The Fiction of Albert Camus: A Complex Simplicity (review)

Although some of Camus’s theatrical works and essays are mentioned in this study, Dr Longstaffe’s focus is unapologetically on his fiction. She examines this in chronological order, from La Mort heureuse to Le Premier Homme, with chapters devoted to each. If Camus’s writings remain preoccupied with the same themes (the human condition, happiness in the context of mortality, and issues of innocence and guilt), these become more complex over the course of time, Longstaffe suggests. In accordance with her belief that the religious debate is fundamental to Camus’s thought, Sisyphus and Christ are proposed as exemplars against which major characters are measured. If Mersault of La Mort heureuse is ‘a happy Sisyphus’, then the innocent stranger of L’Étranger resembles this figure to a more limited degree, and becomes, in the role of scapegoat, ‘a mirror image of Christ’ (p. 77). Marking an arrival at lucidity, La Peste problematizes the question of innocence, for death takes the innocent and guilty alike. Clearly, this book is intended for a general reader rather than the specialist, and Longstaffe ably brings us some of the main approaches towards these works. Although her fondness for the rhetorical question may be irritating to some, her lively style is aptly targeted at the undergraduate reader. More careful proofreading would have been advantageous; disconcertingly, Veillard of Le Premier Homme twice appears as Veillant, while a footnote reference to Olivier Todd is 230 pages wide of the mark. For those more familiar with Camus’s work, the book’s strengths may be its weaknesses. One is left with little sense that opposing viewpoints are taken seriously. Given the current desire to convict Camus of colonial sinfulness, Longstaffe’s dismissal of this dimension is appealing, but ultimately unsatisfactory. Like many others, she views landscapes in L’Exil et le royaume as a metaphor for the metaphysical and moral climate, but this does not render them entirely ‘outside time and place’ (p. 199), as she insists. Here, the obvious choice for this argument is the story to which she devotes the most attention, ‘Le Renégat’, where she confidently asserts that Taghâsa is a fictional town whose inhabitants have no connection with any other race or culture. This is not factually true, and Camus’s selection of the historical site of Taghâsa seems to contradict her assertion that as a fable its implications are metaphysical not political (p. 218). Equally unconvincing is the ‘off-the-peg’ approach to the mother figure and her ‘saintly maternal image’. Overlooking Camus’s reflections to the contrary in his Carnets, her statement that the mother is the source of love (p. 274) favours simplicity at the expense of complexity. Rather than addressing such ambiguities, Longstaffe either ignores them or defeats straw men: who does ‘dismiss Camus as nothing but a die-hard macho’ (p. 280)? If there is much to argue with in Longstaffe’s approach, for those seeking to familiarize themselves with this author the book remains a very useful introduction to Camus’s fiction.