebel," which appeared in, "Les Temps Modernes," a magazine controlled by Sartre. This was also after Sartre had made it clear that he was "siding with" the Stalinists. (2) Camus' response to the review went directly to Sartre himself.

Zaretsky quoted from Camus' famous letter: "I am growing tired of seeing myself, and especially of seeing veteran militants who `never ran from struggles' in their own times, receive countless lessons in effectiveness from critics who have done nothing more than point their `seats in the direction of history.'"

Finally, I submit that both Hawes and Zaretsky deserve credit for adding to our knowledge of Camus' legacy, and to his importance to our perilous times. Let's face it, we live in an era where screwball ideologues are running amuck. Dissenting voices can find no better model for taking on these crazed warmongersthan looking to Camus--one of humanity's finest moralists. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Amazing as always
Albert Camus is as good at writing plays as he is at everything else he does. Whether you are new to Camus or not, you will definately enjoy this.

Which is more dangerous, insane people or insane societies?
Camus does an excellent job of contrasting individual insanity and collective insanity in his play Caligula. Basically, Caligula is insane. He is a despot who holds the lives of his subjects in his hands. At times, for very arbitrary reasons, he kills or executes someone from his court. This seems arbitrary and frightenging. Yet, Caligula is contrasted against sane military officers who engage in terrible acts of war where thousands upon thousands of civilians and soldiers are killed. So who is insane?Is it the dictator who might execute someone in his court for very trivial reasons or is it the rational military general who kills thousands and thousands of persons in rational and supposedly justified warfare?Camus reveals to the careful reader that societal evil is far more dangerous than individual evil.This is a wonderful thoughtful classic play that demonstrates Camus' ability to bring complex concepts to dramatic life.

The Misunderstanding, another play in this volume, is another complex drama. An innkeeper and her old maid daughter kills guests of the inn when they are able to discern that the guest's death can not be tracked. They rob the guests which supplements their income.They long for the return of the beloved son of the innkeeper who has been gone for years and years without contact. As you might expect, the son returns to the inn and is murdered by his mother and sister.The deed is revealed when his wife arrives and finds him missing. Camus here deals with the concept of objectification of others so that violence may be done to them without remorse.When the innkeeper and her daughter find they have murdered the long lost son, they are beside themselves with grief. But yet they have murdered many innocent travelers without remorse because they have been able to divorce themselves from any thoughts that these travelers were fellow humans. A simple play with a simple point, yet it points to a terrible feature of human existence, that we can commit unspeakable horror on others once we have convinced ourselves that they are no longer human beings.Camus recognized that prejudice kills, it is not beneign.

I appreciate Camus' ability to make a point without preaching or overstating. I strongly suggest this book of 4 short plays.

What a play!
The cover of Caligula shows an abstract horse bucking, and that is just what Caligula does to us. It knocks us off our high-horse by bringing us face-to-face with death. Only (and I do not choose that word lightly) a true understanding of death can put lives in perspective. Sure Caligula is a despot who could have the life of any of his subjects, but the fact-of-the-matter is that our lives can end at any second. Caligula teaches us not to take life for granted, which is something that is all to easily done in this era. This theme also exists in State of Seige. The other two plays, The Misunderstanding, and The Just Assasins are more subtle, but they also deal with idea that we take petty concerns and ideas too seriously, and fail to look and the big picture. I should also add that the language and passion of the plays are exceptional.

Great stage work from a master
Encompassing the doctorine of the Ubermensch cast alongside the dictatorship of Hitler, Camus creates an absurd, absolute ruler whom thepeople are at his beck and call.Every whim, be it for food or a specificperson's death for the merge specticle of it, are just some of the scenesdepicted in this play.It forces the question of whether one would ratherpossess a ruler who is consistant in all actions, thought, etc. or one whois willing to contradict him or herself for the good of the people.Thisis a complex work whose depths it seems may never be compeletly explored. Often overlooked due to the potency of his prose, Camus has produced yetanother masterwork.

To tell the reader what he WILL find in this book!
Camus' raw talent.There isn't anything negative to say about Camus, other than he died too young.If he'd lived through the 60's, he'd at the most give Sartre a good run for his money.

I love Camus simply becausehe's the only writer/philosopher who 'beats you up' with the truth, andcomforts you with the notion, that he too has done this to himself.Hedoesn't try to replace your religion or your belief, or even question yourplace in the world.And he certainly didn't trade in one 'ism' for anotherlike his Toad-faced contemporary!

