Albert Camus: The Life of the Artist – A Mimodrama in Two Parts (1953)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/08/the-life-of-the-artist-a-mimodrama-in-two-parts.html

by npalli • 13 years ago

57 26 13 years ago

gamegoblin5• 13 years ago

To anyone who hasn't read Camus: I cannot recommend reading The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus enough. They are probably the two most influential books in regard to my outlook on life.

woqe• 13 years ago

Can you elaborate on how The Stranger influenced your outlook on life?

I ask because the person who recommended it to me saw the protagonist as a hero -- someone inspiring.

I read it as a cautionary tale. It showed me one could be apathetic to a fault in regards to their fate. The only thing he seemed to care about was actively not caring about his or others' lives.

bottomless2• 13 years ago

IMO The Stranger becomes more enlightening if you view it as a n examination of human nature. Following this line of thought, the main question should be: Would you consider the protagonist "human"?

gamegoblin5• 13 years ago

I had a pretty troubled childhood, and I surrounded myself in an armor of logic. I acted a bit like Spock, I guess. I tried to reject emotion and act only on logic. This did lead me to develop early mathematical and programming skills, but hindered a healthy worldview. I was firmly convinced that the universe was based in logic and that the meaning and reason of everything could be derived by logical thinking.

When I got older and moved away from home, I began to better understand "The Absurd" that Camus talks about. I had been struggling with the idea that I sought a logical reason for absolutely everything, but was unable to find one in many cases.

The acceptance of "The Absurd" allowed me to deal with the fact that meaning is often obscured or unattainable. I find it much easier to accept the world as it is without burdening myself with attempting (futilely) to logically explain everything. Things just are.

That being said, I don't reject logic at all; a question I was struggling with was "logically, why should I value logic?" Camus helped explain to me the absurdity of this question, and existence, and to accept that it would remain unanswered.

Camus also helped me to find joy in struggle. He says "The struggle to the summits suffices to fill the heart of man. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." I now accept that there isn't any deeper meaning to struggle and it's important to live in the moment. Everyone is struggling in their own way. Everyone is struggling for their own desires, and at the deepest level, there is no reason for it.

Another book I recommend for the same reasons as above is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

bottomless2• 13 years ago

Don't forget to read "The Fall" as well.

grey-area• 13 years ago

I'd also recommend his collection of short stories (Exile and the Kingdom), though I suppose it would depend on the translation - much of the depth of Camus is in the poetic and carefully chosen words. He's technically a very interesting writer, and I think his stories capture a certain existential ache that everyone feels at some point in their life, observing how absurd and cruel the world can be without trying to offer answers. Not really sure they should be set as school texts though, as it ruins them for a lot of people.

ErikAugust• 13 years ago

Me too - even sport a Sisyphus tattoo. I'd recommend Myth more than I would The Stranger - only if for a clarity of meaning.

gtani• 13 years ago

My high school French teacher had us read Camus and Sartre, and my German teacher had us do post-War literature, some of which was dark e.g. Draußen vor der Tür. I'm not sure i got any of it at the time, especially since they're nontrivial in original language, I'll have to cover those again.

gamegoblin5• 13 years ago

The translation by Matthew Ward is excellent.

minor_nitwit• 13 years ago

The plague is also quite good at covering absurdism.

kafkaesque• 13 years ago

I just recommended someone on HN a book by Camus. The First Man.

I read your other comment about your having a troubled childhood. I can relate.

When I was 14 I started reading everything Camus ever published. I became very withdrawn. My family became very concerned. I wrote important phrases by Camus and stuck them on my wall. Pretty soon my entire wall had Camus phrases. My dad's psychologist (and my family) recommended I should 'explore' other types of literature. It was a very tough time. Except for me, I viewed my depression as crippling.

Yes, I was a very logical child, as yourself, but, as Camus suggests, viewing life as absurd leads to a very morose nihilism. I skipped school and was about to fail secondary school. I didn't care. I didn't excel at school, I excelled at philosophy, but that didn't really matter in secondary.

