- A review of The Stranger (L'etranger) by Albert Camus -

L'etranger by Albert Camus, 1989 Anno Domini Paperback, French to English translation

- Background -

{It must be noted right from the get-go that I had picked up this book from my local library, after being inspired by a post as clickable here, and decided to read it after a long time of consideration. My interest in Albert Camus's works didn't stem from French Language class, nor did it stem from English class nor had it even be the result of bumping into him in my time studying philosophy on the internet or the philosophy forums I browsed online. And while, except the French class, I get a major push from them to read Albert Camus's works, the "Absurdity" was that I would finally get to it after I reviewed my thoughts on a Dr. Seuss book.}

{The truly naked part was that it very much aligns with the Absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus; nota bene: the capitalizations here and there as they signify differently from their lowercase counterparts. So why did it take so long, Citizen Victor, to finally decide to pick up not only a work of Albert Camus that acts as a work of literature and not a "philosophical text" but L'etranger / The Stranger itself? Well, mainly it had to do with time crunching and the fact that I couldn't fit even one Camus paper to even just fun read it as I destressed myself from other works. Ho boy would I love some of Albert Camus's works back then as that beat the shit out of the tone of Max Sterner in his Magnum Opus and would've been nice as a lexicon counterbalance to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.}

{Now what about a library? Oj tak! So essentially I was perusing the aisles for my weekly philosophy read up or any books of fiction-crafting that could satiate my mind during work or post-work hours. So happen that I found L'etranger / The Stranger in one of the shelves that stood next to Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Picking up Albert Camus instead, I would check it out and finally go home to get it done before the return due-date. So reading the book a chapter or two a day, I would consume this work fast enough to beat a deadline but slow enough to enjoy the work.}

- Context -

It must already be said that we do not live at the time when Albert Camus was kicking around, so some of the context (and definitely the overarching one) for Camus's philosophy can only be found in works written by Existentialists or in the history books. Albert Camus would produce L'etranger / The Stranger underground with his other free French Existentialist pals , Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, for the Free French press that ran counter to Nazi Occupied French and Vichy French press. The fact of the matter was that France was already, along with Europe, beginning to chip away at the molds of what being a European was; and these currents were being picked up by the trio (along with a whole slew of philosophers) despite understanding a vague feeling of why that was the case. Well, for this brain, it was due to War's massive de-industrializing impact along with the destruction of cities that made impossible to attain one's mean of subsistence post-war which collapsed the SuperStructure into tiny pieces which then fed into the general anxiety of life.

But allow me to go on a side tangent on the "post-WWII European" mood and directionless as to prove a point that this was already being capitalized during the war. Post-WWII Europe was more than economically being unsustainable (for Capitalist standards) or ideologically losing their cushion place of comfort. There was the fact that there was a great undercurrent of proletarians that despised the USA coming and bullying their economy to shape in their standards. Despite France and the USA being Capitalist Nations who had Social Democratic leadership that was against the USSR and later the entire Warsaw Pact during 1955 Anno Domini (Common Era, CE); the Warsaw Pact in comparison forming only six years after NATO or the North-Atlantic-Treaty-Organization that formed in 1949 Anno Domini (Common Era, CE). And some can easily point to Communist influences, but Communism had been running in their system with the victory of the USSR providing the morale boost to the World Communist programmes and the victory of WWII would be greater. Yet there were, as noted particularly well in the French scene, an undercurrent of factionalism even in the "Western/Capitalist" Bloc which wanted to be its own thing and not be bullied by the Capitalist safe-haven that was the USA, to not live up to USA standards and to limit USA bizmen in their markets that they wanted French bizmen to excel at.

Side-tangents aside with a heavy dosage of history, these events post-WWII didn't spawn out of the head of a collapsed Europe though they found themselves afterwards to exact themselves in a post-WWII Europe. These events were very much building up during the war, and as aforementioned the existentialists and other philosophers were noticing this along with the economists and what not. Albert Camus played into this field very well during and post-WWII, as L'etranger would arguably be his most associated work (arguable to be his Magnum Opus as well if we discount his work in the Free French press alongside Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir). And already, from the reflection, rumination and dialogue of the book, the reader is constantly being confronted on their presuppositions on the existence and meaning of the Universe - yet told to shrug off the divide of the "rationale" and the Absurd Universe and accept it, pretty Stoic there. (Though the book takes place in a supposed pre-WWII setting in French-Occupied Algiers, of which Albert Camus was born under during France's Imperialist rule over it. So the birth place and where he lived most his life had played their fair share in making the book.).