Read this!It's wonderful.Camus sumsup life's absurdities simplier than Kierkergaard and a tad bitkinder--maybe even sublte--than Nietzsche (who in my estimation is the oneand only TRUE existential----maybe Che Guevara is a close second) ... Read more

Product Description
Patrick McCarthy places The Stranger in the context of a French and French-Algerian history and culture, examines the way the work undermines traditional concepts of fiction, and explores the parallels (and more importantly the contrasts) between Camus and Sartre. His account provides a useful companion to The Stranger for students and general readers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

This is NOT L'Etranger!
For anyone else who might purchase this erroneously:This is someone's analysis of Camus' work, not the work itself.

This is NOT Camus's Stranger!!!
CAVEAT EMPTOR!!!The listing is VERY unclear on this point:this IS NOT the text of Camus' The Stranger.It is a literary criticism of Camus' work!!I skimmed through it, and it appears to be an interesting analysis, but if you are looking for the actual book, THIS IS NOT IT!!!

This Kindle edition is by Patrick McCarthy not by Camus
The description and customer reviews provided with this Kindle edition refer to Camus's The Stranger not to this book, which is Patrick McCarthy's analysis of The Stranger. I purchased it thinking that McCarthy was the translator. That is not correct. This volume does not contain Camus's book, which is apparently not available for the Kindle.

NOT WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE!
This book is NOT Camus's "The Stranger"!It is a literary review of the work, and NOT the work itself.If you are looking to read Camus's "The Stranger" DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!I feel that Amazon should refund/not charge for those who buy this book thinking they are going to read Camus!

NOT CAMUS "THE STRANGER" NOT NOT NOT!

A book about the book
Stupid me - I thought I was buying a translation of The Stranger.This is an analysis and commentary.Well done, but not what I intended. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Good Read
I acquired The Stranger with no background knowledge of the book or the author. Although at times it is apparent that the book wasn't written originally in English, noticeable mainly through lack of sentence variation, The Stranger is very interesting and tells an intriguing story. A must-read for all Camus fans! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Camus Exile and the Kingdom Great!! this edtion average
Cozmans introduction and tranlation are no improvment over the Justin O' Brian translation in fact Cozman's translation can not touch O'Brians flow, elgance and art.Cozman's tranlation is a labor while Justin O' Brian is tranaltion is a pleasure to read and easly comprehended.If Camus French was a bad as Cozman's English translation then we would not be reading Camus today.

The introduction by the Turkish nobel prize winner is in same leauge as Cozmans translation.He is verbose and not elganant in any way.His novels reak of Camus and Camus should never reak.

The first tip off is that Camus dedication to Frances is deleted from this edition.This is sad when a publisher does not respect the orginal author enough to give a page to a dead nobel prize winner for a dedication.Camus gave us so much that he deserves this respect.

The O'Brian text has no introduction, no forward, just Camus translated well and the dedication to Frances.That is enough for me.

The EXILE and The KINGDOM is wonderful. The Silent Man, The Adultrous Woman and The Artist's Life three of the greatest stroies ever written.I read this book cover to cover twice in succesion.Most books of short stories only have one captivating short story and idea. This book of stories was orginally published with the Novel the Fall.The O'Brian editon of these two books are comnonly found used on Amazon and at your local library.

A Good Selection of Both Solid and Eclectic Works
As a point of reference, I have read most of Camus's major works. The present collection is an interesting mixture of six short stories. The stories are more varied than his novels which tend to reflect his philosophy of the absurd. I thought the present stories were among his best works. The story The Guest is outstanding, two or three of the stories are excellent, and the others are good or are at least interesting.

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus rejected any ideological classification. Camus was a young recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award in 1957. He died in a car crash only three years after receiving the award. He was a social activist and Communist, and fought with the French resistance in WWII. Later he rejected Communism. The present book was copyrighted in 1957.

The present novel contains six works:
- The Adulterous Woman
- The Renegade
- The Silent Men
- The Guest
- The Artist at Work, and
- The Growing Stone.

I had previously read The Guest in other collections of short stories. It is one of his best short works and it it is about an Arab prisoner who had murdered a family member and who is now transferred to a schoolmaster, Daru, at an isolated outpost in the desert of North Africa. Daru is supposed to deliver the prisoner to a jail the next day.

The Silent Men are a group of workers who have returned to work at a barrel factory after a strike, and who are not interested in talking to the boss who stopped the strike. The Artist at Work is about the rise and fall of a young painter. The Growing Stone is about a civil engineer on an assignment in the coastal jungles of South America, while the remaining two are set in desert towns of North Africa, and are the most eclectic and imaginative stories in the group.

The stories are all interesting and I enjoyed the reads.

