A Happy Death - Albert Camus

A HAPPY DEATH - ALBERT CAMUS

A Happy Death by Albert Camus was conceived and composed between 1936 and 1938 so he would have then been about 25 years old. He died in a car crash in 1960 at the age of 47 and this particular book was published posthumously in 1971 after his death. It's commendable and it's appreciated that his estate allowed it to be published because Camus is obviously a towering figure in the worlds of philosophy and literature so anything written by him is of interest. The slight problem with it, however, is that up until the time of his death Camus was on a roll, with every new book written by him being another step forward in his thinking. A Happy Death is a step backward. At the time of his death, Camus was actually writing his autobiography, entitled The First Man, that he felt was going to be his masterpiece but unfortunately it was never completed though an incomplete transcript of it was eventually published in 1974. Before that, however, came A Happy Death.

This is a book that was written before Camus wrote The Outsider and essentially it's a precursor to it. A practice run. The main character in The Outsider is called Mersault and so too is the main protagonist in A Happy Death. In The Outsider, Mersault kills an Arab and in A Happy Death the Mersault character murders a crippled man although both are under completely different circumstances. In The Outsider, there is no real reason for shooting dead the Arab only that it was done in a moment of illumination but in A Happy Death, the crippled man is shot dead because of money though possibly with the victim's consent.

A Happy Death is Camus ruminating on the question of freedom and how to achieve and retain it. What he's doing here, however, is rather than calling it 'freedom' he's calling it 'happiness'. So is freedom and happiness one and the same thing? Well, no it's not and I think Camus whilst writing his book had some kind of epiphany and realised this too, leading him to scrapping what he'd written and starting all over again. The result being The Outsider.

It can happen. Once you start writing down your thoughts, they're captured on the page and cemented, enabling if not causing you to look at them afresh. If you're happy with what you've written then you leave it as it is but if you're not then you re-write it or even scrap it entirely. Sometimes the words you write fail to convey what you mean but sometimes they invite other extended thoughts. This, I believe, is what happened with Camus, that when writing about happiness he realised that what he actually meant was 'freedom'. So when Camus asks 'How to die a happy man?' what he really means is 'How to die a free man?'

'What matters - all that matters, really - ' Camus writes 'is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever-present consciousness. The rest - women, art, success - is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for embroideries.' Swap the word 'happiness' for 'freedom' and this sentence suddenly becomes a lot more relevant.

For Mersault, 'happiness' seems dependent on having money though not because money can buy happiness but because money can buy time to be happy. Having money is a way of being free from money. This, however, begs a lot of questions: In having no money is there no happiness? In poverty is there no time? Is poverty but a ghetto to escape from? If so, is wealth not also a ghetto?

Mersault murders a crippled man and steals his life-savings, making the murder look like suicide. He then leaves his native Algeria and travels through Europe only to fall sick and miserable. He returns home, sets up house with three women before finally moving to a quiet coastal village to play out his days in longed-for solitude, face-to-face with his own self.

A Happy Death is Camus casting around for answers to the questions in his head. It's his first tentative steps into exploring the questions of human existence. The Existential questions. The heavy stuff. It's a very well-written book and very descriptive but Camus still chose to scrap it, and this is a very important point about it. For all that, however, though it may not have been good enough for Camus, it's certainly good enough for me.

John Serpico

The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE -

JAMES M CAIN

There's the film starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange with the scene on the kitchen table and then there's the book by James M Cain on which the film is based. What might not be so well-known, however, is that the book was said by Albert Camus to have inspired his own book, The Stranger. You live and learn.

In regard to Cain's book, by page 9 the two main protagonists are at it with a 'Bite me! Bite me!' and well, I don't remember reading anything like that in The Stranger or indeed in anything Camus has written. And hang on a minute, when was this written? 1934? And there was me thinking (as Philip Larkin once put it) sexual intercourse didn't begin until 1963, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP.

By page 45, the cheating wife and her errant lover have murdered the husband and with a 'Rip me! Rip me!' and a 'Yes! Yes, Frank, yes!' they're at it again down in the dirt and dust next to the crashed car where the husband's body is, after staging the crash to make it look like an accident.

