Camus, a Romance [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Hawes first fell in love with Albert Camus while studying his work in college in the United States, thousands of miles from the environs frequented by the French novelist/playwright/philosopher in the final months of his life. Camus' premature death in a car accident in January 1960 put an abrupt end to Hawes's dreams of encountering her hero in real life, but not to her fascination with the man, his works and his ideas, as this fascinating book shows.

I read this work -- part-biography, part-intellectual history, part-memoir and completely riveting -- on the subway, walked along the streets with the book in my hand and devoured bits of it in spare moments standing in line to pay for my groceries. I read late into the night, relishing Hawes's sense of style, her ability to move seamlessly from conventional biography to writing about the process of memoir, from describing places and people to tackling her own inner feelings about her subject. The latter is a process all too unfamiliar to those of us who read biographies; even the best rarely come with the perspective of the biographer attached, and yet it's hard to imagine that any historian or writer who has lived with his or her subject for years doesn't have some kind of emotional connection of some kind to that individual. The difference is that Hawes shares her thoughts. At one point, she recounts how, handling a letter written by Camus, she inadvertently smudges the ink on the document to the extent that it is now illegible. She's horrified, but fascinated at the same time. "In a very real way I had just interacted with Albert Camus," she informs the reader. Sometimes these ruminations are touching (reminding me of adolescent crushes); sometimes they become a tad irritating and repetitive, as when she wonders whether Camus might have met other people she knows, or people those people knew. (Those particular ruminations are fueled by the realization that during the brief time she and A.J. Liebling overlapped working at the New Yorker, the latter must have been working on his review of Camus's notebooks without her knowing.)

Hawes's self-awareness, along with her willingness to reveal both her own emotions and her research process to the public eye, is refreshing. For me, it transformed this book from a four-star read (for the diligent scholar or Camus devotee, there is relatively little in the way of new material here) into a five-star triumph. The story of Camus is told, in his own words and through those of his contemporaries, from his earliest days as a 'petit blanc' (lower-class white) in Algeria, where scholarships and a mentor transformed his life, to his Nobel Award for Literature in the late 1950s, a time when he was at one of his lowest ebbs professionally, after a falling out with much of the postwar French left-wing, his former allies. It was fascinating to see that as he became lionized, he became more self-conscious and more despairing of his ability to live up to the expectations of his 'fans'. Particularly poignant is watching Camus plan a new cycle of works, as both Hawes and the reader are aware that he will die before he can complete them. "It is easy, even quite thrilling, to imagine how richly, and perhaps erotically, he might have written on the subject of love," Hawes muses. "Given the lyricist (SIC?) with which he invokes the physical and sensual world, and the tenderness and emotion that spill over into his love letters."

While this book will be most welcomed by those who are familiar with the world that Camus and his contemporaries (such as Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir) inhabited, perhaps the ones who will get the most from it are those with only a passing familiarity with Camus's most iconic works -- particularly The Stranger and The Plague -- in high school or college. It reminded me of the fascination with which I encountered those books as a teenager, a fascination that later led me to read some of his latter books, as well as many of his essays but never led me to the same extreme attachment that Hawes experienced. At the same time, I relished getting 'behind the scenes' in the process of crafting a book about a literary figure, his works and his world, something that I imagine would appeal to any reader curious about the art of biography. Happily, at the end of the day, Hawes retains her sense of her own identity as distinct from that of Camus, making it possible for her to craft a remarkable book: "whatever the perceived intimacy, I was clearly the most distant of observers, a secondhand witness, a third party."

Highly recommended; one of the best books I've read this year.
(edited to address typos...)

While still in college, Elizabeth Hawes (later a staff member at "The New Yorker" in the 1960s), developed a keen interest in Camus, verging on an obsession. Camus was the subject of her college thesis. That began a forty-year quest to know Camus better, to "connect" with him as well as she could. Around 1994 she actively began researching and writing this book. Among other things, she studied collections of Camus's correspondence in library archives and interviewed 18 people who had known Camus, including his daughter (and literary executor) and his son.

First, the negatives. Even allowing for the author's understandable affection for her subject, the book is too personal, and there is too much information about Hawes, her life-long obsession, and her quest. It occasionally lapses into being mawkish. One example is at the end when she visits Camus's grave: "I didn't have any particular thoughts as I stood before the grave, but I was content just to be there in Camus's proximity. Eventually, I sat down in the gravel path next to him." At times, Hawes seems surprisingly naive. A more minor complaint is that her presentation of Camus's life is less chronologically linear than I would like, which also leads to some unnecessary repetition.

