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Camus: A Life
Albert Camus is among the most significant French writers of the twentieth century. His novels, "The Plague" and "The Outsider", have a timeless power and appeal and are studied all over the world, and his philosophical work has had an enduring influence. Oliver Todd has been authorised by Camus' family to write the definitive life. Opening with his impoverished childhood in Algiers, Todd brings the historical context to life, shedding light on Camus' later agonising conflict between sympathy for the working class Algerians and for the French colonials with a stake in their adopted land. His life pre-sented impossible choices and perpetual his intimacy with the Gallimard family, despite their collaborationist activities; his involvement in the conflict between Satre and de Beauvoir; and, his own battles with debilitating bouts of tuberculosis and with the passion-ate, restless nature that would never let him settle. Because Todd understands his subject and his times so well, he brings to this rich, generous biography a rare immediacy and perception, evoking a great writer and his would with memorable force and engaging subtlety.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
March 11, 2025
The great challenge for every biographer lies in the selection: which details or aspects does one include in the description of someone's life, and especially which does one leave out? Olivier Todd clearly is an adept of the school that you can only reconstruct a life if you provide all, or at least as many details as possible. And that results in a book of almost 800 pages, not counting footnotes. Let there be no doubt: Albert Camus is certainly worth it, and Todd dived absurdly deep into his life. However, as a reader, do you really want to read and process all those details? Do you really need to know where Camus was at what time of the day? Which street he walked down? Who he spoke to? I'm a bit mocking Todd, I know, because of course he does not do all that, otherwise this book would have become a diary or chronicle of thousands of pages. But I must admit that I regularly started reading diagonally, the flood of names and facts was simply too overwhelming. In that sense, this biography, despite its impressive size, is not successful.
Did I learn nothing at all about Camus? No, that would be ridiculous, of course I did. To begin with, there are the many elements about the writer's personal life: Todd portrays Camus as a sometimes very headstrong, rude, arrogant and downright unpleasant man. That was quite surprising. I must admit I clearly had too flattering an image of him. But at the same time there is the contrast: Camus could also be very endearing, empathetic and compassionate. And of course there is the endless procession of women who played a role in his life; Todd only picks out the most important ones, but you still get the impression that Camus was a real womanizer who would have been branded firmly in our time. Todd does not excuse Camus' behaviour towards women, although at one point there's this strange remark that "Camus was, after all, also a North African".
But let us focus on the literary, philosophical and political merits of Camus. Of course, Todd extensively discusses the genesis of Camus' literary and philosophical works: certainly in the case of the smaller, lesser-known works, this biography provided me with new and very relevant background information, as well as personal interpretations by Todd himself. As a result, I think that those works that I valued less will perhaps speak more upon a second reading.
To be honest, I was mainly interested in what Todd could teach us about Camus as a political person: his attitude towards communism and towards the Algerian war of independence. Todd goes into this in such detail that you sometimes lose your bearings. But overall, a Camus appears on the scene who absolutely refused to think in simplistic terms or to adopt black-and-white points of view. He was not thanked for this in either case; just think of the way in which Sartre, De Beauvoir and a whole lot of other left-wing friends settled accounts with him. The recurring reproach to Camus was that he did not dare to take a clear position, not to choose sides. Todd manages to prove that this certainly had to do with Camus' idiosyncratic personality, but also with his firm, and elaborately argued refusal to go along with superficial reasonings. In that connection - and I will definitely not be the first and only one - I immediately had to think of Erasmus of Rotterdam (c1466-1536), who also refused to clearly choose sides in the feud between Catholicism and Protestantism, and was therefore also brandished as a weakling. No, this biography has strengthened my conviction that Albert Camus can be called one of the most authentic and honest voices of the twentieth century, a man who realized that you cannot avoid reality (and therefore must engage), but that reality never is black and white. In that sense, this thick biography by Todd is absolutely successful.
Did I learn nothing at all about Camus? No, that would be ridiculous, of course I did. To begin with, there are the many elements about the writer's personal life: Todd portrays Camus as a sometimes very headstrong, rude, arrogant and downright unpleasant man. That was quite surprising. I must admit I clearly had too flattering an image of him. But at the same time there is the contrast: Camus could also be very endearing, empathetic and compassionate. And of course there is the endless procession of women who played a role in his life; Todd only picks out the most important ones, but you still get the impression that Camus was a real womanizer who would have been branded firmly in our time. Todd does not excuse Camus' behaviour towards women, although at one point there's this strange remark that "Camus was, after all, also a North African".
But let us focus on the literary, philosophical and political merits of Camus. Of course, Todd extensively discusses the genesis of Camus' literary and philosophical works: certainly in the case of the smaller, lesser-known works, this biography provided me with new and very relevant background information, as well as personal interpretations by Todd himself. As a result, I think that those works that I valued less will perhaps speak more upon a second reading.
To be honest, I was mainly interested in what Todd could teach us about Camus as a political person: his attitude towards communism and towards the Algerian war of independence. Todd goes into this in such detail that you sometimes lose your bearings. But overall, a Camus appears on the scene who absolutely refused to think in simplistic terms or to adopt black-and-white points of view. He was not thanked for this in either case; just think of the way in which Sartre, De Beauvoir and a whole lot of other left-wing friends settled accounts with him. The recurring reproach to Camus was that he did not dare to take a clear position, not to choose sides. Todd manages to prove that this certainly had to do with Camus' idiosyncratic personality, but also with his firm, and elaborately argued refusal to go along with superficial reasonings. In that connection - and I will definitely not be the first and only one - I immediately had to think of Erasmus of Rotterdam (c1466-1536), who also refused to clearly choose sides in the feud between Catholicism and Protestantism, and was therefore also brandished as a weakling. No, this biography has strengthened my conviction that Albert Camus can be called one of the most authentic and honest voices of the twentieth century, a man who realized that you cannot avoid reality (and therefore must engage), but that reality never is black and white. In that sense, this thick biography by Todd is absolutely successful.
August 7, 2010
Love the book. Love Camus.
October 18, 2013
Olivier Todd creates a portrait of Albert Camus that is so vividly alive that when the grimly inevitable happens, as it must - seven pages from the end - it still comes as a shock, even though you knew to expect it.
Benjamin Ivry's translation occasionally betrays the text's origins in French when he strays into the (to use his own word) unidiomatic: at one point he has Camus say that he has been [critically] "killed from behind" where I might have said "stabbed in the back", but on the whole it is good. (Although as William Boyd noted in his review, which appears in the compendium Bamboo: Essays and Criticism, it's a moot point whether some of the parts that the translator expurgates as 'not of interest to the English-speaking audience' are in fact not of interest.)
This book appears to have become the definitive account of M. Camus' life and works and I certainly learned a lot and gained new insight into the circumstances - particularly the conditions in Second World War France - under which his most famous works were written. It has certainly inspired me to go back and re-read them.
