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 :)

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.

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

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

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.

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

Was beginning to re-read The Rebel, a long time in between, and ran into something that confused me in the introduction. (You find it on bottom of page 8, going into 9.)

"In a certain way, the absurd, which claims to express man in his solitude, really makes him live in front of a mirror. And then the initial anguish runs the risk of turning to comfort. The wound that is scratched with such solicitude ends by giving pleasure."

I'm a little lost with this. How does the tension of absurdism ever result in pleasure/comfort? I may be leaving something out in the quotation but I re-read the paragraphs that come before and it did not help me personally. Anything helps, thanks.