Withheld from publication in France for twenty-nine years after his death, and now in English for the first time, Camus's final journals give us our rawest and most intimate glimpse yet into one of the most important voices of French letters and twentieth-century literature. The first two volumes of his Notebooks began as simple instruments of his work; this final volume, recorded over the last nine years of his life, take on the characteristics of a more personal diary. Fearing that his memory was beginning to fail him, Camus noted here his reactions to the polemics stirred by The Rebel, his feelings about the Algerian War, his sojourns in Greece and Italy, thinly veiled observations on his wife and lovers, heartaches over his family, and anxiety over the Nobel Prize that he was awarded in 1957. As in the earlier Notebooks, we see here also the birth of some of Camus's greatest works: The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and his unfinished masterpiece, The First Man. His gorgeous travel descriptions, his political observations, and his philosophical musings are the most appealing features of these recorded thoughts. Notebooks 1951-1959 completes one of the most important set of literary 'working papers' of the past century. Ryan Bloom's sensitive translation was shortlisted for the French-American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation translation prize for nonfiction.
Notebooks 1951-1959
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This is the intimate record the only one we have of the final years of Albert Camus. Years that should have been glorious, leading up to and including his Nobel Prize. But for Camus they were the saddest years. He had lost the ideological battle to his arch-enemy Jean-Paul Sartre, or at least he was meant to feel that he had. He was genuinely ill, acknowledging defeat from illness of a lifetime. Death his own is a leitmotiv running through this journal. He would of course die soon after writing these final pages. He died not because of his lungs but when a friend drove their automobile into a tree. Camus would have enjoyed the irony of this, for irony was another of his leitmotivs. Now we can be grateful that Camus put so much of his existence into his notebooks, grateful to his family for allowing them to be published, and to his publishers for giving them to us.--Herbert Lottman
About the Author
Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. His most important works are The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall, The Rebel, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Ryan Bloom's writings and translations have appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Horizon Magazine, and the Arabesques Review. He also teaches English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
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3.8 out of 5 stars
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A 'must' for any college-level collection strong in Camus
8 Jun 2008
By Midwest Book Review
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
College-level collections strong on Camus will find this a special acquisition presenting the notebooks withheld in France for some 29 years after his death, appearing for the first time in English. The first two volumes of his notebooks began simply but this concluding volume was written over the last nine years that he lived, and reads more intimately, like a diary. From his travels to his observations about life and politics, this concludes a fine expose of Camus' life and thoughts and is a 'must' for any college-level collection strong in Camus, particularly those who have his previous earlier notebooks.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delicious as the earlier volumes
9 Nov 2008
By Marcel Louis
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
In his notebooks, Albert Camus is truthful, intelligent, articulate, and absolutely never dull. He was the rarest of beings, especially for a man; within Camus, mind-truths and body-truths remained wedded all his days, and nights. Including the contradictions--those are married, too. The guy is irresistible. This volume of his carnets is as delicious as the ones that came before. No matter what your mood--happy, sad, bored (which is probably the same as sad)--the jottings and drafts of Camus' pulsings and articulations will take you where you are, lift and turn you, will change your life.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Sometimes Interesting
18 Mar 2009
By Mr. Steiner
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
These journal entries are far more cursory and selective and the beautiful journals of Gide or Kafka, but there are still glimpses into Camus' creative process and literary interests which often go unnoticed by biographers. He was surprisingly preoccupied with Don Juan and the work of Pasternak, and his explicit anti-communism comes through here repeatedly. There are numerous rough passages which would later be reworked into 'The Fall,' as well as 'Exile and the Kingdom,' but for the most part these fragments are a bit cryptic and uninteresting.
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3.8 out of 5 stars
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