Benjamin Ivry's translation occasionally betrays the text's origins in French when he strays into the (to use his own word) unidiomatic: at one point he has Camus say that he has been [critically] "killed from behind" where I might have said "stabbed in the back", but on the whole it is good. (Although as William Boyd noted in his review, which appears in the compendium Bamboo: Essays and Criticism, it's a moot point whether some of the parts that the translator expurgates as 'not of interest to the English-speaking audience' are in fact not of interest.)
This book appears to have become the definitive account of M. Camus' life and works and I certainly learned a lot and gained new insight into the circumstances - particularly the conditions in Second World War France - under which his most famous works were written. It has certainly inspired me to go back and re-read them.
May 13, 2009
This book invites its reader into the mind and life of the great writer, Camus. I first became fascinated with his ideas and writings after reading the Myth of Sisyphus. While this book broaches one of the darkest subjects available for discussion, it did not strike me so much as a philosophical book; in my mind, it is more of a great piece of art. He did not lay out a set of propositions, or a particular theory; nor did he claim the truth to rest on one ideal. It is simply a great piece of writing, that explores the subject of suicide by first, presenting a question and then following on from there. On reading this biography, it is becoming clear that Camus was indeed more of a writer than a true philosopher, and he has produced works all the better for this. On some levels I found myself identifying with this man; on others of course I didn't. It is a truly fascinating read and very well written. The tales of Camus' beginnings in life in particular caught my attention - you can see the adult in the child before he has come of age, and the sheer intelligence and courage of this little person is as times astounding. I recommend this book to any accomplished reader, be they a fan of Camus or not.
April 10, 2020
This was an emotionally and morally necessary book for me to read. Reading about Camus encouraged me to be more courageous as a writer, more willing to express honestly my non-orthodox opinions. I don’t know if this determination will hold, but I’m glad I found some kind of a role model in Camus for how to be a writer. He was, like his most famous character, an outsider for most of his short life because his opinions didn’t fit neatly not with the right nor left wing. He was a unique thinker who didn’t mind admitting when he was wrong and changing his mind, a person who sought nuance and didn’t settle for easy slogans. But while I’m glad I read more about his life and the risks he took and the price he paid (like being ostracized by Sartre and his supporters), I found the biographer’s writing to be too close to the minutiae of Camus’s life, too unable to soar up and give us also a bird’s eye view. People kept appearing in and disappearing from Camus’s life without any explanations and introductions, and the same can be said about much other stuff there. In particular, I felt there needed to be more psychological analysis of Camus and a stronger narrative of his development as a writer (for example, only late in the book, and as a random aside, I learned how important Dostoyevsky’s work was to his creation). Instead, the book was too heavy on the political aspects of Camus's life.
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September 22, 2024Yksityiskohtainen ja elävä kuvaus yhdestä 1900-luvun tärkeimmistä taiteilijoista ja ajattelijoista Euroopassa. Kirjassa yhdistyvät mielenkiintoinen ja taidokas kerronta historian tapahtumista, Camus'n teoksista ja häntä inspiroineista henkilöistä sekä miehestä itsestään kirjailijana, journalistina, ajattelijana, ystävänä, rakastajana, aviomiehenä, poikana ja isänä. Camus'n oma ääni kuuluu kirjassa runsaissa lainauksissa lähettämistään kirjeistä sekä päiväkirjoista. Erityisen onnistuneesti kirjoittaja on tiputellut syvällisen kerronnan ja tulkinnan lomaan ilahduttavia yksityiskohtia Camus'n elämästä ja persoonasta. Kirjan tapahtumat pitävät otteessaan loppuun saakka ja vaikka tiesin hyvin miten tarina päättyisi, se onnistui liikuttamaan. Tämän elämäkerran myötä koen intoa välittömästi lukea suosikkini Camus'lta uudelleen.
December 2, 2025
Uma biografia completa, detalhada, resumo de centenas de textos sobre a vida deste gênio multifacetado. Conseguimos quase a intimidade de Albert. Podemos sentir sua verdade, separar sua vaidade de seus objetivos. O biógrafo, no entanto, não faz questão alguma de ter estilo, entrega um livro quase matemático. Primordial e definitivo, mas, por vezes, cansativo.
February 9, 2023
I find it worrisome revisiting old heroes. For instance, I love baseball, and many of the moments of my life which make me smile when I reminisce are peppered with baseball heroes, mostly Phillies. However, I could never sit through those Old Timers’ Games they used to put on between games of a scheduled double-header. A shattered visage would appear on “Phanovision” (Philadelphia’s version of a jumbotron), and I’d utter at best a plaintive “wow,” at worst a perplexed “who?” So it was with some trepidation that I chose to revisit a former hero of mine, not a ballplayer this time but a writer - Albert Camus.
Why Camus? Why now? I have read two biographies and many of his works, not always understanding him or them, but always grabbing enough to fuel my admiration for the man who felt the world as I did. With my feelings about the world growing increasingly uncomfortable lately, I thought my past comradeship with Camus could be cathartic. I started by rereading Oliver Todd’s 1997 translated work titled Albert Camus: A Life.
At the beginning things seemed to be going well, my hero seemed unscathed by my meander through the 25 or so years since I last read him. I found myself scribbling down quote after quote from Camus. Here’s a small subset of my scribbles:
“Each time I realize that I’m an invalid, I realize how I am unlike what I’d prefer to be.”
“But in a world suddenly deprived of illusions and light, a man feels like a stranger.”
“Everyone was picking their teeth, sniffing and counting their pennies, and I asked myself what I was doing there and why I consented to this sinister world.”
“It is better to be wrong by killing no one rather than to be right with mass graves.”
“Deprived of the right to say “NO,” a man becomes a slave.”
“I believe in justice, but I will defend my mother before justice.”
But then my scribbling was interrupted by Camus the man. How could a man with such lofty humanist concerns continually disrespect and mistreat his second wife Francine? Psychological and emotional abuse is what it was, the way he took lover after lover while leaving Francine to raise their twins. Francine herself put it best when she said, “You’re always pleading the causes of all sorts of people, but do you ever hear the screams of people trying to reach you?”
My anger over his treatment of Francine persisted even after I finished reading the biography. There was a brief moment there midway through the book, though, when I thought, hoped, Camus had seen his actions for the unkindest cuts they were when he wrote of Francine’s nervous breakdown: “I am the first one responsible, because a part of me has never stopped thinking instinctively that human affairs are not serious.” However, he wasted no time finding yet another mistress, and then another.
So it goes.
Twenty-five years ago when I read this biography for the first time, why was I not offended by the awful way Camus treated Francine throughout their entire marriage? Was I OK with it back then? Did I deem it too insignificant to remember? Was I oblivious? Wow, I feel again like I am looking up at a shattered visage on Phanovision.
It's me.
Why Camus? Why now? I have read two biographies and many of his works, not always understanding him or them, but always grabbing enough to fuel my admiration for the man who felt the world as I did. With my feelings about the world growing increasingly uncomfortable lately, I thought my past comradeship with Camus could be cathartic. I started by rereading Oliver Todd’s 1997 translated work titled Albert Camus: A Life.
At the beginning things seemed to be going well, my hero seemed unscathed by my meander through the 25 or so years since I last read him. I found myself scribbling down quote after quote from Camus. Here’s a small subset of my scribbles:
“Each time I realize that I’m an invalid, I realize how I am unlike what I’d prefer to be.”