Every single book I read by Camus influenced me and was a stab to the heart. He sometimes wrote on the troubling matter of adults not willing to understand adolescents, and I felt very much misunderstood. Plus, I was also torn between two cultures; one rooted in tradition and another which was very progressive.

The Myth of Sisyphus has references which might help to know or understand before jumping into it. The Stranger is definitely more accessible and, for obvious reasons, it is his most widely read book. But the protagonist in that book is a bit of a character study. I think at one point I related to him, but stopped saying so, because a lot of people interpret Meursault as a sociopath. I don't think I was a sociopath, but was deeply confused about the world in which I lived and distanced/detached myself from everything to understand my world better. It's hard to explain, especially here.

The First Man was the first book that ever made me cry. I never really knew my mother, and this book is about a boy named Jacques, and his relationship with his mother. It is also about a boy's reservations about living in poverty, and living with a poor family (and everything that entails), which I got to experience very early in my life. But it is also a metaphor for cultures colliding: Spanish (which also happens to be my grandparents' culture) and a more 'modern' one, French (in my case, English-speaking North American). Of course, it has Algerian references, as well.

I highly recommend Camus. For those who've never read him, I would recommend these, in this order:

A Happy Death

The Stranger

The First Man

Exile and the Kingdom

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

I would place The First Man first, but it is a very different book from everything else Camus has written (except his diaries, I guess). My favourite Camus book is definitely The First Man.

eshvk• 13 years ago

That was stunningly beautiful. I am really digging the new spate of literary articles that have been showing up in my HN feed. Thank you OP.

npalli• 13 years ago

Glad you liked it.

stefantalpalaru• 13 years ago

Beautiful. The only thing out of place was the "Posted by Albert Camus" anachronism.

serf• 13 years ago

Thanks for reminding me of the talent Camus possessed. The Stranger shaped me as a teen, and this brings me back.

tangue• 13 years ago

" Encumbered, he cannot move and is stuck in this pose. Then an official painter, who paints his portrait, arrives, then a second painter, who paints a portrait of the first painter painting the hero, then a third, and so on. Everyone chatters in the light, the ribbons, the dogs, the easels. With great pageantry, somebody brings the painter a mirror so that he may gaze at himself. "

Beautiful. I've never heard of this one, though I'm a french native speaker and was quite interested in post-ww2 literature during my twenties.

paraschopra• 13 years ago

If I had heros, Camus would be one of my few heros. The idea that life is not just meaningless, but rather absurd is quite a relief. What I like about him is that in his writings, he does not offer any solace. He does not promise that we will magically become satisfied with life and existence, rather he writes about the confusion between living and suicide, and interestingly, he argues that both choices are equally absurd. He does argue for morality. The reader is thrown into that dizzying choice where no option is preferential, so the choice to live is rather arbitrary. The realization that life is absurd freezes you for a moment. Though, since life is rather meaningless, I feel it also unchains a person from all those pressures and norms set by society, religion and family. The thought represents true freedom.

Camus also seems to be one of the philosophers who actually looked cool.

javajosh2• 13 years ago

I think that rather than trying to discover the meaning of life while we're busily burning fossil fuels on a single planet that we'd be better off punting on the issue until life in general, and humans in particular, have managed to sustainably spread beyond Earth (and of course demonstrate better care-taking of the world we do have). Until we achieve that end, Camus' philosophy is useless, and in some cases actively harmful.

(Once we're on a few tens of planets, navel-gaze all you want.)

gamegoblin5• 13 years ago

Useless and harmful from your point of view.

Meaningless from a universal point of view.

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

I think that rather than trying to discover the meaning of life while we're busily burning fossil fuels

I suspect your answer might be buried in that there sentence.

Albert Camus: The Life of the Artist – A Mimodrama in Two Parts (1953)

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