Tuesday 19 May 2015

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.