The Stranger

One sentence synopsis... An exploration of absurdity through the life of Meursault, a French Algerian whose apathetic responses to society's standards of behaviour lead him to his death.

Read it if you like... nothing. And dislike nothing. And have no feelings for anything at all. Perfect book for you. Far stretch comparison but at times Meursault gives off some very Patrick Bateman, dead-behind-the-eyes vibes.

Dream casting... I don't think a film version of this book makes any sense but somehow I'd trust Joaquin Phoenix to find a way to make it work.

This book leaves me with a feeling really hard to describe. Nonetheless, I believe those are the best books. At first, I didn't know where the book was heading, and made little sense to me. Now that I have read it and watched analyses on it (I'm new to reading philosophy) and I'm absolutely mesmerized by this piece.

This was very difficult for me to read because I wasn't used to the style of writing. In all honesty, what kept me going was the fact that it was recommended by a good friend and I had trust in his taste of books.
Overall, it didn't disappoint me. The ideas presented were beautifully articulated and although I read through chunks of paragraphs that I really didn't pay attention to, the bigger picture was still there and left me thinking about life and death (which is always a favourite topic).

111 sider uten et overflødig ord, banal naivitet tilsynelatende, men alt henger sammen, hver handling og hvert ord. Side 91:

“I have never truly been able to regret anything. I was always preoccupied by what was about to happen, either today or tomorrow. “

Som om det å ikke ha et forhold til fortiden gjør oss ute av stand til å tenke rettferdighet.

A solid 4.5/5.

This isn't the kind of book that will initially blow your mind when you first read it, there aren't any crazy plot twists, but it's something that will stay with you for a long time after you're done with it, slowly seep into your brain, and resurface every so often whenever you think about life and its purpose.

There isn't much to say about the plot without being too spoiler-ish. The book follows our very blase and nonchalant narrator, Meursault, as he attends his mother's funeral, and then he goes on to live his every day life. We are introduced to his colleague-turned-girlfriend, his neighbours in his flat, and some other side characters, and their drab lives.

On paper, it may not sound interesting, may sound boring even, but there's something so hypnotic and addicting in the way Meursault drones on and on. Nothing ever seems to matter to him. He's unemotional when his mother dies, not even wishing to see her in the casket. He experiences sexual attraction to his girlfriend Marie, but when she asks if he loves her, he doesn't quite know what to say. He doesn't seem to have an opinion for any which way, or to care about much. He goes on and on as he has always does.

But then things take a turn in the second part of the book, and there is much to unpack there, so a majority of my thoughts will be under the spoiler tags:

Meursault kills an "Arab" who had been hounding his friend and neighbour Raymond, who had physically abused the man's sister a few days earlier for cheating on him. He's sent to prison, and we see him carry his non-emotionality over there. Five months pass in prison and he doesn't even seem to feel it, it's all one unending day to him. We go through a courtroom sequence, the verdict is passed, and Meursault is sentenced to be executed by guillotine. This is when Meursault's non-emotional facade finally cracks. He submits an appeal, and when he is sent back to his cell to await the result of the appeal or his fate at the guillotine, is when we see him at his most raw. He ruminates about how the thought of "twenty more years" of life was like "poisoned joy" to him. A chaplain enters, whom Meursault has already refused to see at least three times on account of the fact that he does not believe in God. The chaplain emotionally asks Meursault to reconsider. "I know you've wished for another life," says the chaplain. Then Meursault snaps.[The chaplain] wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who'd come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me.What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.... for the first time in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself--so like a brother, really--I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.The full force of Camus's nihilism comes through in this impassioned speech, and on some levels I already can relate. The universe doesn't care, the world doesn't care. Meursault's indifference to just about everything in his life only reflects how uncaring the world is. Whether or not he sees his mother in the casket or cries at her funeral doesn't change the fact that she has lived her life and now is dead. What did it matter if he testified to the police that Raymond's partner had cheated on him and that he got away with physically abusing her? What did it matter that he agreed to marry Marie even though he doesn't really care either way about her specifically? What did it matter that he fired four more bullets into the body of the man he had already shot once and was probably already dead at the time?The world goes on as it always does despite his decisions. The world goes on whether or not Meursault is pardoned or marches on to his fate at the guillotine. The world goes on no matter what, indifferently, uncaringly. And even if he makes decisions that affects the course of human society, what happens after that? When human beings go extinct, or when the Earth ceases to exist? The universe goes on, just as indifferently.I guess an appropriate way to end this review is to copy and paste choice bits of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.Mama, just killed a manPut a gun against his headPulled my trigger, now he's deadMama, life had just begunBut now I've gone and thrown it all awayMama, oohDidn't mean to make you cryIf I'm not back again this time tomorrowCarry on, carry onAs if nothing really mattersToo late, my time has comeSends shivers down my spineBody's aching all the timeGoodbye everybody, I've got to goGotta leave you all behind and face the truthMama, oohI don't want to dieI sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

I remember my high school humanities teacher assigning us Albert Camus' essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (the last part of it anyways). But I'd never read anything more by Camus until I picked up his classic The Stranger. It's a very short book and tells a seemingly straightforward story: a French man living in Algeria, Meursault, shortly after the death of his mother, falls into a relationship with a coworker, Marie, and a friendship with his neighbor, Raymond. When on a trip to the beach with Raymond and Marie, Meursault is walking on the beach alone when he encounters an Arab man, part of a group that had previously confronted him, and shoots him. He's put on trial and convicted, and an appeal seems unlikely to succeed. That's it, more or less. There's not a lot of story there.