The Stranger and perhaps The Fall remain as his best works and they are must reads, followed by The Plague. Those works include his use of irony and philosophical views. Also, Camus has written some good drama and non-fiction. The present work shows the broader range of his writing skills and is an entertaining set of stories.

A high-school reunion gone bad...


Having not read Camus since my school days, with the exception, that is, of his play *Caligula,* I picked up this collection of short stories remembering Camus as an old favorite. I wonder if I would now find *The Stranger* and *The Plague* just as passé.

These stories just don't hold up, if they ever did. Are they really considered representative of Camus `at the height of his power,' as the biographical note to this edition maintains? I'd have to think, indeed hope, that was just hype.

Delivered with all the subtlety of a trumpeting elephant, the themes comprising *The Exile and The Kingdom* seemed terribly dated, naïve, and without any particular distinction as great literature. As translated, the stories are written with admirable clarity in predominately short, clean sentences reminiscent to me somewhat of Hemingway, which makes the reading quick and simple--but after fifty years, Camus isn't only saying nothing new; he isn't saying anything old in a particularly compelling way either.

Perhaps the best story is *The Renegade*--a `mad' monologue delivered by a missionary captured by a savage tribe in the middle of a salt wasteland and converted to their religion of uncompromising cruelty. Probably the worst of the lot is *The Artist At Work*--a didactic author omniscient narrative that has the simplicity of a fable and all the clichés of one, too.

In the end, I'd like to think that *The Exile and the Kingdom* is a collection of basically throw-away work of fourth-rate Camus that nonetheless made its way into print--and stayed in print so long--because of Camus's Nobel Prize-winning status. And because, at his level of literary importance and influence, everything he's written is of lasting interest, if only to Camus scholars. I'd like to think that, but I'm not so sure. One thing I am sure of, however, is that these weren't of much interest to me at all.

Short stories for philosophers, literature snobs, and lovers of the unusual
Albert Camus, born in Algeria in 1913, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and died three years later, but his writings live on. This collection of six unusual, strange-endinged stories will probably be of interest to a wide range of short story fans. Sometimes seemingly vague and symbolic (and with odd titles and endings), they are thoroughly enjoyable and readable. Though similar in complexity, subject matter and settings vary greatly: a woman joins her fabric-selling husband on a business trip, a detongued former missionary awaits his replacement, barrel makers strike, a prisoner is foisted on a schoolmaster, an artist works amidst ever-changing chaos, and an engineer visits inhabitants near the site of a future dam. Exile and the Kingdom is an excellent, strange, brief book. Other strange short stories: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami.

A gathering of some of Camus' finest short stories
Justin O'Brien's translation renders beautifully into English six of Camus' finest stories, including the masterpiece "The Guest." ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (13)

Extraordinary
I have loved Camus's work since I discovered it--as a teacher--in my twenties. Since then I have read nearly everything I could find, including several biographies. For much of a forty year teaching career I attempted to "teach" Camus and, as is always the case, learned more through those efforts than I ever would have "only" as a reader.And each time I tried to explain to my students why Camus was a man who mattered, my sadness and frustration at his premature death increased.

I wish Elizabeth Hawes had written Camus, A Romance long ago, not only so that my students might have read and discussed the book with me, but because the book brings the man to life in a way that no ordinary biography could. I relished every page (as I suspect Hawes relished writing every page) because for the first time I had a sense of the kind of person Camus was and what his life was like in the times in which he lived and wrote.

I recommend this thorough and extraordinary book.

Engaging Biography that Examines Camus's Hold on his Readers
Many biographies are based on the "more is more" principle, with few details too trivial or associations too marginal to merit exclusion. This often makes biographies unappealing to readers like me, who read them to learn what affected a person as he or she underwent important experiences or--in the case of Albert Camus--produced great books. Call me superficial, if you will. But I like a concise biography that illuminates, not a data dump.

As a result, I thought CAMUS, A ROMANCE was a terrific book. You see, this year I've read THE STRANGER, THE PLAGUE, and THE FALL and I was interested to learn something, but not everything, about the artist who produced such amazing work. For example, how did Camus's experiences affect such themes in THE STRANGER as North Africa, the sea, and the gentle indifference of nature? What are the connections between Camus's TB, the Nazi occupation of France, and THE PLAGUE? And, what emotional forces contributed to the perplexing THE FALL? Well, CAMUS, A ROMANCE addresses these and other questions that might occur to readers of these novels. The artist, though sui generis, didn't come from nowhere.