If The Postman Always Rings Twice was a competitor in a 100 meter sprint then before the starting gun had even been fired it would be half-way down the track ahead of all the others. In its immorality it certainly sets the pace and in terms of being no holds barred, for its time it's way ahead of its time. Of course, nowadays it's all pretty tame stuff but for its mix of sex and violence it comes as no surprise that it was banned in certain states in America.

The influence upon Camus is discernible in its depiction of immorality and the subsequent reckoning with the Law, though in The Outsider it's not so much for the crime that the main character is tried but for his general attitude toward the mores and values of society.

In its style of writing, The Postman Always Rings Twice is very straight to the point; very lean and very mean. There are shades of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment in there as well as Zola's Therese Raquin but it's all condensed into a much purer and much more easily read form. It's pulp fiction, essentially, but pulp fiction at its best.

John Serpico

Exile And The Kingdom - Albert Camus

EXILE AND THE KINGDOM – ALBERT CAMUS

Exile And The Kingdom is a collection of six short stories written by Albert Camus and first published in 1957. So to cut to the quick: what have we got? Well, Camus was a brilliant mind and a brilliant writer and indeed is one of my firm favourites but for some reason reading this particular book of his was somewhat of a chore. On finishing it I did something I hardly ever do when it comes to books and that's to look at Wikipedia to see what it had to say about it there and curiously it's a completely different interpretation to mine. So much so, in fact, that I couldn't tell if it was me reading too much into the stories or actually too little?

The Adulterous Woman centres on a woman on a business trip with her husband and her not wishing to be there. At one point she looks at him and thinks to herself how love, even when filled with hate, doesn't have such a sullen face as his. During the middle of the night whilst staying at some crotchety old hotel at the edge of the desert, she steals herself away from their bed to take in the view from a balcony. It is here that she becomes conscious of the empty void in her life and for a moment wishes for nothing other than to throw herself into that void. This is the adultery she commits to which Camus alludes.

The Renegade is a depiction of the supremacy of evil and how evil begets evil even when challenged by an act of supposed goodness - that in itself can even be taken as an act of evil. There is no surpassing or undermining of it. Evil, it would seem, can be challenged but cannot be overthrown so the only solution to evil is to destroy it utterly. It's only weakness – it's Achilles Heel – is in the fact that evil knows it can be destroyed. Evil is not indestructible and it's aware of this. As Hitler once said: “Only one thing could have stopped us – if our adversaries had understood and from the first day had smashed, with the most extreme brutality, the nucleus of our new movement”. For some reason, The Renegade reminds me of Behold The Man, by Michael Moorcock, where the time traveller goes back in time to confirm the existence of Jesus only to end up enacting the role of Jesus and being himself crucified.

The Silent Men is about how the boss of a small business not doing the right thing for his staff leads to his staff not doing the right thing for him when tragedy strikes. The lesson being: an eye for any eye leaves the whole world blind. The Guest, on the other hand, is almost the complete opposite when a man trying to do the right thing ends up in fear of himself being murdered. The Artist At Work is almost a reiteration of Camus' famous line 'in the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer'. Or even possibly a description of Camus' own life? Whilst The Growing Stone is like a cross between Camus' The Fall and The Myth Of Sisyphus.

Context is all, of course, which means the date of publication of Exile And The Kingdom – 1957 – needs to be taken into consideration, it coming fifteen years after the publication of The Outsider and The Myth Of Sisyphus, one year after the publication of The Fall, and three years before his untimely death in 1960. It needs to be asked, what was Camus trying to do with these stories? What was the thought behind them? Is the reading of these stories effected by the day and age in which they are read, as in 2020 when the world is going through a pandemic-led existential crisis? As I said, am I trying to read too much into them or not enough? Whatever, I'm left with the feeling that Exile And The Kingdom is for Camus completists only.

John Serpico

They Shoot Horses Don't They? - Horace McCoy

THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? - HORACE MCCOY

According to Simone de Beauvoir, They Shoot Horses Don't They? By Horace McCoy is one of America's first existentialist novels. Not that it's ever presented or even typically read as such but once you think about, it's clearly true. In fact, in some ways it's even on a par with one of the greatest existentialist novels ever written, that being Albert Camus' The Outsider.