As a novel, I don't think this is a success. Meursault is a strange character. He's detached from essentially everyone and everything...he seems to feel little sadness about his mother's death, his appreciation for Marie seems primarily carnal, he drifts into a connection with Raymond mostly because he doesn't have anything better to do. He has no depth, and it's impossible to connect with someone so disconnected from his world and even himself. Others fare no better. The plot lurches forward without much energy or tension. And the prose is uninspiring. But it's hard to know if “as a novel” is even the proper mechanism for evaluation.

As a philosophical treatise, though, I don't know that I think it succeeds either. If the point is to illustrate the tension between the human urge to seek meaning and the inherent meaninglessness of life (as posited by Absurdists like Camus), it does do that, but it fails to be at all compelling. If the point is to frustrate the reader by putting forward a text bereft of meaning, therefore pushing the point about the struggle to impose order upon chaos...it also does that, but not in a way that I found especially interesting as a reader who isn't a philosophy student. This is a book that I didn't like and don't recommend.

I don't really know why I read this book. It wasn't that much interesting, really. It took me 2 weeks to finish this, but if this was one of those books I really like, it would just take me 2-3 hours.
I was disappointed that he never mourned for his Mother's death, I mean, is he for real? He never once visited his mom while she's in the Home and just right after the funeral, he went back home like nothing really happened, like his mother didn't die. Merssault is the kind of person who doesn't care about anything. He just goes with the flow of events in his life and never thinks about the future. I find him very boring and pitiful. I think he has no emotion and no ambition. If I was in his place, I'd defend myself but he didn't. I mean, yes, he killed the Arab man to defend himself. His life was pointless and has no direction. He's pretty much absorbed with the present, never the future nor the past, except when he was thinking of Marie.
I don't get why he never defended himself on the court and in front of the lawyers and the prosecutor. He accepted that he was a murderer just like that. I thought the prosecutor was a decent man because he was blabbering about God and all that, but in the end he judged Merssault based from what he'd heard and see, ugh, what a judgmental person.
I think he was just like most men, he doesn't believe in love, but he's attracted to women. I really liked dear old Salamano, he treats his dog like a trash, but deep inside he really loves the dog and I find that very moving.
When he was in jail, I thought of the people in the jail. They must be really bored inside, but I guess it's the payment for what they've done and the way for repentance. And I thought of all those prisoners who were really not guilty for the crimes and was just framed.
When he was talking to the chaplain, I realized he's a practical and realistic man. He just believes in what he sees and what he's sure of, maybe that's why he doesn't believe in God. I'd say he's neither bad nor good, but he's extraordinary.
I've learned a thing or two from this, but I won't mention it, read for yourself and you'll find out. 

Read this while trying to work through my thoughts on Arrest of a Stone Buddha (a game that blends French nihilism with Hong Kong action... definitely an interesting combination). It's a very compelling and enraging book, I think if I'd read this as a depressed teen alongside Myth of Sisyphus it would have been an instant favorite.

A decade later I don't have much use for nihilism and find the exercise here cloying and unmoving. I will give it props for being the type of philosophy I so strongly disagree with that reading it does prompt me to think a hell of a lot about why I am so put off, which I suppose is the purpose of philosophy in a way.

A quick read with one of the most relatable protagonists I've read about, sans murder of course. I have brothers that are autistic and strangers to society in their own way so it hit a bit close to home, especially the trial knowing that even now those with Asperger's/autism and the like eccentricities are used against them. “I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else.”

I picked it up, and only paused my reading to sleep, upon reaching Part Two. Each line, each character, each description felt incredibly deliberate. The book's prose beckoned me to ingest and digest its meaning, interwoven within the thoughts of one of many interpretations of the Absurd Man. Here, he is Mersault, who, instead of grappling with events like his mother's passing, is more concerned with annoyance (at least during Part One). Where his absurdity lies is in his lack of truth. This is hinted at by his lawyer, who references his case as one where everything and nothing is true. He lacks values. He lacks feelings. His life is ruled by whatever seems more convenient, and, therefore, lacks agency or conviction. Living things are all the same to him- dog and man, violent criminal and honest proletariat. This being his nature confounds those around him, and bemuses the reader. Ironically, the guy is annoying in his avoidance of annoyance. However, that is the point. We accompany him as he notices this about himself, as the people in the courtroom react to his appearance, words, and actions. He realizes he is hated. Finally, after a revealing tangent verbally clawed out by a narrow-minded priest, he takes solace in being hated.

This is a very interesting tale, one I may have to pick up again to fully grasp. I enjoyed it.