“But in a world suddenly deprived of illusions and light, a man feels like a stranger.”
“Everyone was picking their teeth, sniffing and counting their pennies, and I asked myself what I was doing there and why I consented to this sinister world.”
“It is better to be wrong by killing no one rather than to be right with mass graves.”
“Deprived of the right to say “NO,” a man becomes a slave.”
“I believe in justice, but I will defend my mother before justice.”
But then my scribbling was interrupted by Camus the man. How could a man with such lofty humanist concerns continually disrespect and mistreat his second wife Francine? Psychological and emotional abuse is what it was, the way he took lover after lover while leaving Francine to raise their twins. Francine herself put it best when she said, “You’re always pleading the causes of all sorts of people, but do you ever hear the screams of people trying to reach you?”
My anger over his treatment of Francine persisted even after I finished reading the biography. There was a brief moment there midway through the book, though, when I thought, hoped, Camus had seen his actions for the unkindest cuts they were when he wrote of Francine’s nervous breakdown: “I am the first one responsible, because a part of me has never stopped thinking instinctively that human affairs are not serious.” However, he wasted no time finding yet another mistress, and then another.
So it goes.
Twenty-five years ago when I read this biography for the first time, why was I not offended by the awful way Camus treated Francine throughout their entire marriage? Was I OK with it back then? Did I deem it too insignificant to remember? Was I oblivious? Wow, I feel again like I am looking up at a shattered visage on Phanovision.
It's me.
April 28, 2023
Thorough, it seems, if not written (or translated) with style. Camus certainly comes across in a variety of moods and beliefs. Earlier I thought the book was boring, but later realized the author didn't think Camus' childhood was interesting enough for the writing (or maybe the translation) to be interesting.
Todd supplies a lot of information about Camus' writing. friendships, and romantic relationships. We get a good view of the arguments about and around saying anything about Communism in the late 1940s and the 1950s, as well as about Sartre (who comes off looking even worse than he always has) -- less about Beauvoir -- plus many others who move in and out of Camus' life. (Having read The Mandarins a short while ago, I couldn't recall how that drab book ended. Here one sees how malicious Beauvoir was in it.) The biography allows room for explanations of Camus' main books and his theatre scripts and theatre work. Then there's reading about algeria and what the french thought of their colony in the 1930-1950s, of which there is much detail.
A lot of cultural history is packed into this biography of a writer who may or may not be second-tier, depending on one's tastes and exposure to world literature. "Solid" is the best word that can be said for the writing.
Todd supplies a lot of information about Camus' writing. friendships, and romantic relationships. We get a good view of the arguments about and around saying anything about Communism in the late 1940s and the 1950s, as well as about Sartre (who comes off looking even worse than he always has) -- less about Beauvoir -- plus many others who move in and out of Camus' life. (Having read The Mandarins a short while ago, I couldn't recall how that drab book ended. Here one sees how malicious Beauvoir was in it.) The biography allows room for explanations of Camus' main books and his theatre scripts and theatre work. Then there's reading about algeria and what the french thought of their colony in the 1930-1950s, of which there is much detail.
A lot of cultural history is packed into this biography of a writer who may or may not be second-tier, depending on one's tastes and exposure to world literature. "Solid" is the best word that can be said for the writing.
March 3, 2016
"Affascinante e ombroso, sincero e teatrale, umile e arrogante, voleva essere amato e spesso vi riuscì."
Ho cercato a lungo questa biografia e sono grata al sistema bibliotecario della mia città che ne possiede una copia, che ho tenuto in ostaggio per due mesi.
La ricerca e l'attesa non sono state vane. Questa biografia in qualche modo mi ha arricchita, ha contribuito ad ampliare la visione e l'idea che avevo di Albert Camus.
Uomo senza dubbio fascinoso e dalla mente acuta e brillante, che ha contribuito alla letteratura mondiale e ha fatto la storia e che è morto prematuramente e in maniera "assurda".
Ho cercato a lungo questa biografia e sono grata al sistema bibliotecario della mia città che ne possiede una copia, che ho tenuto in ostaggio per due mesi.
La ricerca e l'attesa non sono state vane. Questa biografia in qualche modo mi ha arricchita, ha contribuito ad ampliare la visione e l'idea che avevo di Albert Camus.
Uomo senza dubbio fascinoso e dalla mente acuta e brillante, che ha contribuito alla letteratura mondiale e ha fatto la storia e che è morto prematuramente e in maniera "assurda".
November 19, 2024
Nie jest to lektura lekka jeśli nie jest się fanem polityki (to o mnie), bo jest jej na stronach tej opasłej biografii ogrom. Dodatkowo jeśli nie zna się jezyka francuskiego, można połamać sobie język na tych wszystkich nazwiskach oraz nazwach miejsc czy organizacji. Natomiast nadal daję maksymalną notę, ponieważ wpływ tej lektury na odbiór dzieł Camusa jest nie do przecenienia (dzielę swoją przygodę z jego literaturą na przed i po lekturze tej biografii). Kontekst, kontekst i jeszcze raz kontekst. Pozycja obowiązkowa jeśli chce się w Camusa wejść na serio.
August 26, 2023
Grandpa gave me the book and it was fun to read his notes since gave a class on existentialism.
Camus is a cool dude. Ruthlessly agnostic yet contemplative, witty, courageous, and a tasteful hedonist.
Lot’s of great lines but my favorite is this where he talks about becoming a great writer:
“The only thing is to decide which is the most aesthetic form of suicide, marriage and a forty-hour-a-week job, or a revolver."
Lots of other great lines as well!
Camus is a cool dude. Ruthlessly agnostic yet contemplative, witty, courageous, and a tasteful hedonist.
Lot’s of great lines but my favorite is this where he talks about becoming a great writer:
“The only thing is to decide which is the most aesthetic form of suicide, marriage and a forty-hour-a-week job, or a revolver."
Lots of other great lines as well!
May 4, 2023
Nicely constructed biography, understandably a hard topic to research seeing as how private Camus was, but more background and commentary would’ve been appreciated in conjunction with his letter correspondence. Enjoyed all the same.
“These lassitudes are not conclusive.… Suffering is nothing, what counts is knowing how to suffer.”
“These lassitudes are not conclusive.… Suffering is nothing, what counts is knowing how to suffer.”
July 27, 2010
This was a wonderful book about the life of Albert Camus, author of The Stranger, The Plague, etc. I found the book delivered very interesting facts about Camus and was very happy to have read it!! If you are interested about his life, and his books then do yourself a favor and read it!!!!
May 6, 2019
Thoroughly readable biography of the only Nobel Prize Winner that was also a decent goalie.
It gives you the man, the work, the time he wrote in, and how they all intersected. Pays a worthy amount of attention to the journalism and essays.
It gives you the man, the work, the time he wrote in, and how they all intersected. Pays a worthy amount of attention to the journalism and essays.
