Albert Camus ~ “The Plague”

Albert Camus ~ “The Plague”

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The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, “The Plague” is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it.

The Plague is easily one of the best ten novels ever written, far surpassing even the erstwhile classic “The Stranger”. Whereas we examine an uncommonly cold-hearted man in a normal world in the pages of The Stranger, in this novel it is a harsh outside world which closes in on a group of fascinating characters. It is in this much more developed context that Camus’ most remarkable notions of humanity, life, and existence can be fleshed out and communicated more effectively. The lessons of good, normal lives in a world gone mad are much more instructive and meaningful than the observations in “The Stranger” of a man gone mad in a normal world.

A word to the wise: when large numbers of rats come out of the woodwork and commence dying nasty, bloody deaths in the streets and houses, something is definitely wrong. In the port city of Oran, the population ignores the signs of danger and only grudgingly admits that an epidemic, a form of the bubonic plague to be exact, has taken root in their city. The protagonist, Dr. Rieux, is a doctor who finally helps convince the authorities to take extreme measures in the interest of public safety and to eventually quarantine the entire town. Over the course of the novel, we get to observe the manner in which Dr. Rieux, his companions, and prominent men of the community react to the worsening plague and its social consequences. Dr. Rieux has just sent his unhealthy wife off to a sanitarium before the plague breaks out, and he must suffer her absence alongside the stresses of working 20+ hours a day trying to save people’s lives while accomplishing little more than watching them die horrible deaths. Dr. Rieux's attempts to make sense of everything is a basic pulse of the story; an atheist, he cannot find happiness but goes on day after day fighting the disease with all his might because that is what he as a doctor is supposed to do. His friend Tarrou supplies much of the knowledge we glean about the reactions of society as a whole as month after month of isolation continues in the face of death’s greedy fingers. His journal records small but important facts about all manner of men, yet he himself cannot be said to find ultimate peace. We first encounter M. Cottard after he has hanged himself and been saved before death. A criminal type yet not a bad man, his initial worries over inquiries into his suicide attempt fade away as the plague’s grip on Oran tightens. He emerges from a self-imposed exile to actually become a communicating member of society; he alone seems to enjoy the plague because it makes everyone else like him, forced to live each day with the fear of a brooding, horrible fate. Then there is M. Grande, one of the favorite characters in all of literature. A simple civil service employee, he devotes himself to volunteer work computing plague statistics and the like while still continuing his fervent efforts at writing a novel. Grande’s wife left him years earlier because he got too wrapped up in his work and lost the words to communicate his love for her; he began writing a novel in an attempt to find those words. With great devotion and commitment he works on his writing, determined to produce a perfectly crafted novel, one where each word is meaningful and necessary for the story - in short, one that will inspire the future publisher to introduce it to his publishing house cohorts with the phrase, “Hats off, gentlemen.” After untold months of dedicated effort, Grande has yet to get the first sentence to sound exactly right; he engages all of his efforts into perfecting this one sentence, sure that the rest of the novel will fall into place after it is perfected.

These main characters are all fascinating character studies. Not all of them live to see the plague’s end, but each of them struggles to find meaning in his own experience - e.g., one character continues living because that is what is required of human beings, to go on fighting for life in a meaningless world; another character seeks to become a saint of sorts by helping his fellow man fight the pestilence. The overriding message that is left with at the end is that life is worth living despite the arbitrary cruelties of an unforgiving world because there is more good in man than there is evil. The book delivered in fact a rather darkly uplifting celebration of the human spirit; one’s loved ones give life its meaning in a hostile world. “The Plague” succeeds in ways “The Stranger” never could because the characters in this novel are utterly human and represent diverse aspects of the lives of each of us.

“THE STRANGER” ~ Albert Camus

“THE STRANGER” ~ Albert Camus

Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert
VINTAGE BOOKS - A Division of Random House, NEW YORK

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"The Stranger" is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt - all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of "The Stranger", however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.

