Alice Kaplan

Insights into Camus’ Stranger. An English professor investigates the background and history of Camus’ The Stranger - which won the Nobel prize and was often used as an example of exploring existentialist philosophy - although Camus denied that. It follows Camus throughout his life until his death and examines his struggles with writing the Stranger - as well as his indebtedness to other writers. I certainly ended with a deeper appreciation of the book.
I just recently read the book and as a 78 year old retired surgeon perhaps have a different perspective on the concept of life as ‘absurd.’ I saw too many people undergo potentially life threatening procedures and struggle to stay alive and recover to be able to identify with the idea of life as ‘absurd’ and that suicide is a legitimate choice. Nonetheless I find the book and its examination fascinating.… (lisätietoja)

States of Plague: Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic, by Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris, was an eye-opening read for me, combining literary criticism with personal experience and all points in between.

A lot of the best literary criticism includes some elements of the author's personal life, whether interactions with the text or other lived experiences. Yet they often do a bit of one then a bit of the other without a great deal of really weaving them together. Which works quite well, the personal is usually used as a springboard into the textual criticism. Here, however, the entwining of the personal and the literary criticism, of the literary and the cultural criticism, and of two writers doing those things, makes this an exceptional example of how a text can speak to so many people and situations.

As I often do when reading a book like this, I reread the text being examined. In this case, twice, once before reading this book and again after, mainly because I felt like it was a completely different book (or I was a completely different reader). Rereading The Plague before this book was something that really spoke to me. I tried to remember as much as I could of historical context but it was mostly my interaction with the text while living through a pandemic. Reading this book expanded, through their personal experiences, my personal engagement with Camus' text. But it was the actual literary criticism, juxtaposed with what the world is experiencing right now, that really made both this book and Camus' book come alive for me. So reading it again after this book gave me more insight and brought me to several new ways of thinking about certain characters and scenes.

I would recommend this to any reader who has an interest in Camus' The Plague, whether because of our pandemic, its literary value, or a combination of the two. I would suggest, unless you're intimately familiar with it, reading The Plague before reading this, you will get so much more out of it. That said, I think as long as you remember the novel in general, Kaplan and Marris will still offer you new ways to understand our world as well as the world of the work.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (lisätietoja)