March 13, 2014
Πολύ δυνατή βιογραφία, σοβαρή και εμπεριστατωμένη, αντιμετωπίζει σοβαρά τον Καμύ, όχι με στείρο θαυμασμό, αλλά σαν μια πολύπλευρη προσωπικότητα. Με έκανε να θέλω να ξαναδιαβάσω όσα βιβλία του έχω διαβάσει ήδη και να διαβάσω όσα δεν έχω διαβάσει ακόμα.
January 17, 2009
I love Camus. This is a fine biography.
January 30, 2021
Full review at https://jakestakes77.wordpress.com/20...
Aside from an interest in history, why bother reading the four-hundred page biography of a somewhat dated author? Because!, as a contemporary French novelist puts it so well…
“only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weakness and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinessess, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant. Only literature can grant you access to a spirit from beyond the grave – a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you’d have in conversation with a friend. Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak as openly as when we face a blank page and address an unknown reader[…](in principal human beings possess, if not the same quality, at least the same quantity, of being; in principal, they are all more or less equally present; and yet, this is not the impression they give, at a distance of several centuries, and all too often, as we turn the pages that seem to have been dictated more by the spirit of the age than by an individual, we watch these wavering, ever more ghostly, anonymous beings dissolve before our eyes.) In the same way, to love a book, to love its author: we wish to meet him again, we which to spend our days with him.” Michel Houellebecq
What an uncharacteristically earnest quote from the cynical, wine-guzzling French provocateur. Yes, literature! How fantastic it is to be able to meet certain interesting people only on the page.
Incidentally, Michel can’t stand Albert Camus. And, hilariously, Camus’ amazing definition of the romantic dandy, penned 70 years ago to describe writers from two centuries ago, fits Michel like a glove!
“Dandyism is a degraded form of ascetism.[…] The dandy is, by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance[…] (He) rallies his forces and creates a unity for himself by the very violence of his refusal. Profligate, like all people without a rule of life, he is coherent as an actor. But an actor implies a public; the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expressions of others’ faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it is true, because human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish[…]Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it. He plays at it until he dies, except for the moments when he is alone and without a mirror. For the dandy, to be alone is not to exist. The Romantics talked so grandly about solitude only because it was their real horror, the one thing they could not bear.”
Okay, that was a digression. Back to Albert Camus A Life, researched and written by Olivier Todd. Warning: The translation from French is pretty rough. And I should say, right off the bat, if you are looking for an accurate account of Camus ideas, do not look here. Todd gets some of the basics okay, but he’s quite out to lunch on other stuff, like when he says this about Camus’ conception of the artist and writer.
“The artist was the character that Camus understood best. He stated that the creator pushes absurdity aside.”
Camus would never say that. It sounds like dismissing or evading the absurd. Absurdity, for Camus, is a reality which an artist (or a true political rebel) must not evade. To do so is to bury one’s heads in the sand. Camus conceived ‘the absurd’ to be a truth – the human experience of the chance nature and meaninglessness of the world – to which we must remain faithful and never lose sight of, while at the same time rebelling against it in the defiant act of creating. Absurd creation implies tension, not Todd’s “pushing aside”. Todd makes gaffs with other famous writers too, like when he writes of Camus,
“He did not agree with Dostoevsky that if God did not exist, all was possible[…]Certain acts, which are crimes, must be rejected.”
So Dostoevsky was a nihilist then?! You can’t blame the author for the lousy translation of “everything is permitted”, but Todd obviously doesn’t know the first thing about Dostoevsky, arguably Camus biggest hero and influence.
So whatevs, biography is his expertise. He does a great job of the that part. I got everything I wanted from this book. ‘Albert Camus, A Life’, is a comprehensive (you might need to skim sometimes!) and historically contextualized account of his life and his relations. It’s very instructive on all the different forces that shaped his temperament and thought, including his life-long, incapacitating bouts of depression and tuberculosis. Camus’ involvement with the French Resistance is covered, as well as his friendships and loves. There’s lots of juicy stuff from the letters and diaries about all sorts of close and peripheral friends. Some people think that it’s tawdry or ignoble to delve into the mucky personal life of an artist or writer. ‘It’s their ideas and art that you should be interested in. Get out of the gutter!’, they say. Baloney. I’m into both!!! It’s fair game, especially when it comes to philosophers who are basically offering their thoughts on how best to live. So how did Camus live? Let’s enjoy the salacious, grade-A French dirt on offer here, but briefly, so we can respectably move on with the gold nuggets.
Camus’ love life was a mess! He was a total cad who slept with his friend’s wives. He lived up to his gag-reflex-inducing Don Juan-philosophy-of-love from his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. He juggled marriage and kids with several lifelong mistresses and endless flings. His doting and vulnerable wife suffered one mental breakdown after another. Camus lied to his women. By all accounts, his pick-up lines and theatrical declarations of love were seriously cringeworthy, and he could be simultaneously unctuous and calculating. David Foster Wallace’s formulation “sincerity with a motive” comes to mind. Sartre, Camus’ philosophical and temperamental foil, wins some points here in the relationship department. The differences and tensions between these two opposite personalities offer deep insight into both of them. Sartre and his life-long partner, Simone de Beauvoir, (the Beaver, as affectionately nick-named by her friends) were just as slutty as Camus, but, it went both ways with them, and they swore to be transparent with each other about all their flings. They were polyamorish! And up-front about it. They prioritized each other while agreeing upon an open relationship. And they had the integrity to not mix this lifestyle choice with marriage and kids. Also, most incredibly, for those times, Simone de Beauvoir was Sartre’s intellectual equal. She was also a famous writer, and is widely considered now to be the editor and co-author of Sartre’s greatest works as well. For anyone interested, here’s a killer Guardian article about Beauvoir’s unique and trail blazing relationship with Sartre.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/200...
It includes this Beauvoir quote.
“We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people.”
It’s good to consider all this amazing sluttiness in context. This was sexually liberated France. This juicy passage from this biography gives us a hilarious peek into a night out among these intellectual compadres.
“One night in November 1946, the friends went to an Algerian restaurant, followed by an intimate dance on the rue de Gravilliers. Mamaine (Camus fling of the moment) noted in her diary: ‘Also saw the charming spectacle of [Arthur Koestler] squeezing the Beaver against him – she who I believed had practically never danced in her life – around the dance floor, while Sartre – for whom ditto – squeezed Mrs. Camus (Francine) against himself.’ Koestler took the merry group to a nightclub neither Sartre nor Camus knew, the Sheherazade, where he ordered Russian hors d’oeuvres, vodka, and champagne. Sartre immediately began to get drunk, and Beauvoir too, who was weeping floods. Francine was tipsy, and Mamaine reported, ‘Camus told me that from the first time he saw me, he was very attracted to me, but that he couldn’t do anything because of Koestler, and when I told him that it didn’t bother K. if I flirted with men so long as it wasn’t anything serious, then he said I was the type of girl one could fall in love with.’ Simone made declarations of love to Arthur, who was moved,[…]but replied, ‘It’s impossible to be friends when you don’t agree politically.’ Mamaine was convinced that Camus didn’t ‘care a damn about’ Francine, but she sensed how much Francine clung to Camus. Sartre poured large amounts of salt and pepper into paper napkins and drunkenly put them into his pockets. Later that night they made their way to a bistro in Les Halles to eat oysters washed down with white wine. By that time everyone was using the informal ‘tu’ to address one another. That same morning, Sartre had to make a speech at UNESCO, and Camus said, ‘Then you will speak without me’, to which Sartre replied, ‘I wish I could speak without myself.’ ”
Damn! This is enough to make anyone reconsider their answer to the old question ‘If you could live in a certain time and place…’ Top-notch biography-dirt here. On with the gold now.
