“Annoying” is how I felt about the narrator of The Meursault Investigation. I wearied of his mother complex – basically blaming her for everything that went wrong in his life. Man up, dude! Take control of your own destiny!
I also didn’t like not ever knowing where the truth ended and his embellishments began. In contrast, I had a weird kind of respect for Meursault for telling the truth—at least as he saw it. He may be an unreliable narrator because he perceives the world so differently from “normal” people, but I never felt like he was deliberately prevaricating like Harun.
The Meursault Investigation would have been a hard slog without having just read The Stranger. I don’t think it’s a story that stands on its own feet (as does, for example, a companion book like Wide Sargasso Sea).
@PlantMom, I would be interested in hearing what turned you off about this duo.
Yes, I agree, that The Meursault Investigation doesn’t really stand on its own, but I am not overly bothered by that. I can see feeling that he blames too much on his mother, but he was very young when he lost his brother. (Whether or not he was actually killed by Meursault.) What I liked about it was his realization that the revenge killing didn’t make any difference. He’d expected it to put him back on track. I’m glad it didn’t. Similarly the Algerian revolution, that began with such hopes does not end up so wonderfully for Algeria either. The book is a critique of TheStranger, but it’s just as much a critique of modern Algeria.
L-) I’m bowing out of this discussion early, though I plan to lurk rather than stop cold-turkey. My daughter marries on Saturday and out-of-towners start arriving tomorrow.
So, my final two cents: I’m pleased that I’ve now read The Stranger. I’ve seen it on too many lists of books-that-should-be-read not to have had my interest piqued. Though - like @SouthJerseyChessMom - I’m glad I didn’t read as a high school student. I have Camus’ The Plague and The Fall on order from the library. (Maybe I’m an existentialist at heart?) As for The Meursault Investigation: I’m glad I read it as part of our “duo.” Did I like it? Parts of it while other parts, not so much. What I did like is that it made me think. It took Camus’ premise and turned it on its head, adding a whole new perspective. I just wish the novel had been more “user friendly” which is my way of saying author Daoud kept losing me.
In case I don’t get back, @Mary13, great job. Ditto to all who participated.
Looking forward to our next selection. I sent @Mary13 some titles to throw out for me when the time comes to choose our next selection. I expect to really miss NJTM once titles for discussion start being listed - she always had several books in mind.
Why do people escape into sleep? Fatigue, illness, depression, sensory overload. For Meursault, I lean toward the last possibility. “There is too much world,” as the Milosz poem goes.
Harun sleeps a lot as well (or craves sleep): “I just feel a kind of weariness, a frequent urge to sleep” (p. 41). And “The guard brought me a meal and I thanked him, and then I thought it would be a great pleasure to sleep some more” (p. 105).
For Harun, sleep seems to have begun as a means of escaping the guilt he feels about the Frenchman’s murder: “I slept for nearly three days straight, a heavy sleep with waking moments that barely revealed to me my own name” (p. 87). In that way, he is very different from Meursault. The murder Harun commits haunts him: “the only verse in the Koran that resonates with me is this: ‘If you kill a single person, it is as if you have killed the whole of mankind’" (p. 91). Still, he begins to sound more and more like Meursault as the book progresses.
Certain passages in The Meursault Investigation have direct counterparts in The Stranger. Small things kept jumping out at me. For example, with Marie/Meriem (one name is a variant of the other):
From The Stranger:
From The Meursault Investigation:
Everything Harun writes becomes suspect, because he seems to have confused his own life with Meursault’s. Case in point, the final scene at the end of each novel with the priest and the iman. They are mirror images of each other — basically Daoud’s Harun re-enacts the experience of Camus’ Meursault, almost verbatim. It goes on at length, but here’s a sample paragraph (beginning on p. 107 in the Sandra Smith version, and on p. 140 in Daoud’s book):
From The Stranger:
From The Meursault Investigation:
Harun’s description must be from his fevered imagination (although if you hadn’t read the Stranger, how would you know?). It’s as if madness has completely taken over. He doesn’t want to punish Meursault, he wants to be Meursault. Perhaps because that’s the only way he can stop the pain that comes from feeling so much.
