Camus and The Stranger

[Alpaca]

Read The Stranger today.

I dunno - the book may seem to advocate a Stoic or Existentialist approach to life, or so I've heard people claim, but I find the main character so profoundly unappealing that I think it's intended to show the necessity of emotion for a complete life.

[beagle]

You're testing my memory here. It's twenty years since I read it. From memory I think the title translation of the "The Outsider" fitted better than "The Stranger" in some ways (though lost the double-meaning). The idea was that he had become detached and didn't feel the same way as other people (and shocked them by the way he didn't go through the usual emotions at his mother's(?) death) etc.

From the little I remember it went beyond the normal tenets of Stoicism (in The Kipling-esque sense of equanimity in the face of being buffeted by external events) and headed off into the realms of someone becoming detached from humanity altogether. Not sure now or then whether that was intended as a credo, a warning or a statement of existential bleakness.

(Random weird fact. The Cure got in trouble for writing a song about it.)

[Nigga Tony]

I had to read this book in high school. It was the first of its kind for me, and I couldn't wrap my head around some of the existentialist concepts in it. I think I'll pick up a copy and give it another go.

[deadgenome]

Started reading The Fall but keep getting distracted

[Antipaladin]

Read The Fall. It was alright. Questions the nature of right and wrong, especially for atheists. Good read for the FSM crowd.