Camus (review)

Sticking to the brief of the series in which her book appears, seasoned Camus scholar Adele King focuses on her subject’s life rather than his œuvre. Although she quotes frequently (in translation) from Camus’s writings, especially his notebooks, King gives the works themselves summary treatment, integrating them where possible into the broader biographical picture; side panels give thumbnail sketches of other notable individuals mentioned in the main text. While the quotations from the notebooks reveal a Camus far more prone to self-doubt than his public persona and reputation might suggest, the portrait that emerges from King’s account is broadly and conventionally sympathetic, though not without critical nuances. Thus she describes Camus as ‘[t]ender perhaps, but nevertheless a misogynist’ (p. 74) in his relationships with women, and claims — albeit incorrectly — that ‘Petit guide aux villes sans passé’ (L’Été) does not mention the ‘Arab’ population of Algeria (p. 84). Discussing the period of the Algerian War, King notes that Camus, despite opposing the FLN independence movement, intervened in the cases of more than a hundred and fifty Algerians condemned for various terrorist acts, although she does not link this to the opposition to capital punishment he expressed in the contemporary ‘Réflexions sur la guillotine’. She also, however, quotes Camus to the effect that, apart from writing, his job was to fight when the freedom of his family and his people was threatened. Taken together, these references provide a valuable reminder of how torn Camus was between his commitment to justice and his natural loyalties, summed up in his controversial declaration about preferring his mother to justice — or, rather, a struggle for justice that resorted to terrorism. Here King quotes the correct wording of Camus’s remark, so often misquoted and taken out of context, together with the acknowledgement by no less than President Bouteflika that Camus was a true child of Algeria for making it. Another valuable reminder in this context is provided by a quotation from FLN leader Saadi Yacef (immortalized by his having, in effect, played himself in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers), in which he admitted that the FLN killed women and took foetuses out of their wombs, but justified this by saying that it was in the cause of liberation and that it was their ‘only means against a cruel enemy’ (p. 123) — an enemy, according to King, which numbered no fewer than two million French soldiers by 1955. King concludes that Camus will continue to be relevant to the contemporary world both for his literary output and his moral stance: for understanding that evil, however rationalized, remains evil, and that human relations are the true basis of the moral life. The book is rounded off by suggestions for further reading (some annotated) and an index of proper names. Camus does not pretend to compete with the full-scale biographies of Herbert Lottman and Olivier Todd, but, despite occasional slips (Simone Veil for Simone Weil, for instance), it can confidently be recommended to general readers looking for a clear and concise overview of Camus’s life.