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Jun. 28th, 2010 11:47 amI am still working through the giant list of things ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire recced to me, but I got stalled out for a while at Camus' The First Man because I have irrational Camus antipathy that can be traced to two factors: my tenth-grade English teacher (this is the guy who told us that we could stop reading after the third act of Julius Caesar because none of the rest was important, he was in no way qualified to help us get value out of The Stranger) and an awkward eleventh-grade boyfriend who overidentified with Camus in a slightly unnerving way.
Now that I have finally read it, my thoughts are . . . conflicted. The Amazon review page actually summarizes my conflicts well, except for the bit where it categorizes it as YA, because HAHAHA LOL NO. However, the first review title that jumped out at me said "WE HAVE NO RIGHT TO READ THIS BOOK." I - might almost agree? It's an unfinished fragment of a work, with notes popping out in all directions; the fact that, as a first draft, it is still gorgeously written and has various moments that impress upon the consciousness is a testmant to Camus' skill, but all the same it's a very odd experience reading someone's first draft who hasn't explicitly given it to me to read in order for critique to occur. So it did feel weirdly intrusive, especially given that it's a novel about a childhood in Algeria that is so autobiographical he often forgot to change the names.
In other things that filled me with ambivalence, there is also the awkward fact that Camus seems to believe that because the mother in the story is partially deaf and thus cut off from the world, she has absolutely no inner life, and this is what makes her saintly. I am fairly sure that the fact that he loves her lots does not make up for this belief.
But there is no denying that Camus is kind of an unbelievable writer, in terms of sheer evocative description. The concept of 'the first man', the child who has no past because it's all been forgotten, even within living memory, is going to stick with me for awhile.
schiarire recced to me, but I got stalled out for a while at Camus' The First Man because I have irrational Camus antipathy that can be traced to two factors: my tenth-grade English teacher (this is the guy who told us that we could stop reading after the third act of Julius Caesar because none of the rest was important, he was in no way qualified to help us get value out of The Stranger) and an awkward eleventh-grade boyfriend who overidentified with Camus in a slightly unnerving way.Now that I have finally read it, my thoughts are . . . conflicted. The Amazon review page actually summarizes my conflicts well, except for the bit where it categorizes it as YA, because HAHAHA LOL NO. However, the first review title that jumped out at me said "WE HAVE NO RIGHT TO READ THIS BOOK." I - might almost agree? It's an unfinished fragment of a work, with notes popping out in all directions; the fact that, as a first draft, it is still gorgeously written and has various moments that impress upon the consciousness is a testmant to Camus' skill, but all the same it's a very odd experience reading someone's first draft who hasn't explicitly given it to me to read in order for critique to occur. So it did feel weirdly intrusive, especially given that it's a novel about a childhood in Algeria that is so autobiographical he often forgot to change the names.
In other things that filled me with ambivalence, there is also the awkward fact that Camus seems to believe that because the mother in the story is partially deaf and thus cut off from the world, she has absolutely no inner life, and this is what makes her saintly. I am fairly sure that the fact that he loves her lots does not make up for this belief.
But there is no denying that Camus is kind of an unbelievable writer, in terms of sheer evocative description. The concept of 'the first man', the child who has no past because it's all been forgotten, even within living memory, is going to stick with me for awhile.
