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