Nikan
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Post by Nikan on Jul 11, 2023 21:15:04 GMT
So, let's just jump right to the debate which the book surprisingly and wonderfully builds up to (do read it if you haven't yet, it'll take one day  ). Courtroom scene > there are a number of perspectives at work here (in the text): the prosecutor's, the protagonist's and his lawyer. The first is obviously untruthful/ half-truthful... loved that... he is being shady though; he overplays his hand, tries to give the impression that even the next, totally-unrelated ("but is it really?!" he'd argue) case - the killing of the father - is the protagonist's fault … he is right when he says he falls short of his "social duties" but it's obvious what he's doing (again, he is doing the "right thing" though in a sense: condemning a murderer!) … the lawyer wants to save his client (I oddly wanted it too, was rooting for him and didn't feel not-fucked-up about myself in doing so  ) but he's lousy, and doesn't win the court's sympathy (nor ours - which is more important) by saying but he is a dedicated, good worker... also true but doesn't wash away the bad at all... both takes were problematic, but the prosecutor's I find "more" acceptable... which might say more about me than anything else ... then there is the protagonist's, which I didn't think was all that reasonable. My edition ended with a note that Camus himself wrote in the 50s where he defends his main man as a Christ-like hero of individuality... not that I didn't find his note useful, I just wish I hadn't read it... Like dude couldn't you entertain your individuality without murdering a man? and then what else do I have to ask of you? to not be so senseless?... and what makes me superior to you? that I'm closer to being " one of them"? I could've go on thinking that this is a morality tale about how doomed nihilists or atheists are, but I'd feel I'm oversimplifying what I just experienced... Such a short, frustrating yet provocative work. I Just had to let it all out  What is your verdict?
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 11, 2023 21:51:12 GMT
It's my 2nd favorite book - and for a long part of my endless, unfathomable existence was my favorite. Probably for the first 178 years .......literally the moderators call me "Monsieur Antichrist" behind my back ......wtf -  Not merely a Great book but one that leads to maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany others and many other works of Art too - films and music - Punk Rock ......that photo of Robert Mitchum when he got busted for weed, Elevator To The Gallows, Miles Davis playing "So What" , Marlon Brando's early film roles, Dylan, The Fire Within......you know......shit that cool people get.......... while normies are jerking off to their Che Guevara T-shirts and playing with their Star Wars toys and what not It also frees your mind to WORK - to THINK and question ......it's one of the best instructive artistic works of all-time - not merely "passive" .....it's rather cool, detached AND searing at the same time..... If possible I prefer the Matthew Ward translation but you can't go wrong with any including the Gilbert (earlier) and it has the best chapter closes too:
"What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day . . . as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent."  |
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Nikan
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Post by Nikan on Jul 11, 2023 22:40:13 GMT
It's my 2nd favorite book - and for a long part of my endless, unfathomable existence was my favorite. Probably for the first 178 years .......literally the moderators call me "Monsieur Antichrist" behind my back ......wtf - Not merely a Great book but one that leads to maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany others and many other works of Art too - films and music - Punk Rock ......that photo of Robert Mitchum when he got busted for weed, Elevator To The Gallows, Miles Davis playing "So What" , Marlon Brando's early film roles, Dylan, The Fire Within......you know......shit that cool people get.......... while normies are jerking off to their Che Guevara T-shirts and playing with their Star Wars toys and what not It also frees your mind to WORK - to THINK and question ......it's one of the best instructive artistic works of all-time - not merely "passive" .....it's rather cool, detached AND searing at the same time..... If possible I prefer the Matthew Ward translation but you can't go wrong with any including the Gilbert (earlier) and it has the best chapter closes too:
"What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day . . . as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent." Woah  what is the first one? And I'm curious now. what do you make of my take?... is it "correct"? Is yours close to what I took away or it went over my head? I almost wanna say "we all have our own take aways and they're equally valid" but maybe it's Camus' reputation which is intimidating (I have no familiarity with his philosophy and essays) ... there was an intimate unfriendliness to this work, which - miraculously? - wasn't off-putting (or didn't come off as pretentious) at all, somehow... Edit: now I legit feel the book both advocated for and challenged our idea of stubborn individuality... how much of it was planned? how much not and is realized in my reading of it? what does the world mean |
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 11, 2023 23:07:28 GMT
