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[Celinio]

Hi everybody,
May i suggest this book ?

I just finished reading this novel by Albert Camus. He said he wrote it to distract the reader but it also has some philosophical meaning.

Meursault, the main character of this novel, does not believe in God, he is an atheist, like many people today. He thinks life is absurd, he seems to be indifferent to a lot of things.
He would marry his lover if that is what she wants. He is not looking for love.
He kills an arab without any real motive, just because of the heat on that beach that day.
He is indifferent to a promotion at work when his boss offers him a job in Paris.
He does not cry at his mother's funeral.
When he knows his faith (death by guillotine), he wants a new life where he can remember this life.

It is a powerful novel which belongs to the existentialism movement. But i think Camus said it has nothing to do with the existentialism movement but with the absurd.

Has anyone read it ? If yes, what do you think of it ?

[Robert Tulip]

Hi Celinio, interesting suggestion. I enjoyed the recent discussion of Exile and the Kingdom. Camus is also discussed by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism, which Booktalk may get around to some day. Showing my antiquity, one of my favourite bands is The Cure, whose song Killing an Arab is about this book, picking up the existential themes, but with considerable controversy, indicating similar imperial bigotry as Camus in their cultural assumptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_an_Arab

"Killing an Arab" was the first single by The Cure. It was recorded at the same time as their first LP in the UK, Three Imaginary Boys (1979) but not included on the album. However it was included on the band's first US album, Boys Don't Cry (1980).
History
Composer Robert Smith has said that the song "was a short poetic attempt at condensing my impression of the key moments in L'Etranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus" (Cure News number 11, October 1991). The lyrics describe a shooting on a beach, in which the Arab of the title is killed by the song's narrator; in Camus' story the main character, Meursault, shoots an Arab standing on a beach after staring out at the sea and being overwhelmingly blinded by the sun, reflected on the sea, the sand and the knife the Arab was holding.

The track has a controversial history, since it has often been viewed as promoting violence against Arabs. In the US, The Cure's first compilation of singles, Standing on a Beach (1986), was packaged with a sticker advising against racist usage of the song. It saw controversy again during the Persian Gulf War and following September 11th.[1] "Killing an Arab" was the only single from the Three Imaginary Boys era not to be included on that album's 2004 remaster.

The song was revived in 2005, when the band performed the song at several European festivals. The lyrics, however, were changed from "Killing an Arab" to "Kissing an Arab". Smith added a whole new opening verse when the band performed it at the Royal Albert Hall, London on April 1, 2006 as "Killing Another". The "killing another" lyric has also been used during the 2007-2008 4 Tour.

This song lends two of its lines to the titles of one of The Cure's compilation albums, Standing on a Beach, and to its CD/video counterpart Staring at the Sea.

"Killing an Arab" has been covered by Frodus on the 1995 Radiopaque compilation Give Me The Cure and again in 2004 by DJ Riton. Also, the Electric Hellfire Club copied it on their 2000 Cleopatra Records compilation Empathy for the Devil.

Standing on the beach
With a gun in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring down the barrel
At the arab on the ground
I can see his open mouth
But I hear no sound

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an arab

I can turn
And walk away
Or I can fire the gun
Staring at the sky
Staring at the sun
Whichever I chose
It amounts to the same
Absolutely nothing

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an arab

I feel the steel butt jump
Smooth in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring at myself
Reflected in the eyes
Of the dead man on the beach
The dead man on the beach

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an arab

[kbullfrog]

I too have read L'etranger by camus, along with The Myth of Sysiphus, some of his more existential work.

my best friend and i read "The Stranger" together during high school. it seemed to fit right into our burgeoning indifference to authority, school and establishments, plus it was really cool that we knew what existentialism was. there are so many illusions from that book that have stuck with me throughout my adult life. i too love the Cure song "killing an Arab", but then i love that entire album of "boys don't cry", especially burning Cairo....but the blinding brilliance of that summer day on the beach has forever been in my mind. there is an anonymity to camus' "stranger" that lends itself to the reader being part of the strangers indifference. is the "stranger" the inside person, or the outside person? is he the philosophical other that comprises the judges, the girlfriend, the arab, the social structure?

the webster definition of existentialism is:
"n. A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe regards human existence as unexplainable, and stressed freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.

[Celinio]

I did not know that song by The Cure. The lyrics of the song are well in phase with the novel.

[WildCityWoman]

Sounds good . . .

We did a book of Camus short stories here - guess you know that.