NP. The Plague is not Camus's best.

[Mark Kohut]

Basking in the sun of Jerky's hyperbolic praise, just like the sun which
blinded Meuersault into
kill the Arab, no?, I put down a few thoughts on this rereading of *The
Plague. *
*(*by the way, a careful rereading of that novel recently, and it is more
different than most after a lifetime of
living thru most of one's 'existential'crises, does answer the supposed
Academic Reading Group question: Did Meuersault *intend*
to kill the Arab? Camus answers it in the text: Yes. He IS guilty. He
deserved his death (except that life in prison is the human rights
punishment but would have made it a different book. (this is a joke, folks.
Except for the No Capital Punishment truth)

The Plague  is curious in many ways lo these decades later. A dry, but not
Dreiserian, terse novel
as lit critic Morris aptly says, it is also a loose allegory. Or
loose allegories. I learned
this after my first reading in a great university class; stuff that, that
young, was a 'revelation",
a way of learning to read deeper, not a habit or talent then much.

I read the novel raptly then and i simply can't now, and it is a novel of
ideas along with a dry, terse--therefore curiously abstract since the ideas
ARE so earnestly presented,  echoing, almost cut-and-pasting ideas
prosaically expressed in some of his essays, I now see---moral ideas
character-embodied, in how to live.

As Prof then said, "how to live' in this absurd [think the
existentialism trope] world. The word
'absurd' appears once in the novel so far but apt for this loose
allegorical reading, this intention of Camus.

And it is an allegory of the war and resistance. If I saw that then with
help, I now resee why. From Part Two
begins the story of how one guy finds out how to meet the secret circle who
will get him out of the
 locked down city of Oran. A kind of Resistance group. In what must be real
knowledge, the description of
how those involved looked at one guy told to show up at this restaurant if
interested, seems perfect. As
well as the whole subplot.

"Not Dreiserian" ---by this I mean it lacks lots of nitty-gritty dirty
realism detail in many ways. Dreiser's
and others like him, the putting down of full physical and material and
perhaps psychological details (perhaps not Dreiser's strong suit).
One major example: hardly anywhere do we read anyone---not thru stoic,
heroic Dr. Rieux's words--although he dismisses
his "heroism' with a riff on a common sense sense of duty--reflect or
concern themselves with avoiding ways of getting the plague.
Always known to be contagious, and mysteriously so, I guess, no one
expresses thoughts or even fears about this. I know
that dovetails with Camus stoic 'existentialism' whatever that word meant
to him, but it seems forced. All so strong and silent
about it?

All men by the way, this novel would dramatically fail that current
politically correct way of judging movies: believable, strong, fun women
characters. One might do a slant on this novel as a critique of rigid stoic
masculinity, there is an early riff hint on that theme for
one character. Except that it applies to the most positive character in
Camus's vision too.

Later,
Mark


On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 1:53 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I don't know if I'd say that I CARE, with all that word entails, but I'm
> always at the very least INTERESTED to hear your opinions on all things
> literary/artistic/political, MK!
>
> Yours,
> Jerky
>
> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 5:25 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That is all. Yet, good, good stuff.
>>
>> Except that it may be *The Fall* that is and the journals. And a great
>> essay or three
>> and *The Strange*r is more than a minor masterpiece but less than a major
>> one. I think.
>>
>> I say like I'm somebody and that somebody cares.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>