The Stranger (Paperback)

Basically, Meursault does not care about anything, does not feel anything for anyone (including himself, for the most part). He looks at life objectively and determines that it really doesn't matter whether he does something or not in the overall scheme of things. When Marie expresses her love for him, he tells her he will marry her if it will make her happy but that he cannot say he really loves her. He expresses no remorse for killing the Arab because it just happened; he had no intention of doing it, but the fact is that he did, so there's little point in dwelling on it. He cares about the present and, to a lesser degree, the future, but the past is meaningless for the very reason that it is the past. Meursault sees things as they are; rather than rely on flights of fantasy and imagination (the typical tools of the Romanticists), he deals with facts in the here and now rather than run from them and has no problem admitting the seemingly obvious fact that man is a creature of utter depravity. He rejects religion; since each man must eventually die, what does it matter what he does while on earth. It is a man's hopes and dreams that weigh down his very existence; Marsault can only find happiness by cleansing himself of all such illusory notions.

Needless to say, this is not an uplifting book, but it is an engaging, thought-provoking one. While Camus cannot be called a true existentialist in his own philosophical outlook, his fiction does epitomize many existentialist ideas. Marsault is a protagonist like no other in literature--you cannot like him, he is obviously guilty of killing a man in cold blood, and he is of a cold-hearted nature, yet you do understand some of his thinking, find yourself more and more interested in his dark outlook on life, and have to admit that much of what he believes makes sense.

Even if Mersault could be seen as exemplifying the attitudes of the French people - and he clearly exemplifies nothing of the sort - Mr Rushton's anti-French tirade crumbles when you consider some facts he omits to mention. Firstly, Camus himself was active in the resistance during the war and also edited, at considerable risk, the clandestine journal Combat. Secondly Camus' The Plague is an allegory of occupation and resistance and, despite Mr Rushton's assertions to the contrary, exhibits considerable moral bravery. Then he should consider Sartre's Roads to Freedom trilogy, three books which concern themselves unflinchingly with issues of engagement, commitment and resistance.

In any case what philosophy could be more brave than existentialism, a philosophy that rejects the safety net of God and all other transcendental metaphysical fairy tales and insists that man is morally responsible for his own actions and the consequences thereof?

And by the way, as an Englishman who has travelled in France I can assure Mr R that the French do not hate the English and we - apart from a few tabliod reading idiots - do not hate them either.

The Stranger itself is one of the great books of the 20th Century: a masterful study of a man who refuses to conform to the false values and hypocrisy of mass self-assured organised society and ultimately pays the consequences for his bravery in refusing to "fit in". The court room scene is one of the finest pieces of writing you will ever come across, and the book as a whole is beautifully written, intensely moving, and ultimately uplifting.

Buy the book and ignore Mr Rushton's vile "review"

Albert Camus, January 8 1955