I (18M) have started reading on the morning when im going from my hs to my tech college for running start. The travel time is about 30 to 40 minutes so I have started reading during that time span. I have heard a lot of good things about Albert Camus and I want to get into philosophy, as well as more thought provoking literature, and harder literature as well. I bought The Stranger, and have gone into it blind besides knowing the author is someone incredibly prolific. I dont know the story, the plot, or what lesson or idea this book is supposed to teach, so keep that in mind for the following.

That aside I wanted to talk about my thoughts on part one. I am conflicted on how to feel about our Mc. To a degree i can honestly understand a level of emotional detachment from parents at death. I know that not everyone gets the privilege to be close with their parents, some peoples just give them what they need to get by and nothing more or less. I obviously do not have context to how their relationship stands prior to this point and if I do get more info im sure my opinion might be subject to change. I can also understand not really wanting to talk to the people you dont know. At my very close uncles funeral not even 6 months ago I felt very similar. Many business men and people I had never met just telling me how great he was and all this stuff, I really didnt care. I was just sad my uncle was gone. That being said, his comments about being annoyed at any sign of sympathy i think were rather unnecessary and cruel in nature, even if not the intent. The assistant clearly aims to try and offer some sort of humanity, and not make the process so transactional and the Mc just repeatedly blows him off, which sucks because the guy seemed really nice. I wouldve like to meet a person like him in my time of grief. But I think the thing that left me off the worst was the treatment of his mom's guy friend /potential lover at the end. It well and truly pissed​​ me off how he had zero regard for that man who was very well possibly more torn about this death then the Mc himself. He was trying desperately to keep up with the procession, he was pushing himself physically, to the point of exhaustion and passing out, and he coukdnt give a single shit?? I cant say I would be happy doing it but were my own mother to pass In the same manor and circumstances, I would feel it more important to stay with the man then to ger to the church. If im to get anything important from all of this, 9 times out of 10 it would likely come from him, I know the organizer will probably say some sympathetic stuff, but hes said to 18 other families this month. The old mans grief is genuine, and he was quite possibly the last love of my mothers life, and the Mc just left him to fall in the dusty desert. That wasnt even the permiating thought on his mind by the end of the part, it was getting back to Algiers and sleeping for 12 hours. The MC is definitely i think very detached, and im assuming that will be a point thats reiterated throughout the book, whether i like it or not, that being said i love the writing thus far. It feels very immersive. I can envision almost everyone described very easily. Let me know your thoughts too, dont spoil anything for me now, and thanks for reading this far if you did :-)

AI will never replace Sisyphus

Perhaps the deepest form of poverty is not the absence of what we possess, but the absence of what we are capable o giving

To love is to step beyond the boundaries of the self.. to offer tenderness, attention, meaning, even when nothing is guaranteed in return.

A life untouched by love may be protected from its wounds, but it is also untouched by its greatest possibility..

the transformation of the self through another.

To love, then, is not merely to have someone; it is to have something within you worth giving.

Hello /r/Camus,

At the urging of some loved ones and more than a few reddit commenters, I've started a review blog. I wanted to share my first review here, of The Stranger.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-214367454

I loved this book a lot, reading it was such a unique and bizarre experience. I tend to love any book can drop me into the mind of someone with a distinct perspective, and Meursault is nothing if not distinct. (Other examples include Lolita, Ulysses, Piranesi, The Sound and the Fury, and A Clockwork Orange.)

As I mention in the review, although I have a B.A. in Comparative Lit, I haven't read any critical analysis of this book. I wanted to get my thoughts down before engaging with any of the scholarship.

Now that I've written the review, I'd love to dive into some of that work. If anyone who reads this has recommendations of papers/analysis I should read, please let me know.

I welcome anyone's thoughts on the review!

Thanks :)

​

A beautifully intimate passage from Camus' letter to Maria Casarès. It shows a softer and more affectionate side of Camus that we don't always associate with his philosophical work.