In Camus' book the main protagonist for no apparent reason kills an Arab on the beach, saying only that it was 'because of the sun'. In McCoy's book the main protagonist for no other reason than 'she asked me to', kills his dancing partner.

'Ain't he an obliging bastard?' says a policeman whilst arresting him 'Is that the only reason you got?' To which the reply is simply 'They shoot horses, don't they?'

Gloria, the girl who is killed by her partner, is the classic exponent of the 'why kill time when you can kill yourself' school of thought. As revealed throughout the book she is all too aware of the absurdity of life and the apparent futility of existence, stating right from the start: 'It's peculiar to me that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me – who want to die but haven't got the guts.'

To all the people around her, Gloria is nothing more than a consistently gloomy person but actually it's much more than that because Gloria has conviction on her side. All the evidence points her to the idea that she would indeed be better off dead. From her broken childhood, the grinding poverty of everyday life, to her ending up as a contestant in a dance marathon where couples literally dance until they drop, the winners being the last ones standing.

This is the world of the Marathon Dance Craze that Gloria has found herself in, the 1930s near-equivalent of any number of today's reality TV shows where people come and watch other poor and somewhat desperate people physically and metaphorically tear themselves apart for the entertainment of others and the lure of a cash prize. Round and round the contestants waltz or more often just shuffle until they can shuffle no more, all promoted by various businesses only too happy to use the contest and individual contestants to advertise and promote their brand.

'I'm tired of living and I'm afraid of dying,' Gloria says at one point, essentially declaring that she's stuck at the end of her tether with no discernible way out. 'This whole business is a merry-go-round. When we get out of here we're right back where we started. I wish I was dead. I wish God would strike me dead.'

According to Albert Camus, suicide is not a legitimate act and rather than trying to escape from life it's important to remain within it, utilizing creativity and rebellion as a rebuke against the absurdity of it all. For Gloria, her creative and artistic leanings are to be found in her desire to be an actress but through no fault of her own she's locked out of her Hollywood dream due to being unable to get onto the books of the big casting agency that all the studios go to when looking for extras.

Her rebelliousness, however, is unfettered and shows itself to good effect when she confronts some members of The Mother's League for Good Morals who are seeking to close down the dance marathon due to it being 'a degrading and pernicious influence in the community'.

It's interesting that whilst Gloria herself hates the dance marathon and all it stands for, she takes a stand when others try to close it down on moral grounds: 'You're the kind of bitches who sneak in the toilet to read dirty books and tell filthy stories and then go out and try to spoil somebody else's fun,' she tells them 'Do you ladies have children of your own? Do you know where they are tonight and what they're doing? Maybe I can give you a rough idea. While you two noble characters are here doing your duty by some people you don't know, your daughters are probably in some guy's apartment, with their clothes off, getting drunk.'

The women of the Mother's League are aghast at Gloria's outburst: 'Young woman,' one of them says 'You ought to be in a reform school!' To which Gloria replies 'I was in one once. There was a dame just like you in charge. She was a lesbian...'

They Shoot Horses Don't They? ends, of course, in tragedy when Gloria gets her wish and her partner shoots her dead. It's how the book starts and it's how the book ends. At the moment of her death, however, Gloria is relaxed, comfortable and for the first time – smiling.

There is no real great lesson being imparted in these pages and neither no philosophical treatise, but rather it's just a snapshot of a certain time and place in American history that still echoes down the ages. It's probably just by accident that there are existentialist themes running through it but it's a happy accident that launches the book into a whole other territory, taking the reader with it and dropping them there to ponder life's complexities as the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat.

They Shoot Horses Don't They? is a strange book but even stranger is that it was made into a film in 1969 starring Jane Fonda in the role of Gloria, which also in itself stands as an accidental paean to existentialism and the idea that in the midst of winter there is within us an invincible summer.

John Serpico

The Outsider - Albert Camus

THE OUTSIDER - ALBERT CAMUS

Camus goes for the jugular in what is probably his most famous book, The Outsider, and as everyone knows (or should?) it's all about a man who kills an Arab on a beach though of course we're talking Albert Camus here so it's not just as simple as that.

The man, by the name of Meursault, is put on trial for the murder but it soon becomes clear that he's being judged not so much for the crime he's committed but more for his attitude toward life and the meaning of it. As the prosecutor puts it, Meursault is without a soul, nor 'access to any humanity nor to any of the moral principles which protect the human heart'. Indeed, he's accused of having a heart so empty 'that it forms a chasm which threatens to engulf society'.