It's my 2nd favorite book - and for a long part of my endless, unfathomable existence was my favorite. Probably for the first 178 years .......literally the moderators call me "Monsieur Antichrist" behind my back ......wtf - Not merely a Great book but one that leads to maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany others and many other works of Art too - films and music - Punk Rock ......that photo of Robert Mitchum when he got busted for weed, Elevator To The Gallows, Miles Davis playing "So What" , Marlon Brando's early film roles, Dylan, The Fire Within......you know......shit that cool people get.......... while normies are jerking off to their Che Guevara T-shirts and playing with their Star Wars toys and what not It also frees your mind to WORK - to THINK and question ......it's one of the best instructive artistic works of all-time - not merely "passive" .....it's rather cool, detached AND searing at the same time..... If possible I prefer the Matthew Ward translation but you can't go wrong with any including the Gilbert (earlier) and it has the best chapter closes too:
"What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day . . . as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent." Woah what is the first one? And I'm curious now. what do you make of my take?... is it "correct"? Is yours close to what I took away or it went over my head? I almost wanna say "we all have our own take aways and they're equally valid" but maybe it's Camus' reputation which is intimidating (I have no familiarity with his philosophy and essays) ... there was an intimate unfriendliness to this work, which - miraculously? - wasn't off-putting (or didn't come off as pretentious) at all, somehow...I think you get it........ the murder is necessary since it parallels his life / execution with the life he took - the book never posits the murder as heroic merely records it - side note: see The Cure "Killing An Arab" - even more Art it influenced! There are many things in the book which reveal themselves upon re-readings - and let's face it - you can read it a billion times very quickly - the way sensory things are described - light, heat, dizziness, water, sweat, coolness of drinks - the sort of playing out of things in "nature" vs. man himself ........there's a lot of pretension in the book in this way - but the writing is so economical, it is also operating as a parody of "court room" drama and "detective fiction" (short, direct, non-flowery prose) The book in that stylistic way is literally Punk Rock - it says exactly what it means without irony - irony just being another way of "not having to mean what you say" - however the plot is heavily ironic........... It's ingenuous - one my favorite parts is when he reads the newspaper clipping he finds in his mattress about a mother and sister who accidentally murder the son / brother and he says it seems both possible and absurd........it's darkly hilarious  Some of Camus' essays are great particularly The Myth of Sisyphus .......  Fave books:movie-awards-redux.freeforums.net/post/404584 |
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jul 12, 2023 1:00:54 GMT
Not merely a Great book but one that leads to maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany others and many other works of Art too - films and music - Punk Rock ......that photo of Robert Mitchum when he got busted for weed, Elevator To The Gallows, Miles Davis playing "So What" , Marlon Brando's early film roles, Dylan, The Fire Within...... Dekalog: Five too! |
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jul 17, 2023 22:24:02 GMT
(responding a bit to the other thread) Well I'm no fan of Sartre or his existentialist jet-set cronies, at all... Kierkegaard did it much, much better 100 years earlier (the Abyss, Anguish-as-catalyst, existence over essence all come from K. and his epic assault on Hegel). Heidegger cringed when Sartre went around Paris posturing as Heidegger's sort-of philosophical heir... the German accused the Frenchman of having understood nothing about his work. And what a pain in the arse the French can be in this period - mon Dieu! Give me Humphrey Bogart, The Wages of Fear (French, but free of Sartre), The Passion of Joan of Arc as authentic Existentialist phenomenons and let them keep their croissants.
But Camus happily isn't Sartre and Camus can write... Taken as a psychological study, The Stranger is amazing, like a mutation of one of Dostoevsky's rebels. But Mersault isn't just anti-hero but anti-rebel--his apathy is total--no room for rebellion or forward movement or anything that threatens stasis. He's also a victim of the moral judgment of others, and it's a sure way of making him, if not likable, appealing in a basic way. Anyway that's the part of the book I can engage with and respond to. But then...
"Camus himself wrote in the 50s where he defends his main man as a Christ-like hero of individuality..."
Wish I hadn't read that either but it's just the kind of thing those pesky French would say!! Either I don't understand the ending of The Stranger (possible) or I find it alarmingly unconvincing. When Mersault rejects the priest as a fraud, isn't he simply substituting one idol (God) for another (Death)? You're left thinking death is the one direct contact with the truth that is real - faced with it, Mersault can reassess his whole life, his mother's life, etc and decode previously hidden meaning. IMO this is terrible philosophy and not convincing literature, either. If he had taken his study of indifference to the bitter end, who knows what he'd find there?
As you say, frustrating, maddening, but a major work...
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) but he's lousy, and doesn't win the court's sympathy (nor ours - which is more important) by saying but he is a dedicated, good worker... also true but doesn't wash away the bad at all... both takes were problematic, but the prosecutor's I find "more" acceptable... which might say more about me than anything else 
what is the first one?
