Reading #3

Josh selected our novel to be The Stranger by Albert Camus.

Reading commences 1/30/2009 and ceases 2/20/09.

"At the time of Nausea's appearance, Camus was writing The Stranger. He told a friend that Sartre's novel was 'a very close part of me.' In his review, Camus wrote, 'the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished and squandered.' Camus felt that each of the book's chapters, taken by itself, 'reaches a kind of perfection in bitterness and truth.' However, he also felt that the descriptive and the philosophical aspects of the novel are not balanced, that they 'don't add up to a work of art: the passage from one to the other is too rapid, too unmotivated, to evoke in the reader the deep conviction that makes the art of the novel.' He likewise felt that Sartre had tipped the balance too far in depicting the repugnant features of mankind 'instead of placing the reasons for his despair, at least to a certain degree, if not completely, on the elements of human greatness.' Still, Camus's largely positive review led to a friendship between the two authors."