Some tidbits from the Albert Camus Society Blog - “The Stranger” by Albert Camus - One Chapter per day:
It’s those tidbits of good will that make the story so opaque; I can’t just write Meursault off as a sociopath. The story is so beautifully ironic in that he receives this harsh sentence for not demonstrating enough empathy (for his mother), when in his mind he’s is being authentic to himself and even feels he’s honoring her by not demonstratively grieving. I can’t decide how much empathy to give to Meursault. I’m also not sure what the appropriate judgment should be. I keep getting reminded of the song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen; I’ve always felt sad about the plight (sentenced to death) but he did kill a man. I wanted to know more. And at the end of the song there’s “nothing really matters to me”-- I guess Camus would say that’s existential indifference!
^just read those lyrics and listened, too.
Nice comparison to Camus - thanks @psychmom
Regarding love. I accepted Marie’s relationship with Mersault, because as stated in a link above, Mersault seemed like an “amiable” guy.
Was he capable of Love? Good question? I don’t think so.
His motivations in the first half of the book were primal, basic, Maslow’s lower level of needs
Food- yes
Sleep- yes
Safety- yes
Companionship yes
Sex yes.
What did Mersault love? The sky, the beach, nature, the stars, and freedom.
I read The Stranger: based on the novel by Albert Camus / Jacques Ferrandez ; translated by Sandra Smith. In other words, I read the graphic novel also.
Thoughts: Ferrandez captures the setting - he’s Algerian - and Camus’ characters well. Sandra Smith translates. The graphic novel should work and work well but somehow - even though all the parts fall into place - it doesn’t quite. Maybe I read it too soon after reading The Outsider but the graphic novel doesn’t capture its depth - even though Sandra Smith translates both. I finished the graphic novel with a greater appreciation of Camus’ novel. The Stranger or The Outsider has only 120 pages and reads quickly - I’m not sure I appreciated the talent that it takes to make spare … substantial and significant.
On the other hand, “the Arab” doesn’t get as ignored in the graphic novel, as you see him more than once (including flashbacks). I also felt greater sympathy for Meursault. His crime seems both more and less “absurd” as you see it unfold - the heat, the instance it happens, his inability to explain or even understand his actions. Therein may lie my concern: if you come away from the graphic novel with a different feel or perspective than you do its source material is that a good thing or not? On the other hand, maybe that is Ferrandez’ (illustrator) goal.
Anyway, the graphic novel can’t be substituted for the novel but can add to it for those who like the visual.
I say it’s a good thing. Viewing the same story through a different medium challenges us to analyze events from a another perspective and re-examine what the author might have had in mind. We do that with movies as well. Sometimes even a very faithful translation from book to screen will have me re-thinking my original opinions, simply because of a character’s expression or the way he or she delivers a line. (Totally random example: the Mr. & Mrs. Bennet from the BBC Pride and Prejudice and the Mr. & Mrs. Bennet from the Keira Knightley P & P come across as entirely different couples, while delivering virtually the exact same lines straight from the book. That’s not a very Camus-like example, but hey, in the end, everything comes back to Pride and Prejudice, right? :).)
Sandra Smith used the medium of radio/sound to complete her new translation of The Outsider: “I listened to a recording of Camus’s own reading of the novel on French radio in 1954, to try to replicate the nuances of his rendition.” The original translator Stuart Gilbert wouldn’t have had that available to him in 1946.
Speaking of translations…I happen to have all three versions: Stuart Gilbert, Matthew Ward, and Sandra Smith (just an accident due to different family members reading the book at different times). When writing an earlier post about Marie’s attraction to Meursault, I looked up one sentence – and was struck by how different all three versions were.
Stuart Gilbert (p. 53):
Matthew Ward (p. 42):
Sandra Smith (p. 39):
Note that Gilbert turns one sentence into three. And Ward’s translation of the end of the sentence has an entirely different meaning from Gilbert’s and Smith’s! @mathmom, how does the French version read?