The honour and integrity that Camus lacked in his love-life, he had in spades in his political and public life of writing, resistance, journalism, and advocating. He was admirably prescient and ahead of his times with his denunciation of capital punishment and Stalinist communism. He was courageous and alone in these convictions. France was still guillotining people as recently as 1977! There’s one instance in the book that sums up Camus’ values and sensibility perfectly – the details of the famous ‘mother’ quote! During a speech he gave in Stockholm, he was being grilled by an Algerian freedom fighter for hypocritically not doing anything to help the Algerian FLN, in spite of being an outspoken anti-colonialist who grew up in Algiers himself. Camus responded to the man,
“At this moment, bombs are being thrown in the trolleys of Algiers, and my mother might find herself on one of these trolleys, and if that’s your justice, I prefer my mother to justice.” Olivier Todd (all the remaining quotes in this review are from Todd’s, ‘Albert Camus, A Life’)
This public statement brought Camus no end of flak from Sartre and the rest of the communist intelligentsia who took hard lines, accepting any means towards Algerian independence. The statement seemed to them selfish of Camus, small minded, and like weak prevaricating. But those truly familiar with Camus’ essays would have known that his words were hardly just an off-the-cuff reaction. They’re actually a key to what is most salient about his whole philosophy. Camus intentionally founded all of his thought, and his theory of true rebellion, on the freedom and dignity of the individual, and the importance of compassion. His lifelong criticism of the systematic philosophies of Hegel and Marx was rooted in these basic values. He believed that these two philosophers paved the way for the Totalitarianism of his day by treating the individual as a cog in the predetermined progress of history.
Camus writes,
“Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it. I focused on the individual so much, because he seems to me insignificant and humiliated today.”
Unlike Sartre, who was the rebellious son of rich, bourgeois parents, Camus’ perspective was shaped by growing up poor with his illiterate, single mom in Algiers. He liked to think of himself more as an artist and a journalist than an academic philosopher. His hero was Dostoevsky, a fiction writer. He never forgot his roots, and was always weary of abstract, systematic philosophy. He always kept his eye and ear on the street.
“Camus’ revolutionary friends like Nicolas Lazarevitch and Boris Souvarine explained to him how in the USSR the Bolsheviks betrayed the pure revolutionary ideal, and they urged him to read books of testimony about Soviet gulags. Camus had the unusual merit of actually listening to the critical witnesses of the Russian Revolution, who were plentiful, but almost entirely ignored by the French intellectual world.”
Camus was at odds with his times. He rejected all ideologies and rational justifications for treating human life as a means to an end. He criticized colonialism, but also any kind of terrorism that endangered civilian life. This made him an enemy of both the French government and the Algerian freedom fighters. He was panned by the left-wing and right-wing press in France. While the rest of the French intelligentsia, led by Sartre, stubbornly clung to their pro-communist positions well into the 1960’s, Camus had long before broken with the communist party in 1937. With his outsider perspective, he went against the grain of the French intellectual world and called out all the conformity therein. When he published ‘The Rebel’, which critiqued Marxism and attacked Stalinism, his fraught friendship with Sartre ended publicly and viciously. Hannah Arendt, tellingly, really liked the book.
“To criticize the French Revolution was to conspire against freedom, just as in the 1950s Marxist historiography dominated university studies in France, which turned the Russian Bolsheviks into the heirs of the French Jacobins.[…] Camus linked the French period of post-revolutionary terror to contemporary Soviet Terror. Thus, he took on the whole mythology of the French educational system and the left-wing intelligentsia. In his critique of the French Revolution, Camus attacked sacrosanct historical figures like Robespierre and Saint-Just, who were admired by nearly every French lycee student.”
It should be said. Camus was a socialist himself. Just not a dupe.
“Camus did not seek to condemn the Socialists, but rather to illustrate their problems: either they must ‘admit that the end justifies the means and that murder can be legitamized, or else they must renounce Marxism as their absolute philosophy, limiting themselves to retaining its critical aspect, which is often worthwhile.’[…]In private, Camus was even clearer about his beliefs. He noted down a meeting with an unnamed old friend fro...
For full review go to https://jakestakes77.wordpress.com/20...
Aside from an interest in history, why bother reading the four-hundred page biography of a somewhat dated author? Because!, as a contemporary French novelist puts it so well…
“only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weakness and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinessess, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant. Only literature can grant you access to a spirit from beyond the grave – a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you’d have in conversation with a friend. Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak as openly as when we face a blank page and address an unknown reader[…](in principal human beings possess, if not the same quality, at least the same quantity, of being; in principal, they are all more or less equally present; and yet, this is not the impression they give, at a distance of several centuries, and all too often, as we turn the pages that seem to have been dictated more by the spirit of the age than by an individual, we watch these wavering, ever more ghostly, anonymous beings dissolve before our eyes.) In the same way, to love a book, to love its author: we wish to meet him again, we which to spend our days with him.” Michel Houellebecq
What an uncharacteristically earnest quote from the cynical, wine-guzzling French provocateur. Yes, literature! How fantastic it is to be able to meet certain interesting people only on the page.
Incidentally, Michel can’t stand Albert Camus. And, hilariously, Camus’ amazing definition of the romantic dandy, penned 70 years ago to describe writers from two centuries ago, fits Michel like a glove!
“Dandyism is a degraded form of ascetism.[…] The dandy is, by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance[…] (He) rallies his forces and creates a unity for himself by the very violence of his refusal. Profligate, like all people without a rule of life, he is coherent as an actor. But an actor implies a public; the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expressions of others’ faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it is true, because human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish[…]Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it. He plays at it until he dies, except for the moments when he is alone and without a mirror. For the dandy, to be alone is not to exist. The Romantics talked so grandly about solitude only because it was their real horror, the one thing they could not bear.”
Okay, that was a digression. Back to Albert Camus A Life, researched and written by Olivier Todd. Warning: The translation from French is pretty rough. And I should say, right off the bat, if you are looking for an accurate account of Camus ideas, do not look here. Todd gets some of the basics okay, but he’s quite out to lunch on other stuff, like when he says this about Camus’ conception of the artist and writer.
“The artist was the character that Camus understood best. He stated that the creator pushes absurdity aside.”
