Albert Camus, L’étranger (1942, Methuen Educational 1970)
My practice of reading a couple of pages from a classic book every morning has been in abeyance since I finished reading Montaigne’s essays in January (final report at this link).
When a copy of L’Étranger turned up in a street library after Camus had cropped up in other reading – The Incorrigible Optimists Club and The Visionaries – I took it as a sign from the universe. I’ve read quite a lot about Camus, but not anything by him, except in excerpts and perhaps a play whose name I don’t remember. [Added later: I did read The Plague when I was 19, at my older brother’s bidding. I think I failed to think of it because I read it before I knew anything about Camus or existentialism, so it’s stored in a different file in my memory.]
My copy of the book has a protective plastic cover and the pencilled name of a former 6th form owner. There are pencilled notes on translation, but only on the first four pages (either her French got a lot better or she decided it wasn’t worth the effort to write). It also has some pedagogical apparatus – an introduction, a vocabulary, and a bibliography of critical studies, all of which I intend to ignore as far as possible.
I’ve just read Camus’ short avant-propos from 1955 in which he says that his protagonist, Meursault, becomes an outsider because, unlike the rest of us, he does not lie by exaggerating his feelings (‘majorer ses sentiments‘). Tomorrow morning I’ll start the text itself, and will report back in a month’s time.
Me fail? I fly! 