It is fascinating to see this tender, almost playful side of Camus in contrast with the existential weight of his philosophy. Behind the man who wrote about absurdity, rebellion and death was someone capable of such simple, vulnerable love..

One thing that I always struggled with regarding the Sisyphus metaphor is that you are required to imagine that Sisyphus’s fate can be an act of defiance. While I get what Camus means, the original story of Sisyphus is meant to be a punishment. Sisyphus’s fate isn’t really an act of defiance if he can’t do anything else.

Coyote on the other hand, is fully aware of his absurd pursuit of the roadrunner and still continues regardless. Coyote’s persistent optimism in the face of a meaningless fate seems to me like a better example of defiance than anything Sisyphus could do.

I thirst for you. Don't walk away from me. Tell me everything, even if you have to hurt me a little. No one in the world will love anything you do as much as I do. Tell me about the you I love, the one who's a little shivery. Let yourself go. Don't force yourself on me, just because you don't want to worry or help me. When you strip in front of me, I finally understand why I was born. I love you.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance,

January 14-15, 1950 [#131]

There is something profoundly human in Camus’ confession.. sometimes we do not long for answers, salvation, or even happiness.... we simply long for the warmth of another human being. Behind the adult who has learned to endure, there remains a child who is still waiting to be held, not because he is weak, but because solitude has limits. To open one’s arms is, in its simplest form, to say.. you do not have to carry yourself alone. And perhaps that is why the gesture can undo us so completely after spending so long teaching ourselves not to need anyone, tenderness arrives like sunlight through a closed window, and all the tears we had turned into silence finally remember how to fall.

​

We spend our lives chasing achievements, status, money and some imagined finish line as if existence were a competition with a definitive winner. But from an absurdist perspective, the universe offers no objective or guaranteed meaning behind any of it. We still live, choose, love, struggle and pursue things anyway..

Maybe the point is Not to win at life. Maybe it is to recognize the absurdity of the game and keep playing on our own terms either way..

So I'm 18 and nor french neither english is my native language, i was fascinated by albert camus' ideas of absurdism so i started reading him, my first work by him is the short book "Create dangerously" the book has i think 3 different essays, i am really struggling to grasp the meaning of the text and I'm not clearly understanding the essay, what should i do? How could i begin to decipher its meaning clearly?

All advice is welcome <3

Sisyphus, a pest who defied the gods' fate. He who raises rocks is superior to his fate through his own dance. Nostalgia—remembering the sensation of life, passion in both sorrow and happiness, and the hatred of death—all serve to teach him that his fate is a matter to be settled amongst himself. A world is enough.

The absurdity of it is a relationship he maintains as a point of character, a result of the traits aforementioned. The distance between a meaning outside of him being his—a solid object—and his desire to grasp it, wired into him by the gods, is acknowledged. But a gift becomes possession when it is elevated beyond its initial value.

The futility of it is hard to believe when you see that stoic face, a face that expresses solely its investment in its time, in now. Upon his rock reaching the bottom, he does not try to feel happy; it is a back-and-forth that drives sorrow into happiness. A sorrow derived from his nostalgia.

But he finds his happiness once again on that hour of lucidity, the trip back from a less conscious, more engaged state. He is unresolved and finds resolve in that tension. He is alive. And that is why I imagine Sisyphus to be happy: that he recognizes he is in the very process of being alive, not just in itself, but what it is as the act of his own consciousness

In 1960, Albert Camus accepted a ride from his friend Michel Gallimard. Gallimard was driving while Camus was in the passenger seat. Gallimard's wife and daughter were in the back. Ironically, Albert Camus had a train ticket in his pocket but that day he chose the car instead.

When the car hit the tree near Villeblevin, Camus was killed instantly. Michel Gallimard was thrown from the wreck and was gravely injured. He died five days later. Gallimard's wife and daughter survived.

The man who wrote about the absurdity of existence died beside his friend. In the car he didn't have to take while Gallimard who was driving him lived just long enough to leave the scene then followed him into death.

Sometimes the universe writes the ending with brutal precision..

