The Stranger
(Albert Camus)
The Stranger by Albert Camus is one of the few reasons I ever wanted to learn a foreign language. We?ll get to the story in a moment but first, ahhh the images, the power of the world the main character, Meursault, lives in. Whether it is the open sores on the neighbor?s foul dog or the power of the sun?s rays at the pivitol moment of the story, Camus carries us each moment in the quill of his pen. I wonder how much more powerful and haunting the dreaming landscape of this novel would be if I knew the subtle intricacies of its native French.Set in Algeria in the 1940s, The Stranger seems at first to be a somewhat boring account of the death of Meursault?s mother an event that doesn?t seem to bother Meursault at all. Shortly thereafter, however, Meursault is involved in a brilliant, hallucinatory walk down the beach written with the skill of an author who would later win the Nobel Prize for Literature. At the end of this walk, Meursault shoot and kills an Arab lying on the beach. (hint hint ?killing an Arab? by The Cure.)Still detached from his own experience, Meursault watches as the court, his lover and the world reel in shock. The trial turns oddly to the issue of his mother?s funeral, as if, unable to understand the senseless murder (caused by the sun, says Meursault) the world must seek some explanation in his failed relationship with dear old mom.I?m not nearly deep enough to get into what Camus meant by all of this. He was an existentialist of the first order. I do know awesome writing when I read it though, and that?s what this is. Love it or hate you got to admire it. Get a copy.
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