The Absurdity of Albert Camus: Rebellion, History, and the Human Condition

As it happens, I recently re-read The Stranger -- the last time was in 2006, so it was essentially fresh.

The first half of the short book is easily on-par with any of the great masterpieces of literature. It was written in a direct, vivid, gripping, and yet somehow languorous style -- something almost paradoxical. It was also very attuned to the aesthetics and flow of the outside world, but inattentive to the narrator's inner life -- insensitive and, in a sense, essentially masculine in a non-performative way. As a purely aesthetic work, it is truly excellent.

The second half falls apart catastrophically. The key scenario, the book's turning point, is contrived almost beyond belief. The trial is a farce on several distinct levels -- you can criticize it from almost any perspective, and you'd be right. (There's a well-known Orientalist critique which is just the tip of the iceberg.) And the close of the book brings with it a number of unreliable narrator problems, which make the book as difficult to resolve as time-travel fiction.

My impression was that it worked wonderfully as pure prose, and that Camus should probably have written travel journals a la Gerard Nerval. As philosophy, though, it was hopelessly muddled, badly contrived, and confused.