I found this book quite uncomfortable reading. As Muersault observed the world around him, I was caught up in it, found myself seeing it all through his eyes, trapped in his inertia. I entered his world and felt a weird kind of sympathy as well as identification with him. This was very troubling. The little book packs quite a wallop.

Yes, I do see this book as a work of art. Every word resonates with double and triple meanings. And every word is like a hammer blow. I read it fast, trying to shake off its impact. That didn't work, however, because "The Stranger" will linger long in my mind. This is the philosophy of essentialism and the book is a classic. I just can't help the fact that I hated it.


An existentialist tour de force of literature   July 10, 2002
 94 out of 104 found this review helpful

The Stranger is a haunting, challenging masterpiece of literature. While it is fiction, it actually manages to express the complex concepts and themes of existential philosophy better than the movement's most noted philosophical writings and almost as well as Dostoyevsky's Notes From the Underground. This is a new kind of literature. The story in and of itself is rather simple, but the glimpses into the intellect and feelings of the protagonist are the sources of the magic of this novel. M.Meursault is a normal man in Algiers, France. When we meet him, he is on the way to his mother's funeral, where he says very little, expresses no remorse over her death, and immediately returns home. The next day, he goes swimming, meets Marie, takes her to see a comedy that night, and spends the next few weeks living his normal life and occassionally seeing Marie. He ends up getting indirectly involved in a dispute between his neighbor Raymond and a girl who did him wrong, and the conflict culminates in an encounter on the beach between Raymond, Meursault, and the girl's Arab brother and friend. Raymond is cut with a knife, but the whole episode seems to be resolved. Meursault, though, decides later to take another walk on the beach because he is too worn out to go inside and rejoin his friends, and somewhat inexplicably he ends up killing one of the Arabs. The second half of the novel examines Meursault's thoughts in relation to his trial and sentence; interestingly, he is prosecuted as much if not more for his moral character than for the crime of murder itself.

Basically, Meursault does not care about anything, does not feel anything for anyone (including himself, for the most part). He looks at life objectively and determines that it really doesn't matter whether he does something or not in the overall scheme of things. When Marie expresses her love for him, he tells her he will marry her if it will make her happy but that he cannot say he really loves her. He expresses no remorse for killing the Arab because it just happened; he had no intention of doing it, but the fact is that he did, so there's little point in dwelling on it. He cares about the present and, to a lesser degree, the future, but the past is meaningless for the very reason that it is the past. Meursault sees things as they are; rather than rely on flights of fantasy and imagination (the typical tools of the Romanticists), he deals with facts in the here and now rather than run from them and has no problem admitting the seemingly obvious fact that man is a creature of utter depravity. He rejects religion; since each man must eventually die, what does it matter what he does while on earth. It is a man's hopes and dreams that weigh down his very existence; Marsault can only find happiness by cleansing himself of all such illusory notions.

Needless to say, this is not an uplifting book, but it is an engaging, thought-provoking one. While Camus cannot be called a true existentialist in his own philosophical outlook, his fiction does epitomize many existentialist ideas. Marsault is a protagonist like no other in literature--you cannot like him, he is obviously guilty of killing a man in cold blood, and he is of a cold-hearted nature, yet you do understand some of his thinking, find yourself more and more interested in his dark outlook on life, and have to admit that much of what he believes makes sense.


Unsettling book; uncomfortable translation   January 18, 2004
 29 out of 38 found this review helpful

Without a doubt one of the most important books of the 20th century, The Stranger is a classic piece of literature and one of the literary pillars of existentialism, a movement that continues to color the way we see the world.

The storyline is very simple: a young and aimless Algerian immigrant to France, Meursault, unmoved by his mother's death, becomes involved in petty events beyond his control and ends up killing someone. The trial is a ridiculous farce, and the real art comes from the way Meursault dispassionately describes the events overtaking him: the funeral, the trial, the sentencing. The story is at once beautiful and unsettling.

Of course, none of this is anything that hasn't already been said among the other reviews here. What prompted me to write a review about this now (after all, I had first read this story more than 20 years ago and have only re-read parts of it recently) is the new and much-heralded translation from Matthew Ward. Mr. Ward's work has been almost universally praised by critics, who have called it an essential update and a production that will make the book more accessible to American audiences.

That may be so, but I can't escape the feeling that it also cheapens this great book. I realize that some traditionalists will always accuse a modern translator of a classic piece of literature of tampering with art. But even if I keep that in mind as I read The Stranger in its newest form, I still get that sinking feeling.