Camus would never say that. It sounds like dismissing or evading the absurd. Absurdity, for Camus, is a reality which an artist (or a true political rebel) must not evade. To do so is to bury one’s heads in the sand. Camus conceived ‘the absurd’ to be a truth – the human experience of the chance nature and meaninglessness of the world – to which we must remain faithful and never lose sight of, while at the same time rebelling against it in the defiant act of creating. Absurd creation implies tension, not Todd’s “pushing aside”. Todd makes gaffs with other famous writers too, like when he writes of Camus,
“He did not agree with Dostoevsky that if God did not exist, all was possible[…]Certain acts, which are crimes, must be rejected.”
So Dostoevsky was a nihilist then?! You can’t blame the author for the lousy translation of “everything is permitted”, but Todd obviously doesn’t know the first thing about Dostoevsky, arguably Camus biggest hero and influence.
So whatevs, biography is his expertise. He does a great job of the that part. I got everything I wanted from this book. ‘Albert Camus, A Life’, is a comprehensive (you might need to skim sometimes!) and historically contextualized account of his life and his relations. It’s very instructive on all the different forces that shaped his temperament and thought, including his life-long, incapacitating bouts of depression and tuberculosis. Camus’ involvement with the French Resistance is covered, as well as his friendships and loves. There’s lots of juicy stuff from the letters and diaries about all sorts of close and peripheral friends. Some people think that it’s tawdry or ignoble to delve into the mucky personal life of an artist or writer. ‘It’s their ideas and art that you should be interested in. Get out of the gutter!’, they say. Baloney. I’m into both!!! It’s fair game, especially when it comes to philosophers who are basically offering their thoughts on how best to live. So how did Camus live? Let’s enjoy the salacious, grade-A French dirt on offer here, but briefly, so we can respectably move on with the gold nuggets.
Camus’ love life was a mess! He was a total cad who slept with his friend’s wives. He lived up to his gag-reflex-inducing Don Juan-philosophy-of-love from his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. He juggled marriage and kids with several lifelong mistresses and endless flings. His doting and vulnerable wife suffered one mental breakdown after another. Camus lied to his women. By all accounts, his pick-up lines and theatrical declarations of love were seriously cringeworthy, and he could be simultaneously unctuous and calculating. David Foster Wallace’s formulation “sincerity with a motive” comes to mind. Sartre, Camus’ philosophical and temperamental foil, wins some points here in the relationship department. The differences and tensions between these two opposite personalities offer deep insight into both of them. Sartre and his life-long partner, Simone de Beauvoir, (the Beaver, as affectionately nick-named by her friends) were just as slutty as Camus, but, it went both ways with them, and they swore to be transparent with each other about all their flings. They were polyamorish! And up-front about it. They prioritized each other while agreeing upon an open relationship. And they had the integrity to not mix this lifestyle choice with marriage and kids. Also, most incredibly, for those times, Simone de Beauvoir was Sartre’s intellectual equal. She was also a famous writer, and is widely considered now to be the editor and co-author of Sartre’s greatest works as well. For anyone interested, here’s a killer Guardian article about Beauvoir’s unique and trail blazing relationship with Sartre.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/200...
It includes this Beauvoir quote.
“We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people.”
It’s good to consider all this amazing sluttiness in context. This was sexually liberated France. This juicy passage from this biography gives us a hilarious peek into a night out among these intellectual compadres.
“One night in November 1946, the friends went to an Algerian restaurant, followed by an intimate dance on the rue de Gravilliers. Mamaine (Camus fling of the moment) noted in her diary: ‘Also saw the charming spectacle of [Arthur Koestler] squeezing the Beaver against him – she who I believed had practically never danced in her life – around the dance floor, while Sartre – for whom ditto – squeezed Mrs. Camus (Francine) against himself.’ Koestler took the merry group to a nightclub neither Sartre nor Camus knew, the Sheherazade, where he ordered Russian hors d’oeuvres, vodka, and champagne. Sartre immediately began to get drunk, and Beauvoir too, who was weeping floods. Francine was tipsy, and Mamaine reported, ‘Camus told me that from the first time he saw me, he was very attracted to me, but that he couldn’t do anything because of Koestler, and when I told him that it didn’t bother K. if I flirted with men so long as it wasn’t anything serious, then he said I was the type of girl one could fall in love with.’ Simone made declarations of love to Arthur, who was moved,[…]but replied, ‘It’s impossible to be friends when you don’t agree politically.’ Mamaine was convinced that Camus didn’t ‘care a damn about’ Francine, but she sensed how much Francine clung to Camus. Sartre poured large amounts of salt and pepper into paper napkins and drunkenly put them into his pockets. Later that night they made their way to a bistro in Les Halles to eat oysters washed down with white wine. By that time everyone was using the informal ‘tu’ to address one another. That same morning, Sartre had to make a speech at UNESCO, and Camus said, ‘Then you will speak without me’, to which Sartre replied, ‘I wish I could speak without myself.’ ”
Damn! This is enough to make anyone reconsider their answer to the old question ‘If you could live in a certain time and place…’ Top-notch biography-dirt here. On with the gold now.
The honour and integrity that Camus lacked in his love-life, he had in spades in his political and public life of writing, resistance, journalism, and advocating. He was admirably prescient and ahead of his times with his denunciation of capital punishment and Stalinist communism. He was courageous and alone in these convictions. France was still guillotining people as recently as 1977! There’s one instance in the book that sums up Camus’ values and sensibility perfectly – the details of the famous ‘mother’ quote! During a speech he gave in Stockholm, he was being grilled by an Algerian freedom fighter for hypocritically not doing anything to help the Algerian FLN, in spite of being an outspoken anti-colonialist who grew up in Algiers himself. Camus responded to the man,
“At this moment, bombs are being thrown in the trolleys of Algiers, and my mother might find herself on one of these trolleys, and if that’s your justice, I prefer my mother to justice.” Olivier Todd (all the remaining quotes in this review are from Todd’s, ‘Albert Camus, A Life’)
This public statement brought Camus no end of flak from Sartre and the rest of the communist intelligentsia who took hard lines, accepting any means towards Algerian independence. The statement seemed to them selfish of Camus, small minded, and like weak prevaricating. But those truly familiar with Camus’ essays would have known that his words were hardly just an off-the-cuff reaction. They’re actually a key to what is most salient about his whole philosophy. Camus intentionally founded all of his thought, and his theory of true rebellion, on the freedom and dignity of the individual, and the importance of compassion. His lifelong criticism of the systematic philosophies of Hegel and Marx was rooted in these basic values. He believed that these two philosophers paved the way for the Totalitarianism of his day by treating the individual as a cog in the predetermined progress of history.
Camus writes,
“Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it. I focused on the individual so much, because he seems to me insignificant and humiliated today.”
Unlike Sartre, who was the rebellious son of rich, bourgeois parents, Camus’ perspective was shaped by growing up poor with his illiterate, single mom in Algiers. He liked to think of himself more as an artist and a journalist than an academic philosopher. His hero was Dostoevsky, a fiction writer. He never forgot his roots, and was always weary of abstract, systematic philosophy. He always kept his eye and ear on the street.
“Camus’ revolutionary friends like Nicolas Lazarevitch and Boris Souvarine explained to him how in the USSR the Bolsheviks betrayed the pure revolutionary ideal, and they urged him to read books of testimony about Soviet gulags. Camus had the unusual merit of actually listening to the critical witnesses of the Russian Revolution, who were plentiful, but almost entirely ignored by the French intellectual world.”
