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Travels in the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World
Albert Camus’s lively journals from his eventful visits to the United States and South America in the 1940s, available again in a new translation.
In March 1946, the young Albert Camus crossed from Le Havre to New York. Though he was virtually unknown to American audiences at the time, all that was about to change— The Stranger , his first book translated into English, would soon make him a literary star. By 1949, when he set out on a tour of South America, Camus was an international celebrity. Camus’s journals offer an intimate glimpse into his daily life during these eventful years and showcase his thinking at its most personal—a form of observational writing that the French call choses vues (things seen).
Camus’s journals from these travels record his impressions, frustrations, joys, and longings. Here are his unguarded first impressions of his surroundings and his encounters with publishers, critics, and members of the New York intelligentsia. Long unavailable in English, the journals have now been expertly retranslated by Ryan Bloom, with a new introduction by Alice Kaplan. Bloom’s translation captures the informal, sketch-like quality of Camus’s observations—by turns ironic, bitter, cutting, and melancholy—and the quick notes he must have taken after exhausting days of travel and lecturing. Bloom and Kaplan’s notes and annotations allow readers to walk beside the existentialist thinker as he experiences changes in his own life and the world around him, all in his inimitable style.
In March 1946, the young Albert Camus crossed from Le Havre to New York. Though he was virtually unknown to American audiences at the time, all that was about to change— The Stranger , his first book translated into English, would soon make him a literary star. By 1949, when he set out on a tour of South America, Camus was an international celebrity. Camus’s journals offer an intimate glimpse into his daily life during these eventful years and showcase his thinking at its most personal—a form of observational writing that the French call choses vues (things seen).
Camus’s journals from these travels record his impressions, frustrations, joys, and longings. Here are his unguarded first impressions of his surroundings and his encounters with publishers, critics, and members of the New York intelligentsia. Long unavailable in English, the journals have now been expertly retranslated by Ryan Bloom, with a new introduction by Alice Kaplan. Bloom’s translation captures the informal, sketch-like quality of Camus’s observations—by turns ironic, bitter, cutting, and melancholy—and the quick notes he must have taken after exhausting days of travel and lecturing. Bloom and Kaplan’s notes and annotations allow readers to walk beside the existentialist thinker as he experiences changes in his own life and the world around him, all in his inimitable style.
- GenresTravel
152 pages, Hardcover
Published March 10, 2023
9 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Albert Camus
1,083 books37.9k followersWorks, such as the novels
The Stranger
(1942) and
The Plague
(1947), of Algerian-born French writer and philosopher Albert Camus concern the absurdity of the human condition; he won the Nobel Prize of 1957 for literature.
Origin and his experiences of this representative of non-metropolitan literature in the 1930s dominated influences in his thought and work.
He also adapted plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Requiem for a Nun of William Faulkner. One may trace his enjoyment of the theater back to his membership in l'Equipe, an Algerian group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons.
Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest, he came at the age of 25 years in 1938; only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation served as a columnist for the newspaper Combat.
The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds notion of acceptance of the absurd of Camus with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction."
Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later - when the young killer faces execution - tempted by despair, hope, and salvation.
Besides his fiction and essays, Camus very actively produced plays in the theater (e.g., Caligula, 1944).
The time demanded his response, chiefly in his activities, but in 1947, Camus retired from political journalism.
Doctor Rieux of La Peste (The Plague), 1947, who tirelessly attends the plague-stricken citizens of Oran, enacts the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice, and confirms words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them."
People also well know La Chute (The Fall), work of Camus in 1956.
Camus authored L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) in 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He styled of great purity, intense concentration, and rationality.
Camus died at the age of 46 years in a car accident near Sens in le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin.
Chinese 阿尔贝·加缪
Origin and his experiences of this representative of non-metropolitan literature in the 1930s dominated influences in his thought and work.
He also adapted plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Requiem for a Nun of William Faulkner. One may trace his enjoyment of the theater back to his membership in l'Equipe, an Algerian group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons.
Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest, he came at the age of 25 years in 1938; only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation served as a columnist for the newspaper Combat.
The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds notion of acceptance of the absurd of Camus with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction."
Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later - when the young killer faces execution - tempted by despair, hope, and salvation.
Besides his fiction and essays, Camus very actively produced plays in the theater (e.g., Caligula, 1944).
The time demanded his response, chiefly in his activities, but in 1947, Camus retired from political journalism.
Doctor Rieux of La Peste (The Plague), 1947, who tirelessly attends the plague-stricken citizens of Oran, enacts the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice, and confirms words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them."
People also well know La Chute (The Fall), work of Camus in 1956.
Camus authored L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) in 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He styled of great purity, intense concentration, and rationality.
Camus died at the age of 46 years in a car accident near Sens in le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin.
Chinese 阿尔贝·加缪
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 24, 2023
In 1946, French journalist and author Albert Camus discovered the Americas. In two separate speaking tours, he went to the northeastern American states and Canada. Later in the year, he went to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. Travels in the Americas is collection of his journal entries. It’s no Lafayette in America, but he does give some perspective to how Europeans view the USA, at least.