In providing this information, Elizabeth Hawes takes a somewhat unusual approach to her biography. Instead of functioning as a detached narrator who gathers, organizes, and interprets information, she admits to being profoundly affected by Camus and his work. Thus, the second subject of her book is the mystery of her interest in Camus. She wants to know, in other words, why the man and his work are so meaningful to her. While Hawes actually reveals little about herself (she likes dogs, she has a summer house near the ocean), she does put front-and-center the highly personal relationship that readers develop with writers who affect them. In this case, Hawes describes herself as feeling, at times, like Camus's wife or sister, as well as a reader and student. Ultimately, she ends up in the right place, where she considers Camus her friend.

CAMUS, A ROMANCE is not only about Camus's books and the grip they exert on many imaginations. While not going into unnecessary detail, Hawes also discusses the pied noir in Algeria, intellectual life in post-war France, the famous exchange with Sartre following the publication of THE REBEL, Camus's writer's block, the Algerian War, Camus's Nobel Prize, and so on. But this information exists to illuminate the man and his work, which always has a serious moral dimension. Data doesn't dominate.

Even so, I would have cut the paragraph where Hawes relates her most recent dream of Camus. "...he was full of ordinary life. I had joined him walking down a crowded city street, and as we duck around people trying to keep abreast of each other, we laughed..." Regardless, recommended.

A delightful and vibrant book
"Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will." - Goethe

One of Algeria's greatest sons, the late Albert Camus, is back where he rightfully belongs--center stage! Thanks to Elizabeth Hawes' delightful and vibrant book, "Camus, A Romance," and Robert Zaretsky's scholarly and insightful tome, "Albert Camus: Elements of a Life." Albert Camus: Elements of a Life Camus, a talented writer and philosopher, has again risen from the literary ashes. His clarion call for "limits" in the pursuit of otherwise laudable causes; and for truth-telling in the realm of political injustice and social inequities, is as relevant today, as it was during his turbulent lifetime.

Camus was a French-Algerian. He was born in 1913, and raised in the city of Algiers, in a run-down neighborhood. His father, whose ancestral roots were French, was killed fighting in WWI for France against the Germans; while his mother, of Spanish stock, was half-deaf, uneducated and rarely spoke. Is the latter, the origin of the importance of "silence" in Camus' persona? Zaretsky thinks it played a relevant part and I agree with him.

Algeria, in Camus' days, was a French colony, although its Arab population, was in the majority. Life was hard for the budding writer and for his family, but for many of his Arab contemporaries,discrimination, starvation and illiteracy were often their lot.

When I was in high school, at Calvert Hall, a Christian Brother institution, in downtown Baltimore, I remember mostly counting the bricks on a wall located across the street, I was so terribly bored! One of the exceptions was in my "literature" class with Brother Gregory at the the helm. He truly loved what he was doing and it showed. When he read something aloud from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens or Washington Irving, the room lit up for me. Brother Gregory, bless his memory, was an inspiring teacher.

Enter into Camus' life, one Louis Germain. He was an elementary school teacher. Hawes labeled him as Camus' "first surrogate father." Both authors detailed Germain's importance to Camus' eventual career and to his intellectual development as a philosopher. Not only his mentor, Germain became Camus' life long friend and trusted advisor. He helped get him into the "lychee," and later accepted at the University of Algiers.

After graduating from the university, in 1937, Camus became a reporter. In 1939, he documented a famine in the mountainous area of Kabylia, Algeria, not too far from its capital city. His damning report for the "Alger-Republicain" newspaper, was entitled, "Misery in Kabylia." Camus' editor was Pascal Pia, another mentor and significant figure in his success as a literary icon.

Both biographies highlighted incidents such as the above in Camus' experiences. Why? They seemed to have shaped, and, in some cases, reaffirmed, his political and philosophical views. Seeing first hand the evil effects of French colonialism, and the world's indifference to it, left an indelible mark on the psyche of Camus. Later, that influence would be revealed in his books, like: "The Rebel," "The Fall," "The Plague," and "The Myth of Sisyphus."

Camus championed the notion of the "absurd" in his writings. The novel, "The Stranger," his first acclaimed work of art, which catapulted him to fame, is probably the most cogent example of what exactly that concept meant to him. This made Camus' death in an automobile accident, in 1960, even more poignant.

Hawes described Camus' fate of dying in a car crash, "the ultimate absurdity for the man who named the absurd. [He] had in his pocket a round-trip ticket travel by train with his family, but he had been persuaded at the last moment to drive to Paris." The driver was speeding, the car went off the road, striking one tree and then another. The impact broke "Camus' neck," and killed him.