The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities - that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral, are two ostensibly damning facts - so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable. Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end - dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING ~ Milan Kundera

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
~ Milan Kundera

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This is either a book of philosophy masquerading as a novel, or a novel about the lives of four or five characters with pretensions to be a book of philosophy. Either way, it's an amazing work. Kundera deals with his characters in a rather sketchy way, using them to pose a number of questions, rather than to go into great psychological depth. Yet, even there, the characters Tomas and Tereza do come through well. Their moods and motivations, even their dreams, hold a reader's attention. A couple of the others, Sabina and Franz, maybe Franz' wife, are very light indeed. Kundera is interested in sex and love, in the fact that they tie people down, in the fact that they are so fickle, so gossamer light, yet so important. In a time when ideology and/or political oppression create craziness or stupidity and the common sense of daily life is overthrown - as in post-1968 Czechoslovakia - love and sex are more or less what is left for people to hang on to. Kundera also ponders the choices that people make, and the extremely haphazard way these choices come about, based perhaps on endless strings of coincidence. This is not a novel long on plot. Rather it is a vehicle for some very intelligent musings. When living under oppressive rulers "is it better to shout and thereby hasten the end, or to keep silent and gain thereby a slower death?" What is the nature of love? Man is a 'cow parasite', he tells us, (though he's probably talking about a certain percent of humanity only) and goes on to say that attitude towards animals is a fundamental moral test of Man. We've failed. As you live, you write the story of your life. You don't get the chance to "write" an alternative story; there are no comparisons for you. History is the same, he says, as light as individual human life. There is no possibility of comparison of chances either in history or life. These are only a small sample of the interesting thoughts and ideas Kundera mulls over. The choice you make by reading it, may evolve into something completely different in your life, have totally different repercussions sooner or later. Will you recognize that? After all, each book of any consequence you read leaves an imprint. THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING will definitely do so.

Sculpting in Time (1987) / Andrei Tarkovsky

"Sculpting in Time" (1987) / Andrei Tarkovsky

By Darren Hughes

"My hope is that those readers whom I manage to convince, if not entirely then at least in part, may become my kindred spirits, if only in recognition of the fact that I have no secrets from them". — Tarkovsky.

I've never read another book like "Sculpting in Time". In it Tarkovsky speaks as eloquently about art as he does faith and philosophy, and does so in a remarkably kind, concerned voice. To him, his subject — the unique ability of the cinematic image to touch the soul and inspire spiritual improvement — is quite literally a matter of life and death. "The goal for all art," he writes, "unless of course it is aimed at the 'consumer', like a saleable commodity, is to explain to the artist himself and to those around him what man lives for, what is the meaning of his existence. To explain to people the reason for their appearance on this planet; or if not to explain, at least to pose the question". And again: "The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning it to good".

That we understand the gravity of this statement is more than a simple intellectual or rhetorical exercise for Tarkovsky. Throughout the book (but most notably in its "Conclusion") he speaks in the voice of a trusted elder, as if determined to pass along the wisdom gained from experience and inspiration while time allows. That he was already suffering from terminal cancer when completing the book makes it all the more affecting.

In the closing paragraph of "Sculpting in Time", Tarkovsky makes his final appeal, speaking to us as confidants:

"Finally, I would enjoin the reader — confiding in him utterly — to believe that the one thing that mankind has ever created in a spirit of self-surrender is the artistic image. Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God? " — Tarkovsky

In the margin of my copy I scribbled, "Now that is how to finish a book." Although my own appreciation of his sentiment is due, in large part, to our shared religious faith, I trust that such a faith is by no means a prerequisite for his readers. I can't stress enough how refreshing it is to read a filmmaker speak of his craft using terms like "truth," "love," "sacrifice," and (especially) "beauty." Tarkovsky writes, "We have almost totally lost sight of the beautiful as a criterion of art". It's a criticism of the commercial cinema that is both blatant and absurd — in an era when weekend box office grosses have become the stuff of water-cooler conversations, the word "beauty" is as alien to "movies" as Tarkovsky himself is to most American movie-goers.

The greatest compliment I can give "Sculpting in Time" is to say that when I finished reading it I took a deep breath and watched his film, "The Mirror", three times. Forgive my hyperbole, but Tarkovsky has quite honestly challenged me to adjust my entire understanding of film and of its potential.

Much of "Sculpting in Time" is devoted to Tarkovsky's fascinating and detailed explanation of his methods as a filmmaker. He addresses both his stylistic techniques and, more specifically, how he put them into practice in each of his seven films (Ivan's Childhood, The Mirror, and The Sacrifice are given the most attention; Stalker and Solaris the least). Chapter V is the longest chapter and should probably be the starting point for anyone who is interested in Tarkovsky, but not in reading the entire book. The chapter is broken into six film elements:

The Film Image
Tarkovsky begins the chapter by acknowledging that a concept like "artistic image" could never be "expressed in a precise thesis, easily formulated and understandable". And that is precisely the point. For him, the potential of cinema lies in the unique ability of the film image to communicate Truth more effectively (or affectively) than language. The image is able to reveal the totality of the universe and allows the viewer to experience simultaneously complex and contradictory feelings.