Sorry, I had to go to a memorial service in Boston this weekend and forgot to bring my computer, but I’m back now. So more or less literal translation: " After a moment of silence, she murmured that I was bizarre, that she loved me undoubtedly because of that, but perhaps one day I would disgust her for the same reasons." (One sentence, and weirdly reasons is plural, and I don’t think it had to be.) The Gilbert, besides being old fashioned sounding also turns what she says into a direct quote.Ward, seems to have mucked it up there. There’s a different word that means mumble and it’s definitely I would disgust her, not she would disgust me. How strange.
That may be Meursault’s philosopphy, but I don’t believe it’s Camus’s.
I haven’t read The Fall, but I would like to now. From The Plague though, and also from the way he lived his life, I think Camus’s philosophy is that whether or not God exists, we should do what we can to do good in the world. That’s what makes us human.
Just for fun, someone filmed the Queen song as a film noir. 
http://www.wbtv.com/story/34026783/queens-bohemian-rhapsody-spawns-short-crime-film
There is a filmed version of * L’etranger* with the very handsome Mastroianni. Not the obvious choice for the part and not apparently the director’s first choice.
I do think sometimes films or other media versions can make you see something you hadn’t originally - the filmed version of Sense and Sensibility made me actually like the sensibility half of the story much better. She was charming. In the book, I was merely annoyed by her.
I’m not surprised by the idea that Camus is writing himself cameos. In L’Etranger the newspaper clipping Meursault reads in jail is the plot of a play he wrote. And in The Plague someone mentions in passing the story of an Arab being killed on a beach.
I liked this analysis of The Stranger: http://www.bibliofreak.net/2012/02/analysis-outsider-by-albert-camus.html
I also wanted to add that the last lines in The Stranger baffled me until I noted that Camus has a Meursault/Jesus connection:
Sandra Smith refers to the Meursault/Jesus connection, and the last lines that @ignatius refers to above, in the translator’s introduction to The Outsider:
From Sandra Smith - comments about the last paragraph-
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/nov/28/translating-camus-the-outsider-sandra-smith
It’s a big deal that Meursault never expresses regret for his sin. “I had never been able truly to feel remorse ofr what I’d done” (Chapter 4 part 2) and contrasts with the idea of Christ who died for our sins.
^ That lack of remorse initially drives the judge to distraction, but then he seems to resign himself, rather wryly, to the immutability of Meursault:
How do you understand the final comment ?? " cries of hatred" Such a jarring choice of words.
**my last wish was that here should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred" **
It is strange. He seems to have come to such a place of acceptance for his upcoming execution that those words are extra-startling. It’s easy to say that he also is accepting his sin, but there’s no real sign of that otherwise. I think his explanation that he’s thinking of the crowds at the Guillotine from the French Revolution are one explanation, (images from the era always show crowds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine ), and so is the reference to Christ.
BTW, I read about 1/4 of The Fall last night. No question that in many ways The Meursault Investigation is tipping its hat to it. I dislike the narrator, which makes it annoying, but it’s very short.
One of advantages–and in a way, disadvantages–of reading a well-known classic is that everybody and their brother has written about it. Here’s a take on the last line from a scholar at Washington University:
I would certainly say he makes choices. He’s the one who pulled the trigger on the gun, without any prodding. He wrote the letter for Raymond. He chose not to see his mother in her coffin. It’s not that he doesn’t make any choices, it’s that (as VeryHappy pointed out in post #32), it’s immaterial to him what choices are made.
“it was of no importance whatsoever” (p. 8)
“it didn’t matter to me one way or the other” (p. 30)
“as far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter in the least” (p. 34)
“I didn’t care one way or the other” (p. 38)
…and so on.
He says in the second to last line of the book that he has finally opened himself “to the gentle indifference of the world.” Phrases like those in the list above suggest that “gentle indifference” was his M.O. all the way along. Shooting the Arab, however, takes it to a new level. It’s indifference, but no longer “gentle” (or “tender” or “benign” – the words used in the alternate translations). I still don’t really understand it – the violence doesn’t seem to fit the sort of sleepwalking Meursault from the preceding chapters. But then again, how well do we really know him? Unreliable narrator and all that.
The chapter-a-day blog on the Camus Society site re Meursault as unreliable narrator: