Customer Reviews

Albert Camus: A Life

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Olivier Todd has compiled an excellent, thorough and captivating account of the life of Albert Camus. I was particularly impressed with this book's detail and accounting of Camus' s life in Algeria before moving to France. If there is any criticism I might have, it is that there is not enough detail about his last years. For a book that is filled with interviews, details and anecdotes from those who knew Camus, wanting even more information is a bit of a complement. I always suspected that Camus's personal life was a complicated one and this book confirmed that. I read it over a ten day period and didn't really want it to end. Wonderful job!

As other reviewers have noted, this is an abridgement of the French version. And it is a bad one. Contrary to one of the other reviewers, though, I don't think the fault is with the French original.

For one thing, the abridgement makes Camus so boring and unsymapthetic for the first 1/3 of the book, that it's tempting to put the book down. This section is where the translator and his editors threw away the most material: the 1/3 mark in the translation is more like the 1/2-way point in the French original. The result is a forced march of events and girlfriends, without much description of local character or humanizing incident.

Unfortunately even the part of the book dealing with the adult Camus is stripped of a lot of meaningful material. For example, some amusing anecdotes about the local residents were edited out of Chapter 25, which describes Camus's wartime stay in a rural area of France.

Moreover, the translation itself has some weird quirks. One is the persistent reference to C.'s notebooks as "Carnets", presented as if this were a book title. Notebooks of French writers should become capital-C and italicized "Carnets" only when they're edited and published. If you're talking about what an unknown (in fact, unpublished) writer wrote in his notebooks, then you should say "notebooks" or, as Todd does in the French original, "carnets" without italics. Yet translator Ivry uses italicized "Carnets" throughout.

Another irritation is that sometimes it would have been better to leave some stuff in French and hang a footnote. E.g., in Chapter 25, the biographer talks about Camus's friendship with another French writer, Francis Ponge. Around the same time Camus's first literary works were being published, Ponge published his famous collection of prose poems, "Le parti pris des choses". Within the chapter, Ivry mentions this title in French, without translation. The chapter title is the puzzling "Men's Prejudices." Yet in Todd's original, the chapter title is "Le parti pris des hommes" -- a clear reference to Ponge's book. Ivry should have provided a translation of the book title, or else left the chapter title in French. To do as he did entirely obscures Olivier Todd's light and witty touch. (Another mystifying and humorless choice is that the original title of Ch. 25, "Rutabagas et résistances," is translated simply as "Resistances.")

If you just want a quick resume of the facts of Camus's life, should you make a commitment to this 400-page biography that may not warm you up to its subject? If you want to really dig into his life, should you read this book that skips everything that the translator (or his publisher) believed is "not of sufficient interest to the American general reader," as Ivry says in his preface? Personally, I'm interested in Camus only just enough to read one biography of him, once. Discovering the huge gap in quality between this translation and the gigantic original after I was already halfway through the English version was frustrating.

It's also sad to reflect that Ivry and his editors probably belong to that segment of US society who are most sincerely interested in literature. That they believed the average reader who's already interested enough to read 400 pages about Camus wouldn't have read 600+ pages about him, or appreciated some footnotes at the end of the book (all of the original's footnotes are omitted), represents either condescension, bad market sense or tremendously bad taste. To say nothing of the fact that by often throwing out more humanizing and light-hearted material, they're reinforcing many English speakers' false caricature of Camus, often formed after reading "The Stranger" in college, as an alienated and depressed "existentialist" guy who couldn't enjoy life.

Not all publishers make such bad choices. Oxford U Press recently published the 4th volume of a biography of Gustav Mahler, which also happens to be a translation from the French; just that volume alone comes to almost 1,800 pages in English. It would have been a much more modest project for Knopf to have published an unabridged translation of Todd's bestseller -- and much more respectful to both author and readers.

The only real problem I have with this book was that the American edition has been abridged. Over 150 pages have been cut. As a result much of the portrait of Camus as a philosopher has been deleted. So I would recomend reading the French edition if at all possible

If you want camus' angle on his life, read the first man, if you want an outsiders opinion, oliver todd is as good as it gets. Todd is a stickler for detail which is what anyone reading a biography really wants, so it's a must read on my list

When published in French in 1996, "Albert Camus: une vie" was, by consensus view, the most comprehensive and objective biography of Albert Camus to date. This English translation was published the next year. Unfortunately, when translated into English, Todd's original French biography also was abridged - "unfortunately" because I sense that the abridgement was clumsy. I suspect that much of the cropping occurred in the first part of the book, dealing with Camus's life from his birth in Algeria in 1913 until his move to Paris in 1941, since the first third of this biography (through 1941) is annoyingly choppy and poorly organized. Around page 130 the quality of this English version of ALBERT CAMUS: A LIFE improves.

