The Stranger (Vintage International)

This is not light reading. Despite its length of 123 pages, The Stranger is a literary endurance test: exhausting, exhaustive, excruciating ... and excellent. Meursault is nobody special. A pied-noir residing in pre-World War II Algeria, he guns down an Arab in cold blood on a blistering summer day. The protagonist is thrust into the limelight, and a man who once took life at face value finds himself examining a vacuous life. Such is the plot, but this author's main interests lies elsewhere. Is life not absurd, Camus challenges us through his anti-hero Mersault, when human life is so terminal and soon-forgotten? If yes, why not thrash it and mock it? This question of the absurd has drawn many comparisons with Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, but Camus shook off the existentalist moniker, and this is a tribute to the Frenchman's intellectual honesty. For the idea of the absurd in this novella contrasts sharply with those of classic existentalists, and Camus's artistic technique differs as well. My reading of The Stranger hinged on whether, like existentialists, Camus intended to create humor or artistic distance, and in the end, finding no such evidence in the text, I decided he did not. This is bone-hard reality: a prima facie argument delivered with raw power and skilled craftsmanship, but without, I think, sufficient perspective. Unlike Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, Camus is not poking fun at a 20th-century Chernyshevsky or Hegel here. Camus is right in there with Mersault--dead serious--in this tract of complex ideas and stark layering. The protagonist's declarative statements carry a raw, political force, and indeed he's quite terrifying, and the novel will leave many readers baffled and disturbed. In a word, this book is surreal, and when read from a surrealist's perspective, the book falls neatly into place for me. A central, philosophical question is this: is Mersault stark-raving mad, or is the world? And if it's the latter, is this murderer in fact sane? What does this say about morality and ethics? Camus doesn't want us laugh at his protagonist as we do Dostoevsky's underground man; we might agree with him instead. As surrealist Andre Breton would say, Mursealth is above "conscious moral or aesthetic self-censorship," where the convicted becomes society's accuser. The crowd is lost in self-serving hypcrisy and delusion, and only Mersault has the wit and integrity to tell them. In this way, Camus argues for his protagnonist's sanity and ethical grounding as he delivers a dark, foreboding message from the cell of an Algerian prison. The author's sillogism goes something like this: life's unhappy and then we die. Life shouldn't be unhappy, even though we're going to die. Therefore, if we want to be happy, we must embrace death. Like all arguments, this one makes assumptions: people aren't happy, people can't find happiness in the absence of embracing death (such as through spiritual faith). Mersault shouts out his disgust with a rotten world and finds solace in it; he does this in a kind of self-declaration, where he's entitled to speak for himself if he so pleases. In true, post-modern style, Camus suggests we listen to his maverick. Surrealists typically embrace the idiosyncratic and individual while rejecting all forms of group-think--even to the point of refusing to define insane. So no irony is intended when Salvador Dali declares, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." This is Mersault. Surrealism was popular in Camus's France during the 20th century, but as a reader I nevertheless need to ask whether Mursealt is mad. Mersault is a man of acute awareness struggling in an insane world. This man can murder without contrition, and when the crowd screams out ugly bile in response, they speak with a twisted--but elegant--harmony on the matter of life's cruel nature. In this there's universal solice, and Mersault's individual, relative reality is conjoined with the universal's. Having come full circle, we're left in a moral conundrum where murder is sane. Now Camus has trapped us. Or has he? It's difficult to laugh at Mersault since he's so disturbing. So I approached this question of Mersault's sanity by evaluating the argument, a dangerous foray inside a man's matrix. But this is precisely where Camus failed, in my view--a wry commentary on a book that was so beautifully constructed atop the human intellect. Kierkegaard avoided the trap of self-declaration when he acknowledged a universal idea of the ethical before allowing a need for a telelogical (i.e., with a purpose) suspension of that ethical, and only as a true act of faith. Mersault has no faith, and his suspension of the ethical is purposeless. That is, he has not placed his transgression on the shoulders of a higher authority. Faith is a paradox, Kierkegaard says, and a moral individual will transcend the ethical only on faith that a higher authority will intervene in this life. Mersault absolves himself of such consequences, and as such, morally disconnects himself from the world of mankind. If this is not a form of madness, then what is? I think the argument collapses here: what's missing in The Stranger is layering. Dostoevksy, too, on the other hand, layers his argument vis-à-vis artistic distancing by presenting his anti-hero in the form of parody. Knowing this, can't we begin to smile at Mersault's self-certain simplicity, despite the internal logic of his argument? The elements of paradox and mockery are not present in The Stranger, but should be. It's a shame. The 20th century was the most violent and ideologically deranged century in human history. This is a great novel and an excellent read, but like so much literature of that era, The Stranger said more about the world in which it was written than perhaps was intended. My Titles Shadow Fields Snooker Glen

The Stranger, by Albert Camus, took only five hours or so to read but was worth every penny, mainly because of the author's unique writing style, which is economical of words, while saying a lot. He can describe in two sentences what takes other writers two paragraphs to convey. Dialog is short and only used when necessary to move the story along. The novel also has a worthy subject, that of whether the unexamined life is not worth living, as his fellow famous countryman, Rene Descarte, once proclaimed. I'm sure the main character, Monsieur Meirsault, looking back on everything, would disagree. That I know many people just like him, makes the story that much more relatable and relevant. Meirsault is like a lot of people, neither the best nor the worst. He focuses on what is in front of him, taking life as it comes, never worrying about how it all fits together or how his actions may affect others. He simply doesn't care, and that unfortunately brands him as malevalent. The Stranger may not behave like you or I, but he is like every man, and that is what makes this novel so compelling to read.

I did not hear anything before this book, in fact, you could say it's the first time in ages I read a book again, my expectations with a book it's like a movie, I expect an interesting start, and indeed it is very explicit narrating the whole Mother funeral and then the history feels a bit cold with Raymond and Masson, anyway it's a great start to read books again. Bye!

A must read. In my top 5

I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. The Stranger is simple on the surface but it sticks with you in a way that’s hard to shake. Camus’ writing is straightforward and almost detached, which somehow makes everything feel heavier and more unsettling. Meursault feels painfully human in his honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable. I finished the book quickly, but I’ve been thinking about it long after. It’s one of those books that quietly changes how you look at things. Definitely worth reading, especially if you like books that make you sit with your thoughts afterward.

As for the quality of the kindle edition, not the book itself - the format was okay, but there were a few weird issues here and there - like paragraphs not indented correctly, or an indentation made and a paragraph started when it shouldn’t have been. I also noticed that many sentences that seemed to start with “A” had the A left off. (For instance: A man came to the door. In this format it would show up as: man came to the door. It is minor, yes, but annoying - and it happened a good amount of times in the text.) As for the story, I wasn’t really into it. It was a highly regarded “classic” by many, but it wasn’t my jam. Very nihilistic. If you like hearing about how nothing you do in life matters, or nothing makes any difference, over and over ad nauseum, then this is the book for you. It’s like listening to an indifferent teenager going, “Whatever, I don’t care” for three hours. I wouldn’t bother reading this again.

Too abstract for year 2025. Maybe too French. 4 stars because there is something to be learned from - otherwise, terrible narration.

It's a good read if existentilism interests you

Niestety, okładka książki jest bardzo cienka i łatwo się zgina, co trochę psuje przyjemność z czytania. Szkoda, bo treść zasługuje na lepszą jakość wydania.

Interesting book that makes you think.

Another one of Albert Camus classics, book arrived quickly and was in great quality. Highly recommend.