The 33 year old Camus sees in the USA “Order, power, economic strength, they’re all here. The heart trembles before so much remarkable inhumanity.” That is probably the most profound opinion he has and it comes very early (as the ship docks in New York), making the rest of the book a quest to see anything even close to its equivalent. And failing in that quest.
He was surrounded by intellectuals, wellwishers and fans everywhere he went. His speaking engagement halls overflowed. His novels and his closeness to Jean-Paul Sartre made him a star before his arrival. The various French institutes and the embassy in New York provided him with companions and tour guides. He never seemed to be alone. He was forced to go for drinks after his talks, even if he didn’t want to. One of his new friends actually bought a used car and drove him to Montreal for his talk there, only to find it had been cancelled. America, it seems was starving for actual thinkers. In those days.
Camus was baffled by Americans’ denial of the tragic in life, something bred right into Europeans with all their wars, pestilence, poverty and autocratic governments: “This great effort (to be optimistic and forward-looking) is moving, but we have to reject the tragic after having looked it in the face, not before.”
He visited a library and was most impressed with the gigantic children’s reading room: “Finally a country that really takes care of its children.” If he only knew. On the other hand, “I look up philosophy in the card catalogue: W. James and that’s it.” As he should have noted himself: starved for intellectuals.
He observed that “no one ever has any change in this country, and everyone looks as if they’ve just stepped off a low budget film set.” Whatever that might mean. He was offended at entire stores selling men’s ties: “You have to see them to believe them. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable.” Of course, it was the French who invented them, forcing 300 years’ of men to have to buy them – and worse, wear them. Seven days a week.
At several points in the book, Camus states his preference for Blacks, promoting them even beyond what they might merit, he acknowledges. He is also more at ease among Asians: “China Town. For the first time, I am able to breathe easy, finding real life there, teeming and steady, just as I like it.”
His trip to South America was more like that of a tourist, and not of an observer or an evaluator. One of the rare exceptions occurs in Brazil, where he says “Life is lived close to the ground, and it would take years to become part of it. Do I wish to spend years in Brazil? No.”
But for the most part, Camus is taken from religious ceremony to religious ceremony, as standard Roman Catholic is modified by traditional Brazilian. A lot of dances, costumes and sweat, everywhere he is taken. He is momentarily impressed, everywhere he goes. But ultimately, it is meaningless to him.
He finds the native women particularly disappointing: “French women make for good company. Lively, witty, the time passes quickly.” This smacks of colonialism, ten years before his own native Algeria rebelled against their colonial overlords – the French.
Lastly, in Chile, he learns they endure 500 earthquakes a year. His assessment: “Chileans are gamblers., spending everything they have and doing politics day by day.”
The book is very helpfully annotated by Alice Kaplan and its translator, Ryan Bloom. They provide brief footnote bios for all the people who Camus met and wrote about, was minded by and drank with.
The insights are not many or deep, when not totally wrong. The book is more of an insight into Camus’ own mind than anything else. He spent all his time suffering what called flu, which was in fact tuberculosis. It gave him massive headaches and fever pretty much the entire time, but never stopped him from smoking his Gauloises. If the tours proved anything, they proved Camus was just a middle class human.
David Wineberg
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November 15, 2024
A travelogue like no other. Not unsurprisingly full of whimsical observations. “After dinner, moonlight on the sea. Mme D and I agree most people don’t live the life they’d like to live, and that this is a matter of cowardice.” Or “Mariners love the mountains, and mountaineers love the sea.” And towards the end “We pass over the Andes at night - and I can’t see a thing - which just about sums up the trip [to Argentina].” And finally “The trip finishes in a metal coffin, between a mad doctor and a diplomat, heading for Paris.”
I particularly enjoyed Camus’s description of his Atlantic crossing on a cargo ship Oregon and the first half of the book spent in New York. Later chapters spent in Rio and São Paulo, including visiting a favela and listening to a radio show ‘where poor people came on to discuss their needs’.
Most writings by or about Albert Camus are worth reading. This is no exception.
I particularly enjoyed Camus’s description of his Atlantic crossing on a cargo ship Oregon and the first half of the book spent in New York. Later chapters spent in Rio and São Paulo, including visiting a favela and listening to a radio show ‘where poor people came on to discuss their needs’.
Most writings by or about Albert Camus are worth reading. This is no exception.
July 13, 2023
A chance to spend leisurely time accompanying the great writer in his own observant, personal and frank manner traveling sometimes under difficult and broken down means especially in Brazil. He was considered a major celebrity during the South American portion even in far flung parts but the hospitality was quirky. Camus is nonplussed by any travel mishap. He assimilates every occurrence. In New York he heard this story: "a couple of years ago, a man was arrested on 5th Avenue for driving a giraffe around in his truck. He explained that his giraffe didn't get enough air out in the suburbs where he kept it and that he'd found this to be a good way to get it some air."
July 12, 2024
Some keen observations about American fashion and identity, but these sparse journals hardly live up to Camus’ more carefully crafted essays.
March 30, 2024
wonderful way of accompanying this talented writer in his travels. even his journaling got me hooked, i truly devoured this book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews