The Strange The Stranger Chapter 1

Oh, a post about literature? Welly, well, well, well. Astonishing. Right before I started college, I read Camus,' The Stranger. I had gone to Australia and met a great guy there who shared my love of The Cure, and discussions about their music led to him asking me if I had read The Stranger, for one of The Cure's early songs is heavily influenced by it. I had heard of Camus, through popular culture and all of that, but had not tried French literature beyond some of Rimbaud's translated poetry, and Lautremont's "Chants de Maldoror." My Australian friend said I should read the novel, commenting that it is a short little thing, and very good. I ended up reading Matthew Ward's "American" translation, not for any real reason. Just coincidence.

So I read it, and I liked the style. I ended up also reading The Plague, which I liked immensely. Then, right after I started college, I picked up The Rebel, Camus' ideas about the rebel and revolution. I tried to read it then, which was, I would say, in 2003 or 2004. I liked the beginning, but as it got more difficult, I put it aside. I don't think I had really read enough theory to understand it well enough to enjoy it.

I haven't actually picked it back up with the intention of reading it all the way through, yet. I was skimming it the other day, and noticed that it has a section on the rebel in novels. I read a little bit of that, and I really liked it. I had pulled The Stranger off of the shelf at the same time that I yanked The Rebel, also by coincidence, because The Stranger is so skinny, and they were sort of stuck together. I knew what a brief read it was, so I decided that I should read it again, as a graduate.

I'm always a little nervous reading translated work, and even more when analyzing it. Oh, well. I will do this as usual:

Part 1

Chapter 1

This novel has a Part 1, so this is presumably the beginning of something that will happen in stages. Something, it seems, will build.

The opening sentence is great: Maman died today. The death of the mother, the creator, the collapse of the cave from whence we all came, is an excellent setting. It is a reminder of that long since forbidden intimacy that Meursault later seems to both crave and abhor. It's a sentence which reminds of that particular intimacy, and is also a renewal of the loss of it, or the extinguishing of the hope of ever having it again. It is Freud that postulated that we all want to get back into the womb? I don't know. I should really read more philosophy. Anyway, we are dealing with the death of a mother -- kind of like in As I Lay Dying. I wonder if Camus was a fan of Faulkner.

I guess you could say that this novel is written in the first person. I wonder, though, who the speaker is talking to, and if we are in what I can only think to describe as "real time." Are we experiencing a story past tense or present tense? We seem to be in the speaker's mind, but also floating at times outside of him, looking either at him or away from him. I don't get the feeling that the narrator is really aware of us. When he says things like, "I don't have anything to apologize for," referring to needing time off from work, and feeling guilty for asking for it, I'm not sure if he's telling us, or trying to convince himself.

I think Camus wants us to believe that what we are reading is all that goes on in Meursault's head. There is such a lack of any kind of judgement, but perhaps this is because, as he tells us, he's been influenced by the fact that Maman had never in her life given a thought to religion. It's interesting that instead of saying that his mother wasn't religious, he uses the phrase, "never given a thought." This implies that thoughts are not intrusive, but extrusive. They could just be sitting there, with no subject, no predicate, simply waiting for you to choose what to give them to. That means that there is another consciousness deciding, or thinking, what to think about. In that case, there is another consciousness that Meursault is not disclosing, or perhaps cannot disclose to us. The one that chooses what he is going to give his thoughts to. Or at least that is his experience -- so he's not acknowledging the super-ego? Alas, there I go again, quoting that which I'm not familiar enough with.

The action at the funeral and the senior home is probably what initially establishes the novel's reputation as concerning a "detached" man. Yet, I didn't find it hard to identify with Meursault as he finds the home a virtual prison for the elderly, and the behavior of the attendants there absurd. What I noticed about this episode was the various systems that he has to deal with to get this ceremony over with in order for Maman's death to "have a more official feel to it." Until these systems are dealt with and used, "it's almost as if Maman isn't dead." The structures, the systems, are what pronounce her dead, for Meursault doesn't even glimpse her dead body. It's an experience made up of bare nerves and intolerable foreignness.