Tarkovsky argues that such an image is captured only when the director abandons all attempts at objectivity, building instead from his own personal storehouse of memory and experience. The Mirror is the most obvious example of this principle put to practice — it is a film filled with images from Tarkovsky's own childhood. His approach to the film image (in a nutshell) is that an image based on Truth (even a completely subjective truth) will resonate much more strongly with an audience than will a cliched image that comes pre-loaded with supposedly objective symbolism. Works for me. I can barely make it through "The Mirror" without crying.

Time, Rhythm and Editing
"Sculpting in Time" is Tarkovsky's metaphor for the construction of a film's rhythm. Notice that the emphasis is put on time and rhythm, rather than on editing, which Tarkovsky considers little more than an assembly process. This distinction clearly separates him from his Soviet predecessors like Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Kuleshov, whose experiments in montage Tarkovsky refers to as "puzzles and riddles," intellectual exercises that require too little of the audience.

Instead, he writes, "rhythm is the main formative element of cinema". He uses a short film by Pascal Aubier to illustrate his point. The ten-minute film contains only one shot: the camera begins on a wide landscape, then zooms in slowly to reveal a man on a hill. As the camera gets closer, we learn first that the man is dead, then that he has been killed. "The film has no editing, no acting and no decor," Tarkovsky writes. "But the rhythm of the movement of time is there within the frame, as the sole organising force of the — quite complex — dramatic development". Like the Aubier example, Tarkovsky's films are marked by long takes (most notably in the bookends of "The Sacrifice") and slow, beautifully choreographed camera movements.

Scenario and Shooting Script

For Tarkovsky, the greatest challenge associated with developing a script is maintaining the integrity of the film's inspiration — "it almost seems as if circumstances have been deliberately calculated to make [the director] forget why it was that he started working on the picture". For this reason, he argues that the director must also be the writer, or he must develop a partnership that is founded on complete trust. The majority of this section is devoted to "The Mirror" — Tarkovsky uses it as a case study of his method.

The Film's Graphic Realisation

This section offers a glimpse of how Tarkovsky worked on set, describing his approach to collaboration. "It is essential that [the crew] should not be in any way mere functionaries; they have to participate as creative artists in their own right, and be allowed to share in all your feelings and thoughts". He talks specifically about his relationship with the camera-man, who he refers to as a "co-author," and explains how he worked with Georgi Rerberg and Vadim Yusov. This section is featured prominently in "Directed by Andrey Tarkovsky", the documentary that is included on "The Sacrifice" DVD.

The Film Actor
Again, Tarkovsky's approach (in this case, to directing actors) is a distinct break from the Soviet tradition, particularly that of Stanislawski. While he sees much value for the theater in what has become known as method acting, he argues that film actors, like their directors, should find inspiration in subjective experience. "The one thing the film actor has to do is express in particular circumstances a psychological state peculiar to him alone, and do so naturally, true to his own emotional and intellectual make-up, and in the form that is only right for him". Free to perform without restraint, the actors then provide the director true experience from which he selects the "stuff" of his film.

Music and Noises
Tarkovsky's discussion of sound, not surprisingly, begins with its relationship to the cinematic image: "But music is not just an appendage . . . It must be an essential element of the realisation of the concept as a whole . . . it must be so completely one with the visual image that if it were to be removed from a particular episode, the visual image would not just be weaker in its idea and impact, it would be qualitatively different". As is often the case when one attempts to write about music (who said it's like "dancing about architecture"?), Tarkovsky slips more noticeably here into poetic (rather than hard, practical) language. It makes for wonderful reading, but I'm still unsure about his exact approach: "Above all," he writes, "I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could learn to listen to them properly, cinema would have no need of music at all".

"My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him". — Tarkovsky.

As I mentioned above, I realize that I've slipped occasionally into hyperbole here, but since finishing "Sculpting in Time", I've found myself viewing film (and all "art" in general) from a new perspective. We see this debate all the time: Film as "just entertainment" vs. film as "something more." I'd been leaning towards the latter for several years; this book has completed that shift.

