Journal logo

The "Stranger" who remains unknown

How Nobel laureate Albert Camus created one of the most important books in the history of modern literature

By George Karouzakis Published 3 years ago 5 min read
7
Public Domain: Albert Camus, Created: 1 January 1957

Thousands of pages have been written about "The Stranger," the novel by the French writer and Nobelist Albert Camus, published in France in 1942. The book has been translated into 68 languages and sold more than six million copies.

Its story has been adapted for the cinema (the Italian auteur filmmaker Luchino Visconti made a film of the same name in 1967), inspired rock songs (such as "Killing an Arab" by the British band "The Cure") and gives rise to endless philosophical, political and literary discussions.

Most seek its connection to the movements of the absurd and to existentialism, and look for its allegorical relationship to colonialism, conventional morality, alienation, and many other topics.

Decades after its appearance, new views, anachronistic approaches, and innovative interpretations attempt to reach the substrate of its enigmatic plot.

This tenacity is related to the fact that Camus's youthful masterpiece concentrates his personal vision of the human condition. In his deeply orchestrated structure and carefully chosen language, the author displays sophisticated thoughts about existence, death, justice, the irrational, revolt. Man's place in the world as Camus understood it in the dark and troubled environment of his time.

Amazingly, the more one tries to grasp it, the more the intact sense of the novel escapes under the same-some would say-unmerciful Mediterranean light that "blinded" Meursault, the basic figure of the myth, to kill the Arab on the Algerian beach in the book's story.

The main character is a humble French-Algerian clerk who, faced with the loss of his mother with unprecedented apathy, gets involved in a brawl and kills an Arab, claiming at the subsequent trial that he was blinded by the strong sun to commit the act. It is not a subject one encounters easily in the literature of the early 1940s.

I follow Camus, month after month, as if I were looking over his shoulder

The reader's attempt to understand the hero is further complicated by Meursault's first-person narration. Traditionally, this type of narration, the voice of a character who is also the protagonist, helps the reader to get into the hero's mind and connect with the text.

In the case of The Stranger, the main hero's language, fragmented, disturbingly matter-of-fact, lacking in emotional exhaustion and detailed description, leads the reader down difficult and uncertain paths.

The character's inability to feel or regret the weight of his actions, the inexplicable apathy and calm that characterizes him during his trial, and his peaceful journey to the condemnation and guillotine literally form the novel's compelling narrative.

Meursault's irrational attitude shapes an antihero more drawn to the forces of nature and the distant universe, alienated from the familiar human condition and its conventions.

By houssam korichi on Unsplash

Albert Camus and the life of a literary classic

Albert Camus's great novel and all the questions about its core are presented in the book "Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic" (Ed. University of Chicago Press) by Alice Kaplan, literary historian John M. Musser Chair of Yale University.

Ms. Kaplan makes no further attempt to examine the philosophical or literary significance of the famous novel. Her undertaking is much more original and bold. She presents the biography of the novel, after years of research in archives, books, notebooks, and through numerous conversations with researchers and various people she met in Algeria, France, and America.

"I follow Camus, month by month, as if I were looking over his shoulder, telling the story of the novel from his point of view rather than my own. My plan is to get as close as possible to his process and state of mind as he creates The Stranger, sends it out for review, and publishes it in wartime France," notes on the publication's preface.

Although Kaplan focuses on the genesis of the literary work, her study slowly shapes an original biography of Albert Camus. Through it, a broader picture also emerges of colonized Algeria, of a shattered France and its literary world in the 1940s, and also of Europe in the dark era of Nazi rule.

Her book points to Camus's first literary attempts and influences. To his love of Nietzsche, of Saint Augustine, of the novels "La Douleur (Sorrow)" by André de Richaud and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" by James M. Cain. As well as to the echoes of "The Stranger" in the young Camus' hopeless literary attempt entitled "Happy Death".

The author's struggle with tuberculosis, the endless hours he spent in courtrooms as a journalist for Algerian newspapers, and his direct contact with the real events of the French-Arab conflict in his country are in many ways embedded in the main body of the novel. All these elements and facts prepared the writing of The Stranger underground for several years.

The book was completed after feverish writing in May 1940 in the room of a modest hotel in Montmartre.

In a letter sent from Paris to his wife Francine in Algiers after he had finished the last page of the book, Camus noted,

"I am writing to you in the middle of the night. I have just finished my novel, and I am too enervated to think of sleep. [...] I don't know what it's worth. At certain moments, these days, certain of its sentences, its tone, its truths, shot through me like lightning. And I have been terribly proud. But at other times I see nothing but ashes and awkwardness ...".

A staunch supporter at every stage of writing The Stranger was the French writer André Malraux. He helped in every way with the book's publication by the publisher Gallimard, at a time when Paris was experiencing one of its darkest periods, torn by Nazi Occupation and censorship. While the lack of printed paper made it difficult to publish any new book.

Alice Kaplan has succeeded in presenting a comprehensive, original work that illuminates unknown aspects of its creation and enriches our knowledge of a classic novel that has been read again and again for decades by readers of all ages and nationalities.

In the belief, as she aptly notes, that "the more people continue to read novels, the more the Stranger will live." And that is precisely a guarantee of the immortality that all writers and books would still wish for.

book review
7

About the Creator

George Karouzakis

Journalist, History researcher, art and science lover.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.