Looking for the Stranger - Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic (2016) is a
biographical-style account of Algerian author, Albert Camus, as he is writing
his famed novel, The Stranger (The Outsider), published in 1942. Kaplan
describes it as the biography of the novel (rather than the novelist). The novel
is one of alienation, existentialism, and the absurd.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) was in his
20s, growing up in poverty, and diagnosed with tuberculosis, but excelling at
school. His first job as a crime reporter set the stage for his novel. Kaplan
uses the letters and diaries of Camus to reconstruct the events that lifted The
Stranger from episodic influences to words on the page.
Camus had the opening sentences since
August 1938 and didn’t change a word. Yet his writing policy was to edit, edit,
and edit again. In 1939, it was not exactly peace-time, but neither was it war-time.
Algiers was under German occupation and censorship. And Camus had a certain
amount of ‘literary agitation’ while he was editor-in-chief of the two-page
bulletin, Le Soir Republicain, mostly due to the paper shortage.
In 1940 he knew all he needed was a
place to write – he moved to Paris to the ‘drabness’ of Montmartre ‘where an
artist or writer could get by on almost nothing.’ Although working for the
daily paper Paris-Soir, everything was strange to him, where he didn’t know a
single person. But ‘the work Camus was doing in that small hotel room would
change the history of modern literature.’
Kaplan details his departure from
Paris during the German occupation, returning to Oran in 1941. He mailed copies
of his manuscript to his university professor, Jean Grenier, and newspaper
colleague, Pascal Pia. Kaplan also details their initial feedback. After
editing, and publication, Camus had the ‘postpartum blues.’
Kaplan writes of the literary reviews,
Camus winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, his death, and his
literary acclaim.
Excellent concept and exceptionally well
written, but overall it still leaves many gaps in the literary process of one
of the most famous and widely read novels in the world. Nevertheless, readers
of Camus will like this exploration of a young man, a literary idea, his
environment, his influences, and his overwhelming determination to write
brilliantly.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom
(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends
(2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan
Curse (2009).
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