- Qua Literary Work -

Because I believe in the Lorerunner format, I shall not waste time and get to what I want to say. As a literary work this has stand the test of time for at least seven-plus decades, closing in on eight decades. But literature is more than that, and Albert Camus is a good wordsmithy in not only Showing but Showing for a direct purpose and not Showing qua Showing. He uses the environment and comparisons very well to not only highlight the current situation but a lot of our main character of interest and main protagonist, Meursault. But there's also a story and plot in this work that makes sense, especially in the Absurdist framework, but I shan't spoil anything other than this (and his final wish, though semi-contextualized not fully contextualized): that we start with a mostly apathetic Meursault that dialectically over time develops a sense of emotions that receives inputs from the Social Order around him but ends up but then dialectically moves past that. But wait, in what passion (note not fashion)? In the passionate sense that he does return to thinking principally of what interests him and being apathetic of what doesn't, yet something MORE than that: a sense of including himself in the Social Order he once was a stranger in. Which the obscenity of his murder will finally include but kill him off; his final wish being that there's a big crowd that hates him on the day of execution by guillotine.

- Qua Philosophical Work -

This is an interesting thing to commentate on because, as one could note how people find it hard to not spoil Undertale when talking about its philosophy and game mechanics, this is hard to not spoil L'etranger / The Stranger and talk of its philosophy. To do a talk on the philosophy without spoiling is essentially talking about philosophy in the abstract and not the particular of which Albert Camus interwove here. So instead, I shall talk about how much it complements the Absurdist philosophy as his debut fictional-work for his Absurdist philosophy. And in this sense one can notice, through the mediation of the text, that the main character, Meursault, is the agent of Albert Camus's Absurdism. The situations Meursault finds himself in happen by chance (contingency in a Dialectical sense) and Meursault reacts through his interests and not some moral-ethics or religious standard - because the former presupposes a True Meaning to the universe and the latter the same thing but more on the fact that Meursault was an atheist all throughout the work. (Spoilers abound, even with extreme self-restraint and opaqueness!!!!~) Yet even more-so this gets complimented by the fact that the "The nakedness of man faced with the absurd" in the trial scene.

- Qua Influences -

In terms of influences, this ran parallel to and helped support the growing Existentialist philosophies all about Europe and the USA (and about the World, never forget about the World my anons). Not only helping to expose the spices of Existentialism (apart from the Feminist Existentialism of Simone de Beauvoir which aligned close to the Dialectical, despite the book critiquing Dialectics, Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre) but was very influential in the building European states post-WWII. For literary works, his other works would steal the spotlight more as this acted as a gateway to his other works - yet the Stranger and Absurd definitely do get used in many a medias. Especially with a sequel by a native, Muslim Algerian Kamel Daoud called the "Meursault Investigations" which might just be my next reading if I can't find it in the library and decide to look online for it - definitely worth a read if you loved L'etranger which I definitely did despite me having many objections to Absurdism on philosophical principle of me being a Dialectical Materialist. But the biggest influence is that if a person, like me, can be interested enough to write this, the influence still is there.

- Would I recommend it? -

This one is really a hard question to say, with any work in fact. But because of how much I enjoyed it, from philosophical dialogue to the actual plot and historical context, I would say go and buy it - or rip a pdf off the internet if you lack the funds. Since this book would "decline" in money-value over time like a Video Game's money-value can decrease over time, I would definitely recommend buying this from a library as a nice piece of fiction to read. For philosophy people, might as well get started on reading something by Albert Camus to familiarize yourself with Absurdism and a flavor of Existentialism. For people that love literature, this might not be for you but it shall be for others - I say this because of how Meursault acts. For those that read tabloid articles and want something more, this might just provide not only a lexicon boost but definitely something more interesting than a story in a tabloid article. For those of the Francophone World, might be an interesting challenge to read it in the original French (especially the sequel book) considering this was made by a French author - then again French has a very messy history outside of France. All-in-all, let's look at what Hero Victor has to rate this, cause she read it along with me:

Need I say more?