Camus’ Algerian Legacy

From an article on Algeria’s cultural snubbing of Albert Camus’ Algerian legacy is this nice paragraph about the arc of Camus’ oevre:

“There is a Camus for every stage of life,” says Kaplan, trying to explain Camus’ staying power and relevance today. “Adolescents can identify with the alienation of Meursault [from The Stranger – Ed.] The Plague is for when you’re in college, politically engaged and sympathetic with resistance.” The Fall, Camus’ 1956 novel about the crisis of conscience of a successful Parisian lawyer, “is for 50-year-olds. It is angry, acrimonious, confronting the worst things you know about yourself.” And The First Man, a beautifully rendered, unfinished autobiographical novel published posthumously in 1994, “is Camus’ Proustian moment, his looking back on his life. You can spend your whole life with Camus.”

This entry was posted in Existentialism, History, Literature, Philosophy. Bookmark the permalink.