Camus was at odds with his times. He rejected all ideologies and rational justifications for treating human life as a means to an end. He criticized colonialism, but also any kind of terrorism that endangered civilian life. This made him an enemy of both the French government and the Algerian freedom fighters. He was panned by the left-wing and right-wing press in France. While the rest of the French intelligentsia, led by Sartre, stubbornly clung to their pro-communist positions well into the 1960’s, Camus had long before broken with the communist party in 1937. With his outsider perspective, he went against the grain of the French intellectual world and called out all the conformity therein. When he published ‘The Rebel’, which critiqued Marxism and attacked Stalinism, his fraught friendship with Sartre ended publicly and viciously. Hannah Arendt, tellingly, really liked the book.
“To criticize the French Revolution was to conspire against freedom, just as in the 1950s Marxist historiography dominated university studies in France, which turned the Russian Bolsheviks into the heirs of the French Jacobins.[…] Camus linked the French period of post-revolutionary terror to contemporary Soviet Terror. Thus, he took on the whole mythology of the French educational system and the left-wing intelligentsia. In his critique of the French Revolution, Camus attacked sacrosanct historical figures like Robespierre and Saint-Just, who were admired by nearly every French lycee student.”
It should be said. Camus was a socialist himself. Just not a dupe.
“Camus did not seek to condemn the Socialists, but rather to illustrate their problems: either they must ‘admit that the end justifies the means and that murder can be legitamized, or else they must renounce Marxism as their absolute philosophy, limiting themselves to retaining its critical aspect, which is often worthwhile.’[…]In private, Camus was even clearer about his beliefs. He noted down a meeting with an unnamed old friend fro...
For full review go to https://jakestakes77.wordpress.com/20...
January 6, 2024
Il parait que l'on a beaucoup sabré quand l'on a traduit ce livre. La version anglaise est de seulement 434 pages tandis que la version française est de 856 pages. On a assurément trop coupé. La version française est certainement trop longue mais le plaisir pour la lecteur vient du superflu. L'essentiel dans "Albert Camus: une vie" déçoit énormément. Ce livre est riche en détails pour le fan, mais ne présente pas de grande thèse intéressante.
Todd décrit bien la relation de Camus avec sa famille. Camus a grandi en Algérie. Son père est mort à la guerre en 1914 quand il n'avait pas un an. Sa mère qui était sourde avait un vocabulaire de 400 mots. Il était très proche avec son frère ainé Lucien.
Todd nous donne aussi bien de jolies pages sur les maitresses superbes de Camus. Ses passages semblent avoir survécu aux coupures effectuées pour la version anglaise si on peut se fier aux critiques GR.
Finalement, Todd raconte en profondeur le dossier médical de son sujet. Diagnostiqué tuberculeux dés son adolescence, Camus a eu la santé fragile toute sa vie et croyait être près de la mort à plusieurs reprises.
Todd s'intéresse beaucoup au parcours politique de Camus qui est devenu membre de la partie communiste Algérie en 1935. Il s'est fait expulser en 1937 pour ses opinions trop indépendantes. Pendant les 14 années qui ont suivi, Camus est demeuré proche des communistes, mais le lancement de "L'homme révolté" a provoqué une deuxième rupture plus grave.
Todd explique très bien pourquoi Camus s'est opposé à ceux qui appuyaient l'indépendance de l'Algérie et le FLN et sa faction militaire et terroriste l'ALN. Camus refusait de se désolidariser avec la communauté des blancs algériens à laquelle il appartenait. Camus proposaient une Algérie fédérative avec deux gouvernements , un pour les Arabes et un deuxième pour les blancs (les pieds noirs). Cette option avait très peu d'appuis, mais Camus a été inébranlable.
Todd réussit moins biens avec les cotés littéraire et philosophique de Camus. D'après Todd Camus écrivait des romans philosophiques; c'est à dire un écrit où on présente des idées avec des images. À l'avis de Todd les meilleures de Camus son "L'étranger" et "La Chute".
Les commentaires que fait Todd sur les écrits philosophiques de Camus plutôt insignifiants et il rate complètement son analyse de "L'homme révolté" qui a valu a Camus d'être excommunié par Jean Paul Sartre de la fraternité des intellectuels de la gauche française.
Dans "L'homme révolté" Camus appelle aux philosophes de se renoncer aux déterminismes hégéliens et marxistes et de se renouer avec le dialogue platonique. Le grand défaut et du marxisme et du hégélianisme, c'est qu'ils i proposent que la morale vient de l'histoire. Pour Camus la morale est un absolu en dehors de l'histoire et que le dilemme fondamental de l'homme est de trouver cette morale quand Dieu n'existe pas.
Todd critique vivement adversaires de Camus. Notamment il est très cruel avec Simone de Beauvoir pour son roman-à-clé "Les mandarins" où elle critique Camus de façon très déloyale. Pourtant, Todd n'ose pas défendre la philosophie de Camus. Est-ce que Camus a été un existentialist?. Todd n'y se prononce pas. Il dit seulement que Camus se défendait d'être existentialiste parce que les écrivains qui s'affichaient comme tels appuyaient sans réserve le PCF et les gestes de Staline.
J'ai beaucoup aimé "Albert Camus: une vie" mais il est incontestablement très long. Je comprend pourquoi l'éditeur anglaise a décidé de l'abréger. Malgré tout la version française, originelle est un trésor pour les fans de Camus.
Todd décrit bien la relation de Camus avec sa famille. Camus a grandi en Algérie. Son père est mort à la guerre en 1914 quand il n'avait pas un an. Sa mère qui était sourde avait un vocabulaire de 400 mots. Il était très proche avec son frère ainé Lucien.
Todd nous donne aussi bien de jolies pages sur les maitresses superbes de Camus. Ses passages semblent avoir survécu aux coupures effectuées pour la version anglaise si on peut se fier aux critiques GR.
Finalement, Todd raconte en profondeur le dossier médical de son sujet. Diagnostiqué tuberculeux dés son adolescence, Camus a eu la santé fragile toute sa vie et croyait être près de la mort à plusieurs reprises.
Todd s'intéresse beaucoup au parcours politique de Camus qui est devenu membre de la partie communiste Algérie en 1935. Il s'est fait expulser en 1937 pour ses opinions trop indépendantes. Pendant les 14 années qui ont suivi, Camus est demeuré proche des communistes, mais le lancement de "L'homme révolté" a provoqué une deuxième rupture plus grave.
Todd explique très bien pourquoi Camus s'est opposé à ceux qui appuyaient l'indépendance de l'Algérie et le FLN et sa faction militaire et terroriste l'ALN. Camus refusait de se désolidariser avec la communauté des blancs algériens à laquelle il appartenait. Camus proposaient une Algérie fédérative avec deux gouvernements , un pour les Arabes et un deuxième pour les blancs (les pieds noirs). Cette option avait très peu d'appuis, mais Camus a été inébranlable.