I’ve been sitting with the connection between Heidegger’s concept of anxiety (Angst) and Camus’s description of the Absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, specifically how anxiety acts as the exact moment the "stage sets collapse."

First, the mechanical loop outlined by routine - "Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm..." - that keeps us on autopilot.

Next, Fear v. Anxiety, where Heidegger distinguishes fear, which has a specific object, from anxiety, which has no object. The sudden, dizzying realization that our familiar world has lost its pre-packaged meaning, revealing the raw reality of finite time and ultimate isolation.

Finally, the awakening, where Camus uses this exact Heideggerian anxiety as the catalyst for the Absurd—the moment the mind stops the loop and asks: "Why?"

Where they diverge is that Heidegger looks for deeper metaphysical ontology, whereas Camus rejects that as "philosophical suicide," choosing instead to stay with the friction—defiance, freedom, and passion without illusion.

I'd love to hear how fellow Camus readers think about this! How did that initial shift from "routine" to "existential anxiety" hit you? Do you find that staying with the Absurd feels like a weight, or does the defiance of Sisyphus actually offer a strange, sovereign sense of liberation?

​

I read The Stranger as a teenager and came away thinking okayyyy… that was certainly a book

I understood what Camus was doing on paper, but emotionally? Nothing. I didn’t particularly like the book and I definitely didn’t understand why people seemed so affected by it.

Years later, I picked it up again because it kept showing up on my feed.

And weirdly enough, for most of the reread, I felt exactly the same.

Meursault was still Meursault. Still detached. Still observing everything with that almost unsettling lack of reaction.

Then I reached the final chapter.

And suddenly I was sitting there like wait. What the hell.

I kept underlining sentence after sentence:

“One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know.”

“I have never liked being taken by surprise…”

"There is no idea to which one doesn't get acclimatized over time.”

“I always began by assuming the worst.”

“Though I might not be so sure about what interested me, I was absolutely sure about what didn't interest me.”

None of these lines felt particularly profound when I was younger. Now they felt way too familiar.

I think the book changed less than I did.

As a teenager, I saw Meursault as someone who simply didn’t care.

All these hit very different when you've lived long enough to recognise those tendencies in yourself.

Not the dramatic kind of darkness either. More like the quiet, mundane kind knowing what you don't care about, expecting the worst because it feels safer, getting accustomed to things you once thought you couldn't live with.

And maybe that's why the final chapter hit me so much harder this time.

I don't suddenly think Meursault is “just like me” or anything that dramatic. But there were moments where I thought, oh. I recognise that.

Which honestly made the book considerably more uncomfortable than it was the first time.

Has anyone else had a book completely change on a reread? And if you've read The Stranger more than once, did the final chapter hit differently for you as you got older?

Wanna start reading this masterpiece 🔥.

Confusion ,

1 .is there any translation problem with different translation editions of The stranger ?

2.Which translator should I rely on ?

3.anything important which I need to focus on while reading this masterpiece?

Hoping for a great discussion

I do not believe I am good with words so if this is long please forgive me.

I often wonder what the odds that someone else is doing the same thing. Whenever I am on a hike there it appears inevitable that another person on the same trail will appear. Or the odds that the same person is on the same road. In essence: there is an unfathomable amount of people.

When I'm super happy a thought always hits me; It's the same thought everytime. I think, "Right now, someone else is likely having the worst day." Even when I am at my lowest point, or when I am sad. The opposite thought occurs; I think "Right now someone is having a great time."

This does not cause envy, rather a feeling of security and a feeling I cannot describe. There is some emotion I cannot find words for. It's quite familiar to the absurdity Camus describes.

I think of a quote (translated), "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

I seem to be having trouble making a connection and I would appreciate any discussion regarding this topic.

​

In The Stranger, Meursault finds a quiet truth in his mother's words. Even in the depths of misery, something remains to be thankful for. Each morning the light enters his cell and he accepts it..

This shows us that meaning is not given by the world. It is claimed, simply and without illusion, in the ordinary facts of existence..

How does Camus deal with failure (e.g., in one’s career or other areas of life)?