That’s one reason why The Meursault Investigation annoyed me. I went back to The Stranger to check on something and realized that the language in the latter book was virtually identical to the language in the former. And, if not the language, then certainly the scenes and situations. Call me dopey, but I just don’t understand why Daoud wrote TMI that way. As I said earlier, the technique of writing the story from the point of view of the Arab’s family is wonderful, but everything else is derivative. And I don’t get the point. (That’s why I haven’t participated much on this thread.)
I love the idea that Harun is trying to be Meursault. It explains a lot. I knew there were a lot of parallels, but hadn’t really appreciated just how closely he was following the original text at times.
I think Daoud was trying to have it both ways. He both wanted to do a critique of Camus. (How could you not even give the Arab a name?!) and write a meta novel which plays around with what is truth. I think part of the point is that Harun has read Meursault’s book so many times he’s absorbed the language and events - and sees everything in his own life through that lens.
What an interesting question about sleeping. When I think of The Stranger - I think of bright lights and the sun and how much he’s bothered by them. Sleep is a way of escaping all that sunshine. He seems more at ease in the cell with the stars and the night sky.
Re the pseudo-plagiarism, one Amazon reader wrote that The Meursault Investigation “is not unlike an accomplished Elvis impersonator, who performs, with great style, in tribute to a cultural icon.”
Another reader had a different, very eloquent take on it:
The same reviewer does add, “I did not like Daoud’s lengthy, verbatim borrowing of the text of the Stranger towards the end. It didn’t quite work for me. I don’t think that was necessary or effective. Still, the novel overall is well worth reading—much better also if you have already read The Stranger.” https://www.amazon.com/Meursault-Investigation-Kamel-Daoud/product-reviews/1590517512
I want to put out a big thank you first to our fearless leader Mary, but also to everyone who participated. Ever since I read a review of The Meursault Investigation in the New York Times, I knew I wanted to read this pair, and I knew I wanted to read this book with all of you, not alone. So thank you for bearing with me! I’ve gotten so much more out of both books than I would have by myself. It was really interesting to come back to Camus as an adult - and a much greater appreciation of what he was up to.
I think August is a good time for a fun summer read.
Looking at a couple of lists these popped out at me.
Not suggesting this, but the description made me laugh, ‘The Futilitarians’ by Anne Gisleson “About an Existential Crisis Reading Group with a secret handshake.”
I attended an author talk yesterday at my local library, by Jane Green. Her book The Sunshine Sisters was just published this week and it sounds like a lot of fun. We could also claim it’s somewhat serious, as it examines the relationships between a mother and her daughters, both before and after the mother’s death.
Here are the suggestions that @ignatius sent. All of these as well as the suggestions above sound good to me – haven’t read any of them.
As always, everyone should feel free to add more ideas and/or veto anything that has been suggested so far. I won’t prepare a master list until I get a little more feedback.
Soon after the Meursault book was published, I read it along with revisiting the Stranger, which I read as an adolescent. As a teenager, I did not “get” the existentialism. I thought at the time it was because I hadn’t taken a philosophy course. When I re-read the Stranger, I was aware of existentialist aspects…
However- I was struck more with how my education & experience over the decades since first reading it, was a lens that focused my attention on the psychological aspects of the main characters in both books, such as symptoms of mental health/illness, like depression, as well as the experience & expression of bereavement. With that perspective in mind, I wonder if the emptiness of the loss of a regular participant affected how people felt about the books. I imagine she was a very dear & vivid presence.
Thank you for this book discussion. I had hoped I could remember details about the books themselves in order to contribute. Instead, my one contribution to the book discussion is a suggestion to watch the film, The Blue Room, then read the book it was based on by Simenon (la chambre bleu). I serendipitously did both soon after my dual read. I believe I appreciated, particularly Simenon’s book more, because I had recently read the other 2 books. I read the book only because the film made me curious about it. I suggest seeing the film first because it helps to clarify the structure of the book. The story & the main character are very different from The Stranger, yet the main character’s response to the circumstances under which he finds himself brought to mind The Stranger.
ignatius, Congrats on the wedding! We’ll be thinking of you.
I first read The Stranger back in 2012 when my son was a freshman in college and wanted my thoughts on it. I remember he was so passionate about taking the Theatre of the Absurd course and I loved his enthusiasm. Anyway, I just asked him for his musings on the book and he replied that he’d have to read it again, that he doesn’t remember anything. He ended up becoming a science major. Absurdity!!
Thanks, everyone, for the illuminating discussion. I think NJTM would have enjoyed it-- I picture her here with us as we move forward.
