Quote:
Originally Posted by fantasyfan
The introduction to the book is excellent. It's clear that Camus didn't like to be pigeon-holed as an existentialist or an apostle of the philosophy of the "absurd"--which can be defined in several different ways. The idea that the universe is absurd in the sense that it is devoid of any of the meaningfulness and rationality that we search for in life--what Yeats called its "murderous innocence" is a theme that certainly can be relevant to the novel. Personally, I think that Defoe illustrated this idea in his A Journal of the Plague Year better than Camus. But of course that's only my opinion and even if one disagrees with it, a comparison and contrast of the two works may throw light on both.
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Thanks for sharing this info, fantasyfan. I am trying to keep it in mind as I read. I am about 15% into it. So far so good. My version doesn't have an introduction, but I did some research on the internet so I understand the metaphor. I also read a brief biographical sketch of Camus. I found his acceptance speech for the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature very insightful to his thoughts as an author, and I recommend reading it.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...us-speech.html