Camus Phase?
A few weeks ago I was talking to this man who started telling me about how much he used to read when he was younger. Especially in his twenties - Camus, Sartre, all the existentialists. Then he realized that the world was bleak enough and finally snapped out of it. He spoke a lot about "The Plague," assuming I'd read it (which, to my embarrassment, I hadn't). So Fine. Two weeks later, I started chatting with another guy, an accountant in his fifties who, unprompted, started telling me about his "existentialist phase" when he read nothing but Sartre and Camus, and lay for a whole week with hundred degree fever reading "The Plague." Then he grew out of it, because, hey, life is hard enough without being reminded. Coincidence?
How many others, I wonder, have gone through this "Camus Phase," as they call it, and later gone on to lead normal lives? Is this more typical of men? I know plenty of women who went through a Madeleine L'Engle phase. I personally had a period of three months when I read nothing but those fictional accounts of the Holocaust aimed at young adults. I'm curious to know what other people's "phases" were and if anyone can shed light on the "Camus" one?
posted by SЯK @ Tuesday, December 20, 2005
5 Comments:
you can always tell when someone genuinely likes a certain book or author, or when he or she is just being a dick. i think a guy who had an existentialist phase probably has a painting in his living room so that women will think him sensitive, wordly and rich. "do you like my art? i bought it from a guy. it's very expensive."
i think of existentialist work as being something you read for the idea, not for the pleasure of reading, like a self-help book or a racing form. i read the stranger and liked it ok. it was sparsely written. i also took a theology class from a priest who looked like monty burns and he walked us through nausea. in both cases, it seemd like a book written as an excuse to espouse, an exercise, maybe.
Oh Camus! When I was in Chinese army-I was eighteen going on nineteen, I read "the plague" and "the stranger" (bound together in this Chinese translation). Perhaps it was because of the military life, or Camus, or both, or many other reasons--that I felt I had fallen into something that I would never be able to get out.
I guess I turned out all right. Life is bleak for different, less meaningful reasons now--for instance, my immigration problem. The other day I realized that for the major part of my adult life (in the past decade) a green card (or lack of) has become the very root for my insecurity. (not that America is a place one has to stay permenantly but I do long for the freedom to be able to return to this place if I want...)
I still love Camus. "The Fall" is one of my favorite books. I was a philosophy major; perhaps that explains my ongoing fascination with his work. I agree with Chauncey's assessment that anyone who poompously proclaims having had a particular phase is really just out to actively craft an image of him/herself.
I think both people were pretty genuine about their early passion for the existentialists - neither one was trying to "impress." But I do think when younger people are just discovering literature they like, they do tend to read more for ideas, and big heavy ideas, than subtle observations about day to day life. The popularity of Ayn Rand in high school is some proof of that. I guess it's not as appealing to me now because if I happen to dismiss the whole idea, I dismiss the book. Versus when you're young and big ideas seem worth considering.
Of all the requisite literary phases a young college girl is expected to pass through - the Beats, the expats, Ayn Rand, Plath & Sexton, Chopin, Hurston, Kundera, Vonnegut & Robbins - I missed the existentialist phase entirely. Though I do have a fond memory of seeing such a smitten girl, boasting mold-green hair and a black turtleneck, at the local KFC. She was sitting alone at one of those oleaginous plastic tables, gnawing on a drumstick and reading "Nausea." That's pretty much cured me of Sartre for good.
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