Todd réussit moins biens avec les cotés littéraire et philosophique de Camus. D'après Todd Camus écrivait des romans philosophiques; c'est à dire un écrit où on présente des idées avec des images. À l'avis de Todd les meilleures de Camus son "L'étranger" et "La Chute".
Les commentaires que fait Todd sur les écrits philosophiques de Camus plutôt insignifiants et il rate complètement son analyse de "L'homme révolté" qui a valu a Camus d'être excommunié par Jean Paul Sartre de la fraternité des intellectuels de la gauche française.
Dans "L'homme révolté" Camus appelle aux philosophes de se renoncer aux déterminismes hégéliens et marxistes et de se renouer avec le dialogue platonique. Le grand défaut et du marxisme et du hégélianisme, c'est qu'ils i proposent que la morale vient de l'histoire. Pour Camus la morale est un absolu en dehors de l'histoire et que le dilemme fondamental de l'homme est de trouver cette morale quand Dieu n'existe pas.
Todd critique vivement adversaires de Camus. Notamment il est très cruel avec Simone de Beauvoir pour son roman-à-clé "Les mandarins" où elle critique Camus de façon très déloyale. Pourtant, Todd n'ose pas défendre la philosophie de Camus. Est-ce que Camus a été un existentialist?. Todd n'y se prononce pas. Il dit seulement que Camus se défendait d'être existentialiste parce que les écrivains qui s'affichaient comme tels appuyaient sans réserve le PCF et les gestes de Staline.
J'ai beaucoup aimé "Albert Camus: une vie" mais il est incontestablement très long. Je comprend pourquoi l'éditeur anglaise a décidé de l'abréger. Malgré tout la version française, originelle est un trésor pour les fans de Camus.
June 18, 2017
this biography of albert camus, like his works, is fascinating. todd has done an incredible job of charting the life of one of this world's greatest writers and intellectuals. from his humble beginnings to winning the nobel prize to his tragic death this book covers it all. i really took my time with this one as i simply didnt want it to end. a marvellous tribute that i encourage all to read.
March 4, 2022
I learned what Camus did, but I don't feel like I got to know the man. Not one of the better biographies I've read. But I still enjoyed the book.
March 4, 2023
This was an excellent biography of an intriguing and enthralling character. Camus has been an interest of mine for a few years and I happened upon this book by chance at the secondhand section of Heffers in Cambridge last year. It was a great read firstly because it was written so nicely, I’m of the opinion that anyone could pick up this book and get to know Camus. It didn’t drag unnecessarily, and it gave me all I wanted to know. I think I will keep this one on my bookshelf!
November 12, 2022
Life changing. I wished Camus knew how many lives he had touched and still continues to touch.
January 24, 2023
Obra colosal, tan documentada como humanamente es posible, esta biografía nos revela las distintas facetas de un hombre conflictivo, escindido entre la gloria y la sedición, entre la familia y la seducción, entre la filosofía y la literatura.
Un libro que abunda en todas las cuestiones geopolíticas, socioeconómicas, de escolaridad, de amistad, amor y pasiones extramaritales, de edición libresca y de periódicos y revistas, que redundaron en una escritura que, en menor o mayor medida, revolucionó no solo su tiempo, sino a la posteridad.
En fin, un notable ejercicio histórico y de investigación periodística sobre un hombre inmortal.
Un libro que abunda en todas las cuestiones geopolíticas, socioeconómicas, de escolaridad, de amistad, amor y pasiones extramaritales, de edición libresca y de periódicos y revistas, que redundaron en una escritura que, en menor o mayor medida, revolucionó no solo su tiempo, sino a la posteridad.
En fin, un notable ejercicio histórico y de investigación periodística sobre un hombre inmortal.
October 20, 2021
What a life he had!
I have read most of Camus' books and studied his works in college but was not aware of his turbulent life. I knew he was a womanizer but not to the extent that is shown here.
I'm glad I read this on my Kindle so I could just tap the French words for translation. If I didn't have that option I probably would have lowered my rating.
The story is worth reading. The struggle he had writing his novels and short stories was unending. I really enjoyed the way the author delved into all aspects of Camus' life. His travels and the people he met are impressive.
This is the only biography I have read about Camus. It is worth reading.
I have read most of Camus' books and studied his works in college but was not aware of his turbulent life. I knew he was a womanizer but not to the extent that is shown here.
I'm glad I read this on my Kindle so I could just tap the French words for translation. If I didn't have that option I probably would have lowered my rating.
The story is worth reading. The struggle he had writing his novels and short stories was unending. I really enjoyed the way the author delved into all aspects of Camus' life. His travels and the people he met are impressive.
This is the only biography I have read about Camus. It is worth reading.
April 2, 2010
Albert Camus: A Life is an uneven biography, which provides very little critical analysis of Camus' writings and philosophy, and overemphasizes his numerous affairs, marital problems, and petty squabbles with Sartre, de Beauvoir and other writers. The best parts of the book are its discussions of the creation of L'Etranger and La Peste, but most of the rest of the book was trivial and a chore to read.
March 28, 2021
Great biography with so much detail owing to his extensive letter writing and journal keeping. Creates such a clear image of Camus and would highly recommend this book to any fans of his work as it goes into detail on the background and meanings intended in his writings. His life was so interesting I didn’t get bored of this at all!
May 9, 2011
A comprehensive and well-written biography of a great man.
April 12, 2021
Todd does a wonderful job presenting Camus the man, relying upon personal correspondence and other anecdotal history to put forth his image. The writing is solid, and the picture of Albert Camus I come away with is awe-inspiring. A man who was a serious thinker, who would not compromise his own morals, or put his people in danger, no matter from whom his stance alienated.
The subject of this biography strikes me as so vibrant and full of life that when the inevitable car crash occurs, the breath was sucked out of my lungs. As Camus's mother said when she was informed of his death: "Too young."
Overall a wonderful biography, well worth your read if you're interested in Camus, or perhaps if you'd like to get a picture of who Camus was before you dive into his works, this may be a good place to start, though I'd recommend reading the primary sources first.
The subject of this biography strikes me as so vibrant and full of life that when the inevitable car crash occurs, the breath was sucked out of my lungs. As Camus's mother said when she was informed of his death: "Too young."
Overall a wonderful biography, well worth your read if you're interested in Camus, or perhaps if you'd like to get a picture of who Camus was before you dive into his works, this may be a good place to start, though I'd recommend reading the primary sources first.
August 8, 2021
Vast and thorough. Painstakingly so. One fact giving way to another, a life's laid before us so laboriously Todd the road worker must have been paid by the brick. Yet, as the innumerable episodes unfold, our exasperation at such fastidiousness gives way to sympathy, and then, to respect. A life as delightfully replete with contradictions as Camus' would lose face under Walter Isaacson-like explanation. An intellectual with a workman's heart, a sportsman in a sickly body, a combative pacifist, and a polyamorist family-man. "There is no truth, only truths," we must indeed agree - an admission permitting only description and enumeration. In these, by the Absurdist ethics of quantity, Todd is no less than a hero.
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