The stranger, by Albert Camus

I didn't know Camus until a couple of years ago, when I randomly meet a few quotes from him on internet that I tough were interesting. But apart from that until now I've never read an actual novel or book he wrote. So this year because for some reason I decided to read more novels than usual, I also decided to give a go on a book from him, and therefore I got what some people consider to be his best novel, which is named "The stranger".

The story is about a French man who in a kind of a self-defense act kills another man and then goes to jail. Half of the book is before going to jail and the other half is after being there. The book has a bit of an existentialist touch, although obviously not as near as deep as Dostoevsky's existentialism, for example, but what goes on inside of the main characters head is indeed very strong, crude, rude, and direct. It is an interesting character, that suffers enormously from social conventions which he can not cope and that as a result starts behaving and looking very indifferently to feelings in general. Even when he is sentenced to a death penalty he manages to rationalize the issue and he goes until pretty much the end suffering but at the same time being indifferent to a lot of what is going on. The final scene just before being sent to die he even manages to make the priest that was talking to him in jail to get crazy and to cry because that was no way he would allow his desperate situation to be used by a priest he didn't like to throw on him consolations he didn't want on matters he didn't feel like discussing such as life after death. It was a character I enjoyed reading, that's for sure.

This is the only book I've read so far from Camus, so I can't say much, but in a way this book at least made me remind a lot, at least the style, of another writer which I like a lot, which is Jack London. I though both styles were a bit similar. I don't know, it's like for me that whereas Garcia Marquez is famous for his magic realist style, Jack London and Albert Camus would belong to a sort of "realistic realism" literature gender. That probably doesn't even exist, but that's how I see it and that's why I think both have some similarities. Jack London I might blog something about him soon. He is one of my favorites novelists. I would put him at least in my top 5, but not in my top 2 for sure because these are Dostoevsky and Garcia Marquez. Anyway, it was fun to finally read something from Camus. It is not extraordinary but it is good. I might give a go in another of his books later on. But not for now.

The idiot, by Dostoyevsky

This is the first time I am writing about a novel here. I do like novels, but it simply happens that usually I read much more other stuff, as it can be seen from my other posts here in this blog. Well, why Dostoyevsky then? I have actually a short story on why I am thankful to him. Although I still haven't post anything on Friedrich Nietzsche, the guy is, or at least used to be, my favorite philosopher. But I remember that when I first meet him I couldn't follow or understand him at all. I simply couldn't get into his existentialism world for some reason, maybe I was too young then, I don't know. What changed this in my life was exactly the first book I read from Dostoyevsky, which is called Notes from Underground. Maybe because it's a novel it is easier to enter into the narrative and absorb something. Well, basically it was after reading that Dostoyevsky's book that I could finally read something from Nietzsche and really dialogue with him. That was probably 8 or 9 years ago and during the next at least 5 or 6 years I was all the time coming back to Nietzsche, reading everything I could from him, making him the first big and significant philosophical influence I received in my life. And I am thankful to Dostoyevsky for that. He helped me to open myself to this kind of existential world.

After that as I said, it passed nearly 10 years and the only books I read from Dostoyevsky were apart from Notes from Underground, The Gambler, and The house of the Dead, which are good books, but definitely far from being among his main works. Finally this year, since I was going to Russia to spend a one month vacation there, I decided to get one of his main big books. So I got The Idiot, which was one I managed to easily find a Portuguese kindle version of it. I started to read it when I was on the plane, on my way to Saint-Petesrburg, which by the way plays a very important role on the narrative. And an interesting fact was that there is a small town on the story, which is also very important, called Pavlovsky, near Saint-Petesburg, that I also had the opportunity to visit. But anyway, because of this whole Russian thing I decided that I had finally to give a go on a proper nice long Dostoyevsky's novel.

I confess I really enjoyed the book. Dostoyevsky is probably my favorite novelist. Well, I am also a great admirer of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, although they are miles apart from each other on their content. So sometimes I don't know, I think Garcia Marquez might be my favorite, but most of times yes I say and think that Dostoyevsky is the one. That doesn't really matter much because my preferences are usually fluctuating, but... The novel is a good one, specially because of the Prince Myshkin (The idiot himself), which is such an interesting character. A nice and noble soul, under a great suffering due to his illness and the big struggle he faces all the time between his desire to be noble and gentle and his usual incapability of being it due to his epileptic healthy condition, that makes him look like an idiot and not a noble person. The prejudices that epileptic people or any kind of "disabled" or simply "unhealthy" people faced in Russian at that time were enormous. To be fair even today this is true in Russia, so imagine during that time when he wrote it in the mid seventeenth century. This incredible inner struggles, always present in Dostoyevsky gets a very very big dimension in the character of prince Myshkin. So Ok, but apart from it, what I like about Dostoyevsky's books, and in The Idiot it happens again, is how by reading it you can get into how society used to function under Russian empire epoch, specially how the noble society used to function. You get a lot of this cultural background by reading Dostoyevsky, and that always fascinates me. He has also this thing that at the same time that he criticizes a lot the hypocrisy of  the noble classes from that time, he nonetheless always has at least an unconscious underground desire to be an noble aristocratic himself. At least that's what I get from his stories anyway.

That's pretty much it. The book is huge, and it takes a long time to read, but it is definitely worth if you have the will and the patience and the time. It's a master-piece, and I am happy I finally managed to read one of the most significant novels of Dostoyevsky. While in Russian, after finishing reading this book I managed to find an English version of another book written by him, called Daemons. I will try to read it still this year. Let's see. And then finally to my main goal which is to read The Brothers Karamazov. But that will still wait a bit.