Sculpting in Time (1987) / Andrei Tarkovsky

"Sculpting in Time" (1987) / Andrei Tarkovsky

By Darren Hughes

"My hope is that those readers whom I manage to convince, if not entirely then at least in part, may become my kindred spirits, if only in recognition of the fact that I have no secrets from them". — Tarkovsky.

I've never read another book like "Sculpting in Time". In it Tarkovsky speaks as eloquently about art as he does faith and philosophy, and does so in a remarkably kind, concerned voice. To him, his subject — the unique ability of the cinematic image to touch the soul and inspire spiritual improvement — is quite literally a matter of life and death. "The goal for all art," he writes, "unless of course it is aimed at the 'consumer', like a saleable commodity, is to explain to the artist himself and to those around him what man lives for, what is the meaning of his existence. To explain to people the reason for their appearance on this planet; or if not to explain, at least to pose the question". And again: "The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning it to good".

That we understand the gravity of this statement is more than a simple intellectual or rhetorical exercise for Tarkovsky. Throughout the book (but most notably in its "Conclusion") he speaks in the voice of a trusted elder, as if determined to pass along the wisdom gained from experience and inspiration while time allows. That he was already suffering from terminal cancer when completing the book makes it all the more affecting.

In the closing paragraph of "Sculpting in Time", Tarkovsky makes his final appeal, speaking to us as confidants:

"Finally, I would enjoin the reader — confiding in him utterly — to believe that the one thing that mankind has ever created in a spirit of self-surrender is the artistic image. Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God? " — Tarkovsky

In the margin of my copy I scribbled, "Now that is how to finish a book." Although my own appreciation of his sentiment is due, in large part, to our shared religious faith, I trust that such a faith is by no means a prerequisite for his readers. I can't stress enough how refreshing it is to read a filmmaker speak of his craft using terms like "truth," "love," "sacrifice," and (especially) "beauty." Tarkovsky writes, "We have almost totally lost sight of the beautiful as a criterion of art". It's a criticism of the commercial cinema that is both blatant and absurd — in an era when weekend box office grosses have become the stuff of water-cooler conversations, the word "beauty" is as alien to "movies" as Tarkovsky himself is to most American movie-goers.

The greatest compliment I can give "Sculpting in Time" is to say that when I finished reading it I took a deep breath and watched his film, "The Mirror", three times. Forgive my hyperbole, but Tarkovsky has quite honestly challenged me to adjust my entire understanding of film and of its potential.

Much of "Sculpting in Time" is devoted to Tarkovsky's fascinating and detailed explanation of his methods as a filmmaker. He addresses both his stylistic techniques and, more specifically, how he put them into practice in each of his seven films (Ivan's Childhood, The Mirror, and The Sacrifice are given the most attention; Stalker and Solaris the least). Chapter V is the longest chapter and should probably be the starting point for anyone who is interested in Tarkovsky, but not in reading the entire book. The chapter is broken into six film elements:

The Film Image
Tarkovsky begins the chapter by acknowledging that a concept like "artistic image" could never be "expressed in a precise thesis, easily formulated and understandable". And that is precisely the point. For him, the potential of cinema lies in the unique ability of the film image to communicate Truth more effectively (or affectively) than language. The image is able to reveal the totality of the universe and allows the viewer to experience simultaneously complex and contradictory feelings.

Tarkovsky argues that such an image is captured only when the director abandons all attempts at objectivity, building instead from his own personal storehouse of memory and experience. The Mirror is the most obvious example of this principle put to practice — it is a film filled with images from Tarkovsky's own childhood. His approach to the film image (in a nutshell) is that an image based on Truth (even a completely subjective truth) will resonate much more strongly with an audience than will a cliched image that comes pre-loaded with supposedly objective symbolism. Works for me. I can barely make it through "The Mirror" without crying.

Time, Rhythm and Editing
"Sculpting in Time" is Tarkovsky's metaphor for the construction of a film's rhythm. Notice that the emphasis is put on time and rhythm, rather than on editing, which Tarkovsky considers little more than an assembly process. This distinction clearly separates him from his Soviet predecessors like Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Kuleshov, whose experiments in montage Tarkovsky refers to as "puzzles and riddles," intellectual exercises that require too little of the audience.