One of Zaretsky's book best strength is how he takes "The Stranger," and the other major literary efforts of Camus, and brilliantly dissects them for the reader. While doing so, he lets you know exactly what was going on in Camus' life at the time each of them were written. For example, when "The Stranger" was published, in 1942, WWII was raging in Europe, and huge parts of France were occupied by the German Army. Camus joined the "French Resistance" and was also the editor of its legendary news organ, "Combat." He was then only 29 years old.

Nevertheless, Camus remained an "outsider" in France, as both Hawes and Zaretsky showed. He was an "outsider" to humanity itself, also. Why? He'd contracted a killer disease--tuberculosis!

Camus' experience of French Algeria, where the Arab is the "other," also impacts his views. The themes: "outsider," "the other," and "separate," runs through Camus' thoughts and are reflected in many of his novels, essays and plays.

Zaretsky sees this, particularly, in Camus' short story, "The Guest." It was published, in 1957, only months after he won the "Nobel Prize" for literature, and around the same time that he hadbriefly addressed the horrific events then raging in Algeria. Nationalists were violently responding to the French heel on their neck. That conflict, where some of the male victims had their "genitals cut off" and stuffed in their mouths, and "women's breasts were sliced off," by the enflamed nationalists, lasted from 1954 to 1962. Tens of thousands of "Arabs and Berbers were killed" in retaliation by the French military. Zaretsky said the slaughters, on both sides, were perpetrated, "in a grisly fashion."

With respect to "The Guest," Zaretsky wrote: "Yet Daru [the protagonist of the story and a French Algerian] discovers he is also a `stranger' in what he always believed to be is own land. He had spent his life feeling like an `outsider' anywhere but in Algeria but is now also `exiled' from his native land. And awful truth dawns on Daru: the historical, cultural, and linguistic division between the `pied noirs' [the settler class of which Camus belonged] and the Arabs [the indigenous people]--both of whom are simultaneously hosts and guests to each other--is too great to bridge."

Getting back to Hawes. What I loved about her chronicle of Camus is how she gets so very personal, indeed, intimate, about his life. Her book is, in a real sense, about her love affair, her "crush" on a man, that she only knows from a distance--from his writings.

Hawes' book is passionate, enlightening and terrific fun to read. She even tracked down Camus' surviving children, Catherine and Jean, and interviewed them about their father. Hawes ended her ode to Camus--visiting his grave, at Lourmarin cemetery--not far from his last home, in France. I say: Take Hawes' book with you to the beach for a read this summer. You won't regret it.

There is much more in both of these fine books: Such as the many writers that influenced Camus' craft, namely: Saint Augustine, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Balzac, Synge, Mann, along with the Greek Tragedies; the fact that Camus' first wife was a drug addict; his love of soccer and his womanizing; Camus' visit to New York City; his love of acting, directing and the theatre; his brief membership in the Communist Party; Camus' views on the Hungarian Revolution; his take on the bloody dictator Josef Stalin, the Soviet Labor Camps and the Purges; and of course, Camus' earthshaking break with another literary titan--Jean-Paul Sartre.

It is on this controversial subject, where Zaretsky shines again. I think it's the professor in him. During the frantic days of the "half-liberated, half-occupied Paris," Sartre was assigned the "task of protecting the vacated "Comedie Francaise." When Camus went there, he found Sartre, "napping," and jokingly cracked to him: "You've placed your seat in the direction of history."

In 1952, the two clashed openly over a scathing review of Camus' book, "The Rebel," which appeared in, "Les Temps Modernes," a magazine controlled by Sartre. This was also after Sartre had made it clear that he was "siding with" the Stalinists. (2) Camus' response to the review went directly to Sartre himself.

Zaretsky quoted from Camus' famous letter: "I am growing tired of seeing myself, and especially of seeing veteran militants who `never ran from struggles' in their own times, receive countless lessons in effectiveness from critics who have done nothing more than point their `seats in the direction of history.'"

Finally, I submit that both Hawes and Zaretsky deserve credit for adding to our knowledge of Camus' legacy, and to his importance to our perilous times. Let's face it, we live in an era where screwball ideologues are running amuck. Dissenting voices can find no better model for taking on these crazed warmongersthan looking to Camus--one of humanity's finest moralists.

An interesting exercise that doesn't quite come off
Elizabeth Hawes was in college when she fell in love with Albert Camus. By her senior year, she was writing an honors thesis about him and planning overseas study where she hoped to meet her idol. But on January 4, 1960, the French writer - who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature just three years before, at age 43 - died in a car accident.