I suppose Camus begins with this because it is one of the more absurd moments in life that we construct. We don't usually personally bury our loved ones; others, strangers, bury our dead. Others do all of the work for us, so that we do not really have the experience. When Meursault arrives at the "old people's home," he wants to "see Maman right away," but he must see the director first. He is a little old man of some distinction, wearing a ribbon from the French Legion of Honor. It's been over 140 years since the Legion was established, and the director is described as little and old. Camus could be commenting on the futility of newness, and new orders. I do think that in The Rebel, he notes that every rebellion is only a rebellion until order is restored again. Then rebells cease to be in revolt, and they are either policemen or tyrants. So which is the director? I guess since the director holds Meursault's hand until he "didn't know how to get it loose," he seems like more of a gentle tyrant, overpowering, but only just enough to make the Meursault uncomfortable. But there isn't a clear connotation. The director uses modified language to keep from "criticizing" Meursault, while simultaneously justifying the existence of the old people's home, and acts as the authority on the matter.

There's a slight refrain in this novel, that begins in chapter one. It's something like, "that doesn't mean anything." The meaningless that Meursault is referring to seems like a relief from the forced meaning involved in the old folks' home, and even involved in his job and relationship with his boss, and even in his later relationship with Marie. Meaninglessness becomes the answer to confusion, or the option for freedom from feeling. Thus, the compulsion to find meaning, or to make meaning, becomes uncomfortable for the reader.

A good friend and reader explained the feeling I was having about setting and space as dislocation. Dislocation came up a lot for me in Faulkner. I find it very interesting that Camus has achieved a similar sense of dislocation, but uses more subtle literary techniques than say, stream of consciousness. It's almost as if the realm of ideas is a location that both Faulkner and Camus take us to, some psychological personality place where the self is detached from the present, but not entirely unaware of it. Is this the attempt to know the unknowable? Fittingly, I don't know.

Theater Rage

Being as it's probably the most interesting thing I've been doing lately, besides having a job, and planning European vacations, going to the movies will have to be the subject of yet another post. I wrote about Bright Star, and I'm sticking with my notion that it's simply the best film this year. I'm seeing it again on Monday. It's brilliant.

Tonight Todd and I went to see Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It. The film isn't extraordinary, but I suppose it is mildly amusing. The best thing in it by leaps and bounds is Andrew Wilson's performance as the derby girl's coach. I love those Wilson brothers. They have a genuineness about them that I can't help but admire. What is it? A vulnerability? Charm? Confidence? Coolness? They are just a wildly talented, if a bit limited, trio of men.

The movie was alright, but there's something else I have to tell you. There's something I have to admit to. I have a problem. Let's call it theatre rage. I find myself unconscionably angry when people around me incessantly talk, chomp on popcorn, and open loud candy during films. I mean it really gets me mad. Mutant comic book character mad, where I don't care about getting my butt kicked. This happens to me at concerts, too, but it is never more annoying then when I'm at a movie theater. I have a terribly unreasonable expectation that people watching a film together will be quiet. I mean, before most movies there is actually a message from the theater telling you to be quiet. I mean, I understand that sometimes you have to whisper something, like, I have to pee, or you say, oh, that's Andrew Wilson, but there's this technique called whispering that I don't know people learn anymore.

And I think to myself, am I just getting old and cranky? Am I going to the wrong theater? Apparently not, because when I saw Appaloosa at the Arclight in a 21+ screening with assigned seating, there was a douchebag sitting behind us that wouldn't shut up until we got an usher to remind him. And even then we had to shush him several times. I think -- do I have to see movies at midnight? Especially in movies where the sound is actually kind of important, almost a character unto itself, is the unbecoming knowledge that you "just can't believe that she would do that" -- which is an actual quote from a woman sitting behind me blurting out random statements during that quiet, dialogue heavy movie with Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. When Todd and I saw Bright Star together, there was a row of popcorn chompers behind us, at least three of them, who must have been trying to win some kind of contest for loudness.

Tonight, there was a highschool-aged couple behind us who talked throughout the trailers, and then continued to talk for the first five minutes of the movie, making comments through every line like they were reactionary robots with no control over their impulse to respond. I glared, I shushed. The guy looked like a total bro douche bag, so I finally decided I needed to change seats. Todd tends to kind of panic when I get theater rage, because he feels like I'm going to say something really nasty (like that time I told someone that they had the decorum of a junkyard dog) that will cause him to have to get into a fight, but mostly I think my snobbery and confrontational nature simply embarrass him. I got up in my rage, and spilled all my Junior Mints. Dad blam it. I booked it angrily to some upper seats on the aisle, and we watched the rest of the film a little askew, but it's so much better to be away, away, away from the noise.

I don't know what to do. Anger shaves time off of lives. I love going to the movies. Remember when theaters used to have one screen, and there were ushers inside the auditorium who ensured that no one was disrupting the movie? Sigh.