Instead, he writes, "rhythm is the main formative element of cinema". He uses a short film by Pascal Aubier to illustrate his point. The ten-minute film contains only one shot: the camera begins on a wide landscape, then zooms in slowly to reveal a man on a hill. As the camera gets closer, we learn first that the man is dead, then that he has been killed. "The film has no editing, no acting and no decor," Tarkovsky writes. "But the rhythm of the movement of time is there within the frame, as the sole organising force of the — quite complex — dramatic development". Like the Aubier example, Tarkovsky's films are marked by long takes (most notably in the bookends of "The Sacrifice") and slow, beautifully choreographed camera movements.

Scenario and Shooting Script

For Tarkovsky, the greatest challenge associated with developing a script is maintaining the integrity of the film's inspiration — "it almost seems as if circumstances have been deliberately calculated to make [the director] forget why it was that he started working on the picture". For this reason, he argues that the director must also be the writer, or he must develop a partnership that is founded on complete trust. The majority of this section is devoted to "The Mirror" — Tarkovsky uses it as a case study of his method.

The Film's Graphic Realisation

This section offers a glimpse of how Tarkovsky worked on set, describing his approach to collaboration. "It is essential that [the crew] should not be in any way mere functionaries; they have to participate as creative artists in their own right, and be allowed to share in all your feelings and thoughts". He talks specifically about his relationship with the camera-man, who he refers to as a "co-author," and explains how he worked with Georgi Rerberg and Vadim Yusov. This section is featured prominently in "Directed by Andrey Tarkovsky", the documentary that is included on "The Sacrifice" DVD.

The Film Actor
Again, Tarkovsky's approach (in this case, to directing actors) is a distinct break from the Soviet tradition, particularly that of Stanislawski. While he sees much value for the theater in what has become known as method acting, he argues that film actors, like their directors, should find inspiration in subjective experience. "The one thing the film actor has to do is express in particular circumstances a psychological state peculiar to him alone, and do so naturally, true to his own emotional and intellectual make-up, and in the form that is only right for him". Free to perform without restraint, the actors then provide the director true experience from which he selects the "stuff" of his film.

Music and Noises
Tarkovsky's discussion of sound, not surprisingly, begins with its relationship to the cinematic image: "But music is not just an appendage . . . It must be an essential element of the realisation of the concept as a whole . . . it must be so completely one with the visual image that if it were to be removed from a particular episode, the visual image would not just be weaker in its idea and impact, it would be qualitatively different". As is often the case when one attempts to write about music (who said it's like "dancing about architecture"?), Tarkovsky slips more noticeably here into poetic (rather than hard, practical) language. It makes for wonderful reading, but I'm still unsure about his exact approach: "Above all," he writes, "I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could learn to listen to them properly, cinema would have no need of music at all".

"My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him". — Tarkovsky.

As I mentioned above, I realize that I've slipped occasionally into hyperbole here, but since finishing "Sculpting in Time", I've found myself viewing film (and all "art" in general) from a new perspective. We see this debate all the time: Film as "just entertainment" vs. film as "something more." I'd been leaning towards the latter for several years; this book has completed that shift.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING ~ Milan Kundera

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
~ Milan Kundera

Download Link

This is either a book of philosophy masquerading as a novel, or a novel about the lives of four or five characters with pretensions to be a book of philosophy. Either way, it's an amazing work. Kundera deals with his characters in a rather sketchy way, using them to pose a number of questions, rather than to go into great psychological depth. Yet, even there, the characters Tomas and Tereza do come through well. Their moods and motivations, even their dreams, hold a reader's attention. A couple of the others, Sabina and Franz, maybe Franz' wife, are very light indeed. Kundera is interested in sex and love, in the fact that they tie people down, in the fact that they are so fickle, so gossamer light, yet so important. In a time when ideology and/or political oppression create craziness or stupidity and the common sense of daily life is overthrown - as in post-1968 Czechoslovakia - love and sex are more or less what is left for people to hang on to. Kundera also ponders the choices that people make, and the extremely haphazard way these choices come about, based perhaps on endless strings of coincidence. This is not a novel long on plot. Rather it is a vehicle for some very intelligent musings. When living under oppressive rulers "is it better to shout and thereby hasten the end, or to keep silent and gain thereby a slower death?" What is the nature of love? Man is a 'cow parasite', he tells us, (though he's probably talking about a certain percent of humanity only) and goes on to say that attitude towards animals is a fundamental moral test of Man. We've failed. As you live, you write the story of your life. You don't get the chance to "write" an alternative story; there are no comparisons for you. History is the same, he says, as light as individual human life. There is no possibility of comparison of chances either in history or life. These are only a small sample of the interesting thoughts and ideas Kundera mulls over. The choice you make by reading it, may evolve into something completely different in your life, have totally different repercussions sooner or later. Will you recognize that? After all, each book of any consequence you read leaves an imprint. THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING will definitely do so.