Nearly 40 years later, Hawes has authored what her publisher terms a biography-memoir: it charts her search for, and feelings about, Camus as well as the arc of his life. She describes the places she visited, the archives she sifted, the people she talked with who had known Camus (including his daughter, son, and an actual lover or two). She also describes how she feels about the trek, how her discoveries affect her view of Camus, how well the search is going.

The chapters are arranged partly in chronology and partly by topic (Camus's writing and resistance work during the war, the women in his life, the friendship with and rancorous estrangement from Sartre, his anguish over the bloody colonial struggle in his native Algeria).

It's tempting to say there's a little too much of Hawes in the book and not enough of Camus, but that's not quite right. It would be more accurate to say there's not enough of her to get us firmly and securely to him. Of course Hawes is concerned not to get in the way of her subject, but if we're going to spend time with her at all, we need to know enough about her to be able to trust her assertions.

Otherwise, remarks such as "His voice ... is almost audible," "these documents seem invaluable for their revelations, and the words ring true," and "this made him seem familiar, like someone I actually had once known" come to sound like protesting too much - telling us rather than showing.

She includes notes by Blanche Knopf, Camus's American publisher's rep, about finding a suitable dress for the Nobel ceremony and declares that such small details are "strangely satisfying." This sort of thing may ring true in a fan - each of us has silly obsessions with celebrities, whether they're T.S. Eliot or Michael Jackson - but it's not necessarily helpful in a biographer. If we don't already admire Camus, it's harder to feel with Hawes from scratch, no matter how well she writes.

Now and then, the biographer acknowledges the possible futility of her labors: "But I was not able to summon forth any more of the life that had gone on in that small studio than I had sitting at my desk in Manhattan."

This book would make an adequate introduction to Camus for a reader who knows nothing about him, but those who have read his books or an earlier biography (e.g., Herbert Lottman's or Olivier Todd's) might find it a little thin and precious.

Adolescent Love
The book is as much about the author as it is about Camus and if this was your first introduction to the non-fictional Camus you would want to go further, much further. But if you had read other biographies this book would be at best redundant and at worst frustrating since so much time is spent on the author's love for her subject. Elizabeth Hawe's romance never rises about an adolescent obsession and she unfortunately fails to have the humor to see it in that light. The too brief section that feature interviews with Camus' son, daughter and lover fail to present us with the living Camus. It is ironic that on the last pages of her memoir Hawes speaks to Robert Gallinard on the seeming failure of most biographies on Camus. "...it as a sense of Camus the charmer. It was the way he walked, the way he danced, the way he liked to kick a pebble down the street." Well Hawes does describe the way he walked and danced but the prose is prosaic. ... Read more

Product Description
"The Rebel" is Camus's attempt to understand the time 'I live in' and a brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt. Published in 1951, it makes a daring critique of communism, how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain, and the resulting totalitarian regimes. It questions two events held sacred by the left wing, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 that had resulted, he believed, in terrorism as a political instrument. In this towering intellectual document, Camus argues that hope for the future lies in revolt, which unlike revolution is a spontaneous response to injustice, and a chance to achieve change without giving up collective and intellectual freedom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great!
The product arrived in a timely manner and in good condition. I will remember this vendor for my future purchases. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
From 1935 until his death, Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks to sketch out ideas for future works, record snatches of conversations and excerpts from books he was reading, and jot down his reflections on death and the horror of war, his feelings about women and loneliness and art, and his appreciations for the Algerian sun and sea. These three volumes, now available together for the first time in paperback, include all entries made from the time when Camus was still completely unknown in Europe, until he was killed in an automobile accident in 1960, at the height of his creative powers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Prolific
Simply amazing. The greatest book I have ever read. I have yet to read it, but after buying it I do stare at it often, and this leads me to conclude it is glorious. I have, though, read his other works so I can only falsely conclude that this will shatter my soul with insight, just like you reading this review.

A great introduction to existentialism
This is a great way to introduce someone to existentialism.I always thought Camus to be much more accessible to say, Jean Paul Sartre.If you know anyone who wants to know more about existentialism, tell them to read this book.It's a great introduction to what existentialism is about.It also makes sense of Camus' most famous book, The Stranger. ... Read more

Product Description
When Albert Camus died in a car crash in January 1960 he was only 46 years old - already a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and a world figure - author of the enigmatic The Stranger, the fable called The Plague, but also of the combative The Rebel - which attacked the 'politically correct' among his contemporaries.