There's no denying that Meursault committed the murder but when trying to explain the reason for the killing, all he can say is that it was 'because of the sun'. By this, Camus is putting forward just another way of describing the state of being when everything in one precise moment is absolutely clear to the beholder. The same state of being that Sartre described as 'nausea', that William Burroughs described as 'naked lunch', and that William Blake described as 'illumination'.

Meursault is fully aware of the absurdity of life and of the human condition though there's nothing at all studied about his vision. Rather, it is as natural to him as day and night. He simply accepts it as the way things are and lives his life accordingly. Meursault's neither a rebel nor a social misfit, that is until following the murder he comes up against the mechanism of the law and comes to realise that in actual fact he's at complete odds with the 'natural order' and the games, lies and dictates that govern most other people's lives.

Ever since it was first published in 1942, The Outsider has been pored over by critics, academics, philosophers and intellectuals so who am I to add anything to the study of it? All that I can see in the book has been seen a thousand times already and debated, discussed and dissected accordingly.

I'll say one thing, however: Camus uses an extreme example - as in the committing of a murder - to illustrate his ideas regarding the condition of man. Others have used other examples and in a joining of the dots we arrive at George Orwell who once wrote 'If you want a vision of the future, then imagine a boot stomping on a human face - forever'.

The important thing here being the acceptance of the boot on the face. The acquiescence. The being content with that vision, particularly if the boot is a soft, velvety one rather than steel toe-capped. Whether ruled by an iron fist or a velvet glove, it still means being ruled.

Then with a further joining of the dots we arrive at Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who is worth quoting in full: 

'To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue.

To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured.

That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality'.

The common threads running between and linking the words of Camus, Orwell and Proudhon should be obvious. These are universal themes being ruminated over and it's one of the things that makes The Outsider such a powerful and thought-provoking book. And I say that with the caveat that even though The Outsider might be Camus' most famous book, I'd argue that it's not even his best.

John Serpico

The Plague - Albert Camus

THE PLAGUE - ALBERT CAMUS

In an obscure, nondescript town on the Algerian coast, rats suddenly begin dying; crawling out from their hideaways onto hallways and into gutters where they spit blood and convulse before being trodden underfoot without due care. The numbers of these dying rats rapidly escalates causing murmurs of concern due to the nuisance of it all and the lack of any action from the municipality in dealing with clearing away the carcasses. It's only when people also begin to fall ill and start dying that the idea that there might be something more serious going on starts to take hold.

It's soon obvious that both rats and people are dying in the same horrific manner though it's only when the number of people dying escalates exponentially that it's decided this might be an emergency situation but even then a significant number are still loathe to believe it. By this time, however, it's too late and plague has taken hold.

The thing about the works of Albert Camus is that they never age, they're never out of step or irrelevant to the times they're being read in. When first published in 1947, The Plague was read as a metaphysical novel with the plague being a symbol of the German occupation of France during the Second World War. It can still be read this way, I guess, just as it can still be read as a straightforward narrative but this is 2017 and we're all living in a new age where a vote on membership of the European Union has led to Britain being delivered on a plate to the hard Right and where in America a sleazebag, millionaire, sexual predator has been made President. Both of these events, particularly the latter, begs the question: Are we living in neo-Fascist times?

There's a lot going on in The Plague and though some of it is unambiguous, most of it is subtext and between the lines, most notably the pursuing of some of the common themes found in other books by Camus such as the question of suicide. At one point, Camus describes a sermon as delivered by a preacher in the midst of the epidemic: 'If the chronicles of the Black death at Marseille were to be trusted, only four of the eighty-one monks in the Mercy Monastery survived the epidemic, and of these four three took flight. But when he read that chronicle, Father Paneloux had found his thoughts fixed on that monk who had stayed on by himself, despite the death of his seventy-one companions, and, above all, despite the example of his three brothers who had fled. And, bringing down his fist on the edge of the pulpit, Father Paneloux cried in a ringing voice: 'My brothers, each one of us must be the one who stays!.'