Jean-Paul Sartre ~ “The Wall”

Jean-Paul Sartre ~ “The Wall”

New Directions Paper Book | 1969 | 158 pp

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~ “The Wall”, the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor - seemingly there for the men's solace - their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail. And as the morning draws inexorably closer, the men cross the psychological wall between life and death, long before the first shot rings out. This brilliant snapshot of life in anguish is the perfect introduction to a collection of stories where the neurosis of the modern world is mirrored in the lives of the people that inhabit it. 'The Wall' rises up as a catalogue of man's solitary and free application of the existentialist's understanding. Sartre leaves no dark corner unlit in what could be considered his most biting renderings of the human condition's anguish in the face of meaninglessness. ~

~ "The Wall" itself is an astoundingly suspenseful glimpse at the fine line between life and death, the insanity in ultimate human will-power, and the psychological effects of foreknowing one's own time of death. ~

~ "The Room" is stark and vague. Interpretations abound, all from absurd (in itself) to Sartre's most profound writing. Nevertheless, the story's 'insanity' brings about many insights into the world of the individual of nothingness. ~

~ 'Erostratus' follows quite well, asking whether it is moral, immoral, right, or wrong, to kill and whether a modern man is truly free to commit conscious evil. Furthermore, it questions our modern society's knack for making celebrities of villains. ~

~ 'Intimacy' is a wonderful story with heavy-handed, deadbolt dialogue, well-crafted absurd heroes, and philosophical wit, wound up in a woman's tale of love, adultery, loyalty, friendship, impotence, and existence. ~

~ Finally, 'The Childhood of a Leader' reveals the Fascist's facade of strength, the soft scar-tissue of their idealistic youth, the true childishness of their anti-Semite reactions, and the way in which men allow themselves to follow or hunger to be followed. ~

“THE STRANGER” ~ Albert Camus

“THE STRANGER” ~ Albert Camus

Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert
VINTAGE BOOKS - A Division of Random House, NEW YORK

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"The Stranger" is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt - all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of "The Stranger", however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.

The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities - that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral, are two ostensibly damning facts - so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable. Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end - dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it.

Alan D. Schrift ~ Twentieth Century French Philosophy - Key-Themes and Thinkers

Alan D. Schrift ~ Twentieth Century French Philosophy - Key-Themes
and Thinkers

Blackwell Publishing / 2006 / 325 pp

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The book proper starts with a "Chronology", starting in 1200 and ending in 1999, listing events of philosophical or academic significance, but also such other important historical events as the French Revolution of 1789, the Franco-Prussian War, the opening of the Paris Metro, Pablo Picasso's completion of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the German Occupation of Paris in 1940, and so on (these examples are chosen at random). There then follows "Part I", a relatively short and condensed survey of the main stages in the development of philosophy in twentieth-century France (covering such schools as positivism, idealism, phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, along with their various subdivisions and derivatives). "Part II" provides an alphabetically-organized collection of brief biographies of many figures in modern French philosophy. This is remarkably comprehensive, including not only better-known names like Aron, Bachelard, Barthes, de Beauvoir, Bergson, Brunschvicg, Chartier ("Alain"), Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, Lyotard, Maritain, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Weil; but also a host of other figures who may be less well-known, especially to English-speaking readers.

A Short HISTORY of MODERN PHILOSOPHY

A Short HISTORY of MODERN PHILOSOPHY - from DESCARTES to WITTGENSTEIN ~ Roger Scruton

ROUTLEDGE Publishers ~ 1984 ~ 302 pp

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This new edition of Roger Scruton’s widely acclaimed 'Short History' covers all the major thinkers in the Western tradition, from Descartes to Wittgenstein. It is an ideal introduction to philosophical history for all those with an interest in this fascinating subject. In order to reflect recent debates and advances in scholarship and in response to the explosion of interest in the history of philosophy, Roger Scruton has substantially revised his book, while retaining the lucid and accessible style of the original version. He has also enlarged and updated the bibliography.