Thanks to his early literary achievement, his work for the underground newspaper Combat and his editorship of that daily in its Post-Liberation incarnation, Camus' voice seemed the conscience of postwar France. But it was a very personal voice that rejected the conventional wisdom, rejected ideologies that called for killing in the cause of justice. His call for personal responsibility will seem equally applicable today, when Camus' voice is silent and has not been replaced. The secrecy which surrounded Algerian-born Camus' own life, public and private - a function of illness and psychological self-defense in a Paris in which he still felt himself a stranger - seemed to make the biographer's job impossible.

Lottman's Albert Camus was the first and remains the definitive biography - even in France. On publication it was hailed by New York Times reviewer John Leonard: "What emerges from Mr. Lottman's tireless devotions is a portrait of the artist, the outsider, the humanist and skeptic, that breaks the heart." In The New York Times Book Review British critic John Sturrock said: Herbert Lottman's life (of Camus) is the first to be written, either in French or English, and it is exhaustive, a labor of love and of wonderful industry." When the book appeared in London Christopher Hitchens in New Statesman told British readers: "Lottman has written a brilliant and absorbing book... The detail and the care are extraordinary... Now at last we have a clear voice about the importance of liberty and the importance of being concrete."The new edition by Gingko Press includes a specially written preface by the author revealing the challenges of a biographer, of some of the problems that had to be dealt with while writing the book and after it appeared. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Well written, interesting, but the author doesn't understand French
This is an odd book. While it's well written and thoroughly researched, there are glaring errors in the author's translations from the French. For example, there are two instances (in the first couple hundred pages; I've only read that much so far) where he uses the false friend "sympathetic" for "sympatique", which means "nice": "I'll introduce him to some sympathetic people." There are many examples of mis-translations, which stand out because they are common errors (I'm fluent in French and translate from French to English) even if the original texts aren't included. Other translations are clunky and in some cases make no sense.

Now all this could be moot if the book were reliable, but as I go on reading it, I wonder just how well the author understood the texts he read in his research or the people he met and talked with. I've noticed a number of bits that are different between this bio and the one by Olivier Todd, written decades later, suggesting that the latter work, in spite of its faults, may at least be more reliable.

As I said in my review of the Todd book, it's a shame that there is no good biography of Camus in either French or English.

An admirable effort misses the forest for the trees
A long time ago, I started trying to think somewhat seriously about whether life without God had any meaning. A friend pointed me to Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. So I read it - twice actually. And I went on to read The Stranger, The Plague and even The Rebel. I found in those books some powerful passages (and in the case of The Plague, a pretty good story) and considerable evidence that their author was a decent man, writing in indecent times. But to be honest, Camus' underlying message eluded me. I found his philosophical musings needlessly complicated. Why, for example, does he start The Myth of Sisyphus by asking whether life's absurdity demands suicide? Surely, the survival instinct alone renders the question meaningless; not to mention the possibility of experiencing earthly pleasure. Isn't a better question - the one I wanted answered anyway - how, not whether, to live in a world with no God watching over us? But I wasn't ready to give up on Camus. So I picked up this biography in search of clarity. I didn't get it. Lottman is no better at explaining Camus' philosophy (to me) than Camus himself. Take this Camus line, transcribed as if it were self-evident: "There is only one case in which despair is pure. It is that of a man sentenced to die.'' Huh? What about a parent who loses a child? What about a man or woman betrayed by someone they love? Is their despair somehow different from "pure despair"? And if so, does it matter? Lottman does do a valuable service in compiling the details of Camus' life. He is a relentless searcher of truth, separating fact from myth, getting the dates right, admitting when the evidence is unclear. It's yeoman's work, and deserves praise. And he makes a long story readable. His feisty preface to this new edition is a wonderful rebuke to those who supported Stalin's butchery and condemned Camus (who, as an earlier Amazon review nicely put it, had the good fortune to be "hated by idiots.") But Lottman sometimes doesn't see the forest for the trees and doesn't always put Camus' activities in a context that gives them meaning - assuming, apparently, that the reader already understands the backdrop. For example, I still don't totally understand the Camus-Sartre split, though Lottman tells us the names of the cafes and magazines in which it played out. In summary, this is a valuable book for Camus scholars and those already grounded in his philosophy. For the rest of us, the search continues.

reiterating what has already been said
i agree with both comments below. lottman did an excellent job in his research. and ,at times, he seems to hesitate to cut out all the extra detail that makes it an unnecessarily long read. but i really have to commend him for the work he did. you can find any information you need if you're doing research on camus, all you have to do is look a little.

what i most enjoyed, however, was the feel of lottman's writing. you can just tell that lottman knows his subject and has the right kind of passionate drive to deliver the biography.