If, as suggested by another character in the book that plague is 'just life, no more than that', then what the preacher is alluding to is that one should not try to escape from life but to remain within it. Suicide is not legitimate.

At another point in the book, Camus describes another character reading what is taken to be a detective novel: 'I was thinking of people who took an interest in you only to make trouble for you. Only I've been reading that detective story. It's about a poor devil who's arrested one fine morning all of a sudden. People had been taking an interest in him and he knew nothing about it. They were talking about him and he knew nothing about it. They were talking about him in offices, entering his name on card-indexes. Now do you think that's fair? Do you think people have a right to treat a man like that?'

Detective story? Is Camus talking about Franz Kafka's The Trial here?

Elsewhere in the book, another character describes a conversation overheard in a tobacconist's shop one day: 'An animated conversation was in progress and the woman behind the counter started airing her views about a murder case which had created some stir in Algiers. A young commercial employee had killed an Algerian on a beach. 'I always say,' the woman began 'If they clapped all that scum in jail, decent folks could breathe more freely.'

Clearly, this is in reference to one of Camus' own books, The Stranger. All these things (and more), however, are academic and for students of philosophy and literature to pore over because we're all now living in a new age and what's of greater interest (to me, at least) is the symbolism of plague to the election of President Donald Trump.

Since Trump's election victory there's been much talk about Fascism and whether we'd recognise it if it arrived tomorrow? It's a good question because Fascism is not going to come knocking at our door in jackboots, Sieg Heiling, with a Swastika on its sleeve. No, it would come in another form. In a suit and tie, probably, but just as ugly. And would it announce itself to be Fascist and wear the name like a badge of honour? Of course it wouldn't. So how would we know of its arrival or if, as suggested by some, that it's arrived already with Trump? The answer is that we wouldn't.

Like the rats appearing in Camus' novel, the signs would be there but we wouldn't pay them much attention. We would turn a blind eye and put up with the inconveniences until such a time that the truth is just too discomforting to ignore but by then it would be too late and plague/Fascism would have taken hold.

In Camus' book, when the town's gates are closed and a ban put in place to prohibit people entering and leaving, consternation ensues as people suddenly find themselves cut off from their families and loved ones. The situation is made worse by actually closing the gates some hours before the official order is made known to the public. The similarities to Trump’s Muslim travel ban and the subsequent chaos that ensued at airports is strikingly similar.

What Trump did that day was cruel and inept, serving as a warning shot of what his Presidency was going to be like. The subsequent protests triggered by the ban served, however, as an inspiration and as a sign of what might be expected as a response to such actions. Or as Camus puts it: 'What's true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves. All the same, when you see the misery it brings, you'd need to be a madman, or a coward, or stone blind, to give in tamely to the plague.'

Elsewhere in the book, Camus contemplates what the future might hold if the epidemic spreads: 'We may see again the Saturnalia of Milan, men and women dancing round graves,' he writes. 'Saturnalia', however, is how Margaret Thatcher described the inner city riots of 1981 that blew up in practically every major city in Britain two years after she came to power. So, might we be seeing whirlwind riots across the USA soon?

'We learn in times of pestilence,' continues Camus 'That there are more things to admire in men than to despise.' This is true, but if history teaches us anything it is that such concepts are not enough to prevent a nation state sleepwalking into Fascism. Once there, however, just as important as knowing what to do about it is to understand what led to it so as not to ever have it repeated. Or as Camus puts it: 'We might try to explain the phenomenon of the plague, but, above all, we should learn what it had to teach us.'

The Plague by Albert Camus is considered by many to be his finest book and I tend to agree. It's certainly his most beautifully written. It's a book that is unlikely to ever age and to be always relevant to the time it's being read in. It's organic and its symbolism applicable to all kinds of things: Nazi occupation of France, Ebola in Africa, turbo capitalism, the absurdity of life, and so on and so forth. Even the election of Donald Trump. It's a classic of world literature. Profound, astonishing, thought provoking and unquestionably brilliant.

John Serpico

The Myth Of Sisyphus - Albert Camus

THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS - ALBERT CAMUS

In The Myth Of Sisyphus, Albert Camus gets to the nub of it immediately, as he explains in the preface: "It is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate. ...The Myth Of Sisyphus... sums itself up... as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert."

