Albert Camus – Who?

I had picked up a a dog eared copy of ‘The Stranger’ at a book exchange hut at a re-cycle depot years ago. The story follows a rather sour fella named Mersault, a seemingly emotionally indifferent and aloof man living in French Algeria, whose life takes a fatal turn after he commits a senseless murder on a beach. I sorta identified with the aloof part. It’s a depressing story that supposedly appealed to many. It was published in 1942 during the Nazi occupation of France – a time of depression and horror – similar to this modern era.

He was quotable. The following accurately relate to life in what was once Canada.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer’s soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.”

“Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called ‘vital interests.”