Take the opening paragraph, for example. I have always considered the opening lines in The Stranger among the best in the western literary cannon, and they seem to lose firepower in Mr. Ward's version of the story: "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe. I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: `Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday."

Compare that to the classic Stuart Gilbert translation that is familiar to most English speakers to have read this book: "Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: `Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy.' Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday."

Don't the short and choppy sentences of the telegram contrast strongly to the emotionless as-a-matter-of-fact narrative from Meursault in the second example? And isn't that lost in the newer version when both Meursault and the telegram have the same tone? The Meursault from Mr. Ward's translation always talks that way, giving the impression that he actually puts a bit of thought into what should be his dispassionate commentary, rather than just speaking in meandering run-on sentences as someone simply going through the motions would (and the way author Albert Camus described Meursault in later years).

Also, who is Maman? I'm not sure I would recognize the word as a form of "mother" if I weren't already familiar with the story.

In sum, the value of The Stranger is beyond doubt. But consider the issue of the translations strongly, and, if possible, consider one of the older translations that create a story closer to what I believe Mr. Camus intended and not something that may have been crafted to subtly reshape the story for modern audiences.


The Stranger: Slow-paced is better?   March 2, 2000
 26 out of 28 found this review helpful

In sports, to examine the action closely, they do a slow-motion instant replay. The Stranger by Albert Camus is slow paced; there's one scene in the beginning where the main character, Meursault, describes in full detail his day, in which he looked out the window. That was all, Meursault just talked about the people who walked by that day. However, this single fault the book has is necessary in order to understand and accept Camus' existentialist message. Like a slow-motion replay of fast action, only when Camus slows down the life of Meursault does the reader see the entire picture. The famous image of the novel is Meursault shooting an Arab man on the beach. A fast paced action novel would not have given much detail-- which would have missed Camus' message. Saying that Meursault shot an Arab does not tell the reader anything, but having Meursault describe in full detail the unbearable nature of the heat that day, about the sweat running down his forehead and the sun pounding on his back, and by leaving out any thoughts about the morality of his actions, only then do we understand Camus' message. There is no God out there who care, he could shoot or not shoot, it would not matter either way. What drove Meursault to kill the Arab was not distorted morals, that it would be right for him to kill the Arab on a spiritual or vengeful level. Rather, Meursault killed the Arab because it was hot that day. He is driven by honest emotions only, and Meursault will be persecuted for this later on. Slowing down the pace also makes the story seem that much more real and detailed. I imagined the bullets Meursault shoots at the beach in the same slow motion style that was used in The Matrix. Also, the scenes in which he breaks his placid persona, such as the one in which Meursault attacks a visiting chaplain, are heightened dramatically by the slow pace. The outburst of emotion is far more exciting with a low key atmosphere surrounding it. This is important because the scene with the chaplain, where he discovers his own beliefs (existentialism), is one of the key parts of the novel. Normally I do not like a slow paced novel, but I'm willing to make an exception with The Stranger. By slowing down the action, the theme becomes easier to understand and the images become far more absorbing. Oddly enough, it would appear that the book's only inherent flaw makes the novel better on the whole, and therefore I would not be exaggerating if I said The Stranger was flawless.


Is this book the existentialist bible? No.   June 14, 2001
 25 out of 30 found this review helpful

The other reviewers base their interpretation of this novel on the belief that Camus was an Existentialist and that Camus presented Meursault as a hero. Concerning the last point, nothing could be further from the truth. Before interpreting "The Stranger", one should first read Camus' essays on his own personal philosophy of "The Absurd" and how he relates it to the myth of Sisyphus. These essays reveal that Camus' personal philosophy was distinct from Existentialism in that he imagined that Sisyphus could be happy even though he was condemned to roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades only to have it roll down again on nearing the top. Similarly, Camus believed that people could be fulfilled by searching for the meaning of life even though they know they will not be able to discover it. Consequently, Meursault is not a hero in Camus' eyes because Mersault has given up trying to find meaning in his life and accepts without struggle the lack of emotion and spirit in it. In other words, don't trust everything that was written on the back cover of the american paperback edition of this novel. The back cover contained incorrect information that misled many readers, including myself, about the true meaning of this work. Read Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays" before interpreting "The Stranger" and new meaning will become apparent from this excellent and frightening novel.