For Camus, the plight of Sisyphus as relayed by Homer sums up the plight of human existence. Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain whereupon the rock would roll back down again, forcing Sisyphus to start all over again. Over and over, again and again, on and on, forever and ever, Amen.

Sisyphus, however, is being punished for loving life, hating death and scorning the gods (so in this light he may be viewed as a hero) and for such crimes the gods thought futile and hopeless labour would be the most dreadful of punishments. According to Camus, however, Sisyphus is undefeated and it's during his descent back down the mountain to the rock below to start the rolling again that he becomes aware of his loss of life on the earth, his condemnation to the underworld, and of his fate. It is in that hour that Sisyphus is conscious.

Sisyphus is the proletarian of the gods. Powerless, rebellious but conscious of the whole extent of his wretched condition. He teaches us "the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks... The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

I wouldn't particularly urge anyone to read this book of Camus' above any other of his works but rather to view it as part of his canon, his oeuvre. If we have the luxury to do this in this day and age then why shouldn't we? The Myth Of Sisyphus describes the question of suicide in an absurd world but is incredibly life-affirming and not depressing in the slightest.

Camus' message is a positive one: "Any authentic creation is a gift to the future".

Ultimately, all is well.

John Serpico

The Rebel - Albert Camus

THE REBEL - ALBERT CAMUS

So, back to square one. Back to Albert Camus and back to the reason for existence. And what a merry song and dance it all is as we head toward our execution? Isn't life just one long St Vitus dance in the End of Days? So what to do? If we care to, how can we make sense of it all? What might give life cause or meaning? 'Find the answer within' said once the bloke from The Boo Radleys and he wasn't wrong but rather than using our hands to dig as we scrabble around in the dirt, why don't we get ourselves some shovels? Anything to just make a hole in the fabric of our being so that we may peer within and find the answer we're seeking. To fall to Hell or soar angelic, try a pinch of psychedelic. I'm using metaphors here, of course, so let's cut to the quick shall we? What I'm really saying is: Read a fucking book.

Having explored the absurdity of life and the question of suicide in The Myth Of Sisyphus, moving his philosophy forward Albert Camus delved into the subject of revolt, rebellion and revolution; substituting Descartes' 'I think therefore I am' for 'I rebel therefore we are'. Solitude in an absurd world, Camus deduced, could turn into significant solidarity.

'What is a rebel?' Camus asks. 'A man who says No: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.' he answers. 'He is also a man who says Yes as soon as he begins to think for himself.' In rebelling, a person chooses what is preferable to what is not, and in the process knowledge is born and conscience awakened. An attitude of All or Nothing is adopted and when thinking in absolutes this notion of All or Nothing is an important one. The 'All' that the rebel gains knowledge of might well be obscure and whether it's called freedom or anarchy or whatever, it's still enough to live for, to fight for, and to die for. It's that or the awakened conscience be destroyed by the governing power, be it physical or metaphysical. Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees as my mother once advised me when I was a child - as she loaded petrol bombs into crates during the Bristol riots.

Camus, of course, was a philosopher par excellence who delved deeper than most, so when he writes something like 'I rebel - therefore we exist', you just know it isn't simply a throwaway statement but something that's been arrived at through a lot of very deep thought. The Rebel is that thought, along with the investigation, the critique, the analysis, the blood, the sweat and the tears shed to arrive at such a statement. All captured and laid down in words that flow seamlessly.

It took six years for Camus to write The Rebel and the end result is a work of intellectual genius. Step by step he wades into the mire leaving no stone unturned. Starting with a discourse on metaphysical rebellion he throws up Marquis de Sade as an ultimate example of someone who rebels against all creation, then throws up Baudelaire as an example of dandyism and rebellion against a world dedicated to death. 'To live and die before a mirror' Baudelaire is quoted as saying but if the mirror is other people then when he's alone there is no mirror, and for the dandy to be alone means not to exist.

As to be expected, Dostoyevsky is introduced as the point at which All or Nothing becomes All or No-one, referring specifically to Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov. Nietzsche is also entertained, with Camus highlighting some of his ingenious conclusions such as God being dead having been killed by Christianity, socialism being only a degenerate form of Christian decadence, and deeds not faith being Christ's real message. Camus, in fact, writes very supportively of Nietzsche and tries to wrestle him back from Germany's National Socialists who claimed him for their own.