This is the Single Best Camus Biography
I think I most love this magnificent book because the chilly reception it has received mirrors the deeply ironic incivility the French elite reserved for Camus himself.One can love Camus for his words, his insight, and his passion, but I think I love him most for the fact that he was hated by idiots.It is this theme that runs throughout Lottman's wonderful biography, and it also seems to describe to an extent Lottman's own experience.

For nearly the last quarter of Camus's short life, he lived in disfavor amongst the Paris literati.And for what?Because he, virtually alone amongst French intellectuals, recognized early on the horror that was the true nature of the regime of Joseph Stalin(socialism being virtually an article of faith with the likes of Sartre and others in France at the time).

Lottman himself seems to have had a rather similar experience in his publication of this book.As he points out in his preface to this second edition, a cottage industry has evolved in France and elsewhere in Camus scholarship and criticism.However, though that body of work is deeply indebted to Lottman's research, his preeminent role is rarely acknowledged.I think this is probably because, like Camus, Lottman is an outsider.Neither man was a French native (Camus was an Algerian of mixed French-Spanish descent, Lottman is an American expatriate living in Paris) and neither is an academic by trade (Camus was a newspaper editor, novelist and a man of the theatre, while Lottman is a journalist).Thus, Lottman has seemed at times as unwelcome amongst the French elite as Camus did himself.Again the irony is too much; Lottman has received comparatively little recognition even though he himself is an extremely important cornerstone of current Camus research.

Anyway, this book for whatever reason has received little more attention here in the United States than it has gotten anywhere else, and I think that is a shame.It is a wonderful, readable book.Most importantly, it is non-judgmental and it is very deferential.By that I mean that Lottman nowehere preaches to us how we should understand Camus; as he himself says, the essence of an artist is not in his biography, but in his works. It is long, but has only that level of detail befitting an intellectual biography of this caliber.

For anyone who really wants to understand Camus's literature, a thorough understanding of his life--like Lottman's--is priceless.

Very thorough, but gets bogged down with detail
Although an accomplished and thorough book, it sometimes get bogged down in detail. However, it is a very carefully compiled and analytical book. Good selection of pictures and details of others artists in Camus' life. Ienjoyed it greatly. ... Read more

Product Description
From 1935 until his death, Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks to sketch out ideas for future works, record snatches of conversations and excerpts from books he was reading, and jot down his reflections on death and the horror of war, his feelings about women and loneliness and art, and his appreciations for the Algerian sun and sea. These three volumes, now available together for the first time in paperback, include all entries made from the time when Camus was still completely unknown in Europe, until he was killed in an automobile accident in 1960, at the height of his creative powers. In 1957 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A spiritual and intellectual auto biography, Camus' Notebooks are invariably more concerned with what he felt than with what he did. It is i ntriguing for the reader to watch him seize and develop certain themes and ideas, discard others that at f irst seemed promising, and explore different types of experience. ... Read more

Product Description
Guia moral e intelectual de la generacion llegada a la madurez entre las ruinas, la frustacion y la desesperanza de la Europa de la postguerra, Albert Camus 1913-1960 salto a la fama con la publicacion, en 1942. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Classic existentialism
The Stranger is a classic of literature, that can be read in one sitting (it's very short). Its power lies on the amoral voice of the narrator, his detached emotional state, and the tension that comes from the protagonist's trial, where he is accused of killing an arab, but in reality convicted for his lack of emotion at the death of his mother.
The language of the book is direct and simple, but it brilliantly conveys the psychological numbness of the character. This conveyance is preserved in the Spanish translation of the book (originally written in French) and to a lesser degree (but still substantial) the English translation.

el absurdo
A veces alcaminar por la calle yotambién hesentido esa desazón, esa falta de raíces en el mundo y pese a tener padre y madre,hermanosy esposa, siento que no pertenezco a este mundo, que yo también como el personaje de Camus,soy un extranjero en este mundo, que solo estoy de paso y que no importa lo que haga para cambiarlo siempre será así y jamás será de otra forma. En esos momentos en los que tengo un ataque fuerte de abusurdismo, veo lo banal, y a veces es aún mas fuerte que la depresión, pues en las depresiones te preocupas por que la gente no te quiere, en estos momentos eso no te importa ya, nada te importa. Mucha gente lo achaca a la falta de Dios, a la falta de raices, a la falta de amor, sin saber que a veces los excesos de la vida pueden producir ese mismo efecto y quizás hasta mucho peor. Camus nos muestra en su novela a un hombreque no tiene afectos ni pasiones, un hombre que sin querer mata, y sin querer muere y todo alrededor, vida y muerte, esta imbuido del sentido del absurdo.

Luis Méndez ... Read more