But withal, I am glad that Elizabeth Hawes shared her obsession and quest in this book, as I get a very good picture of Camus. CAMUS, A ROMANCE covers well the major aspects of his life and character: his morality, which defined him intellectually much more than "existentialism"; his love for his homeland Algeria (when he accepted the Nobel Prize, he did so as a French Algerian); his love for the theater; his tuberculosis, which forced him to grapple with mortality at a much earlier age than most; his good looks, elegance, and attractive personality (he reminded virtually everyone of Humphrey Bogart); women; and his mother (a near deaf-mute housemaid). Appropriate attention is given to his stint as editor of "Combat" and the importance of his journalism and editorials to the Resistance and to France immediately after the Occupation, as well as to his condemnation of Stalinist communism and the highly publicized break with Sartre (or, more accurately, Sartre's malicious repudiation and belittlement of Camus). There also is adequate discussion of his major works of literature. In addition, Hawes does a good job of culling Camus's journals and his letters, uncovering and bringing to the fore useful and instructive excerpts. For example, in 1946, observing a post-War world roiled by strident ideologies and political manifestos, Camus wrote: "Justice is the concern of everyone, freedom of only a few. That is what must change."

The Camus that Hawes gives us (I think accurately) was a very admirable person -- more so than most literary giants (at least literary figures of sufficient magnitude to be awarded the Nobel Prize). The personal qualities that are evinced are dignity, reserve and forbearance, honesty, "self-respect and endurance", and "a certain elemental morality." His one weakness was his inveterate womanizing and attendant infidelities, but then both his marriages might be characterized as unfortunate.

In the end, CAMUS, A ROMANCE, convinced me to make Camus one of the authors whose major works I read (or re-read) in 2010. That, and the comments on Camus by Clive James in his "Cultural Amnesia", including his remark, "The widespread notion that Camus's mind was not really very complex at all is the penalty he paid for being blessed with good looks, the Nobel Prize, too many women and too much fame."

Many biographies are based on the "more is more" principle, with few details too trivial or associations too marginal to merit exclusion. This often makes biographies unappealing to readers like me, who read them to learn what affected a person as he or she underwent important experiences or--in the case of Albert Camus--produced great books. Call me superficial, if you will. But I like a concise biography that illuminates, not a data dump.

As a result, I thought CAMUS, A ROMANCE was a terrific book. You see, this year I've read THE STRANGER, THE PLAGUE, and THE FALL and I was interested to learn something, but not everything, about the artist who produced such amazing work. For example, how did Camus's experiences affect such themes in THE STRANGER as North Africa, the sea, and the gentle indifference of nature? What are the connections between Camus's TB, the Nazi occupation of France, and THE PLAGUE? And, what emotional forces contributed to the perplexing THE FALL? Well, CAMUS, A ROMANCE addresses these and other questions that might occur to readers of these novels. The artist, though sui generis, didn't come from nowhere.

In providing this information, Elizabeth Hawes takes a somewhat unusual approach to her biography. Instead of functioning as a detached narrator who gathers, organizes, and interprets information, she admits to being profoundly affected by Camus and his work. Thus, the second subject of her book is the mystery of her interest in Camus. She wants to know, in other words, why the man and his work are so meaningful to her. While Hawes actually reveals little about herself (she likes dogs, she has a summer house near the ocean), she does put front-and-center the highly personal relationship that readers develop with writers who affect them. In this case, Hawes describes herself as feeling, at times, like Camus's wife or sister, as well as a reader and student. Ultimately, she ends up in the right place, where she considers Camus her friend.

CAMUS, A ROMANCE is not only about Camus's books and the grip they exert on many imaginations. While not going into unnecessary detail, Hawes also discusses the pied noir in Algeria, intellectual life in post-war France, the famous exchange with Sartre following the publication of THE REBEL, Camus's writer's block, the Algerian War, Camus's Nobel Prize, and so on. But this information exists to illuminate the man and his work, which always has a serious moral dimension. Data doesn't dominate.

Even so, I would have cut the paragraph where Hawes relates her most recent dream of Camus. "...he was full of ordinary life. I had joined him walking down a crowded city street, and as we duck around people trying to keep abreast of each other, we laughed..." Regardless, recommended.