For Camus, 1789 and the French Revolution is the point at which the divine right of Kings is done away with, underscored by the execution of Louis XVI. 'We do not want to condemn the King,' says Danton 'We want to kill him.' What is different about this particular regicide, however, is that for the first time it's the principle of the King, not the person that is being attacked because monarchy, as Saint-Just explains, is not a King, it is crime. Not a crime, but crime itself.

Hegel is mulled over and certain aspects of his philosophy pronounced as suspect before shifting attention to Russia where Bakunin is declaring the State as being the incarnation of crime, and is seeking 'the universal and authentically democratic Church of freedom'. Bakunin is eclipsed when it comes to All or Nothing, however, by Nechagev who even Bakunin is taken aback by.

Faced with the unwillingness of the oppressed to rise up with them and march forward to their liberation, the anarchists and revolutionaries stand alone against autocracy and from here individual terrorism is elevated into a principle. This is the point at which terrorists are born. According to Camus, 1905 marks the highest peak of revolutionary momentum where 'in the midst of a world which rejects them, the anarchists, one after another, like all courageous men, try to reconstruct a brotherhood of man'. But whilst individual terrorism hunts down the last representatives of divine right, State terrorism is getting ready to destroy divine right definitively at the very root of human society.

So to the rise of the Fascist State as embodied by Hitler's Germany and though it was a revolution of sorts, it was one that had no hope of a future. Rather, it was 'a primitive impulse whose ravages were greater than its real ambitions'. Interestingly, the destruction of Lidice is cited as an example of the utter emptiness of the Nazi, servile soul with only the power to kill and degrade left to fill it in any way. And for anyone reading this who doesn't know what Lidice is, I would urge them to Google it. Moreover, if anyone doesn't know about Lidice then they perhaps should wonder why this might be?

And then to Marx, Lenin and the Russian Revolution - and perhaps the instigating factor for Camus writing The Rebel? Camus knew full well that what he was writing about Marxism was going to lose him friends and gain him enemies, and he was right. Most famously, The Rebel and in particular the criticism of Marxism within its pages caused a fall-out with Sartre that was never repaired - and it's easy to see why. Camus cuts deeply into Russian communism with scalpel precision leaving it dissected on a slab with its guts exposed. It's not a pretty sight. The establishment of the Russian proletarian State and Lenin's admission that there was nothing to guarantee the advent of the higher phase of communism signifies for Camus the death of freedom, leading logically to the betrayal of Makhno and the crushing of the sailors of Krondstadt. Remember Lidice but don't also ever forget Krondstadt. As Camus puts it in summing up: Fascism represents the exaltation of the executioner by the executioner, whilst Russian communism represents the exaltation of the executioner by the victim.

Can The Rebel be criticised? Of course it can, and Les Temps Modernes under the editorship of Sartre tore it to pieces shortly after it was first published. I do wonder, however, if criticising it serves any purpose? Much better, I suspect, that it be discussed or if it is to be criticised then it be constructive criticism. There's much about The Rebel that warrants thinking about even though since first being published in 1950 the world has moved on somewhat. The Berlin Wall, for a start has since fallen and neo-liberalism is now the order of the day. And not to mention amongst many other things Pol Pot, Year Zero, the Thatcher/Reagan axis, 9/11, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the unswerving ambitions of Islamic State. What Camus wrote in 1950, however, is still absolutely relevant today if not more so. It's even possible to view David Cameron's government through Camus' prism.

Camus was killed in 1960 in a car crash so the world was left never knowing where his genius might have taken him next. What he left the world in the form of The Rebel and all his other books, however, is more than enough to keep us going though it doesn't end there. Camus isn't the be all and end all as there's plenty of other books to read in addition to the ones that he wrote. But he's certainly a good starting point.

John Serpico

The Fall - Albert Camus

THE FALL - ALBERT CAMUS

The Fall - Albert Camus' famous monologue; thoughtful, contemplative and... unsettling, I guess. Multi-layered so as to be read as though the fictional narrator by the name of Jean-Baptiste Clamence is addressing a stranger encountered in an Amsterdam bar or as Camus himself addressing the reader directly. Whatever, it's a very effective style of writing that slowly but surely pulls you in until you realise you're trapped in the folds of Camus' world and there's no easy way out.

The Fall was Camus' last book he wrote before he died in a car crash at the age of 46 and is considered to be his most misunderstood if not most difficult work. If you read through his books from The Stranger, to The Myth Of Sisyphus, to The Plague, to The Rebel, you can see a progression in his thought and a development in his skill as a writer. Ever deeper he was digging into the question of suicide and the Absurd and though The Fall isn't the complete flowering of his ideas, it's probably as close as he ever got.

I do wonder, even though The Fall is a classic, does anyone actually know what the story is about before they start reading it? I very much doubt it. A reader might have an idea of what the book is concerned with but it's only after finishing it that you realise it's like a Trojan horse and its real meaning is in its depths, which is almost being smuggled into you. Essentially, The Fall is a mirror held up to the reader and what the reader chooses to do with that reflection is entirely up to them.

Jean-Baptiste Clamence describes himself to the person he's talking to (the reader?) as a 'judge-penitent' and it's only when you finish reading the book that you come to understand what is meant by this. Clamence explains how he was once a very successful, benevolent Parisian lawyer who was near-perfect in every way a man could wish: rich, cultured, noble of mind, dignified, courteous, popular, generous, good-looking, athletic, etc, etc. A man at the height of his powers.

In these exalted heights he revelled, in plain view of all other people so they might see what a wonderful person he was. His existential crisis begins, however, when walking home one night over a bridge in Paris where he sees a young woman peering over the railings into the river below. After passing her, he hears from behind him the sound of a body striking the water and then several cries drifting away downstream before falling silent. He remains there rooted to the spot in shock but rather than turning around or running for help he slowly gathers himself and starts to walk away in the rain, never mentioning the incident to anyone.

From there on he begins to have moments of clarity, realisation and insight into his true character. When he hears laughter it for some reason unsettles him, as if the laughter was aimed at him. He catches himself doffing his hat to a blind man whom he's escorted across a road and realises it's not for the blind man's benefit that he doffs his hat - he's blind, so he wouldn't know - but to people looking on so they might see what a kindly man he is. After playing a part, he was taking a bow. He's involved in an altercation with a motorcyclist and ends up being publicly humiliated, then bitterly resents how he didn't simply give his adversary a good thrashing and then walk away with head held high. His whole life, it dawns upon him, is hypocritical so he starts to wilfully damage his own reputation and destroy his perceived good character, setting himself on a path to social suicide.

To escape himself and to be free of the judgement by others he enters realms of debauchery, taking up with prostitutes and drinking for nights on end; and for a time this succeeds in erasing the laughter though at the cost of damaging him physically. Finally, he closes his law office, leaves France and travels; ending up in the Red Light district of Amsterdam, a city below sea level where poor and rich men alike from all the corners of the world wash through like so much dirty water down a drain.

And there now Clamence waits for them in a bar. Making their acquaintance and relaying his story; changing or highlighting aspects of it according to whom he's talking to on any given evening.

Through the acceptance of his hypocrisy and the absurdity of his existence, and by falling as far as he can, he has found a freedom he wishes to tell others of. There is no turning back and no second chances for anyone, hence the no escaping from his walking away from the event on the bridge in Paris or the public humiliation suffered during the altercation with the motorcyclist. There is no escape from the absurdity. There is no grander height to scale than the very bottom. Those men who are above others in whatever way (such as the Pope - the name of which Clamence was given whilst being held in a prisoner of war camp) need the most forgiving because they are the least innocent, they are the most hypocritical, and they are the most absurd.

The brilliance of The Fall is that it is as I said like a mirror being held up to the reader. What the reader sees in that mirror and how it's interpreted is down to them. The very title 'The Fall', for example, could be read as referring to the woman on the bridge and the incident that instigated Clamence's existential crisis or to Clamence's self-inflicted fall from supposed grace as a lawyer in Paris to a dispossessed judge-penitent in Amsterdam. Or if you're American it could be taken as another name for 'Autumn'. Or it could even just be read as the name taken for one of the most interesting and uniquely individual bands in British music of the last few decades, fronted by a curmudgeonly Mancunian by the name of Mark E Smith...

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

John Serpico