Even so, the biography is on the dry side. The writing is only so-so -- but then, that too might be due at least in part to the translation. As a biography, it is more a collection than a synthesis; Todd inclines more to presenting facts and quoting others' assessments of Camus than he does to offering his own analysis and commentary. A real strength of this biography is that Todd does not succumb to hero-worship. Compared to two other works about Camus biographical in nature that I have read or skimmed, Todd is not blind to, nor does he gloss over, Camus's personal weaknesses and defects of character. Another strength of this biography is how it highlights people and events in Camus's life that he worked into various of his novels and plays. In the end, I applaud this biography for its objectivity, though I also fault how the workmanlike tone and approach virtually strips all sense of warmth for the book's subject.

Yet another notable aspect of this biography is its occasional gossipy tidbits, though they always are presented in a dead-pan manner. One example: For a few years Camus was a close associate of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. As Todd puts it, Beauvoir "felt amorous" towards Camus, but he, despite being a notorious womanizer (though his dalliances tended to be with young, slim, quite attractive women), steadfastly resisted her advances. (This fact should not be overlooked when considering Beauvoir's later castigation of Camus's politics and intellectual abilities.) On the other hand, Simone was able to coax Arthur Koestler into the sack. Ironically, Camus later said to Koestler (perhaps not knowing that for Koestler sex with Simone was not just a hypothetical), "Imagine what [Simone] might say on the pillow afterwards. It's horrible--with such a chatterbox, a total bluestocking, unbearable!"

This biography covers in reasonable detail all of the better-known episodes or aspects of Camus's life: his tuberculosis (which certainly gave him a deeper appreciation for the mystery and wonder of life, which in turn informed his opposition to terrorism and to capital punishment); his involvement with the Resistance; his friendship and then quarrel with Sartre; his controversial public silence in the late-1950s as regards his native Algeria; the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature; and his relations with numerous women.

Camus was an inveterate Don Juan, who could be very jealous and get quite upset upon learning that one of his lovers had been unfaithful to him but, as for himself, could come up with any number of reasons why fidelity or monogamy was not natural for him. It is nigh impossible to pardon him his conduct towards his second wife Francine, and it appears likely that his rampant philandering contributed to Francine's mental illness. From Todd's biography, it also appears that Camus had difficulty understanding that reasonable people could, in good faith, see political or moral matters differently than he. He comes across -- at least to those other than his closest friends - as having been rather smug, maybe even arrogant, which (especially when coupled with his enviable good looks, fame, and success with women) no doubt increased the number of enemies or critics he had among the French intelligentsia.

But by no means is Todd's biography a hatchet job. Todd, in his rather dry and somber manner, honors Camus for his distinctive achievements and defends him from the more shrill and knee-jerk attacks from the Left (which, for the most part, the course of history over the past thirty years has also exposed as misguided). Of Camus's literary works, Todd regards "The Stranger" and "The Fall" to be "masterpieces". Again and again Todd shows how Camus simply refused to be caught up in the ideologies that helped fuel the Cold War. When "The Rebel" was criticized by Sartre and his toadies on the grounds that some of its views were those of the right wing, Camus wrote, "One doesn't decide the truth of an idea according to whether it is left- or right-wing, and even less by what the left or right wing decides to make of it." (A maxim that many of our contemporary political pundits would do well to remember.) To the perturbation of the French Left of the late 1940s and the 1950s, Camus saw and pronounced the USSR to be a "land of slaves" and a lie. To those like Sartre who defended Communism and the USSR as the hope of the future, Camus responded, "We don't need hope, we only need truth." Finally, with regard to Algeria, Todd is not altogether clear or successful in explaining Camus's conflicted and complex position(s), but he certainly is on the mark when he concludes: "Camus wanted Algeria to remain somehow in the French Republic, but he did not have what is seen today as typical colonialist mentality, condoning the OAS counterterrorist groups' torturing Algerian nationalists. Those who claim that he did [such as Conor Cruise O'Brien and Edward Said] falsify his life and works."

Though not ideal, Todd's biography probably is essential to an English-speaking student of Camus who (like me) does not read French. For those who, understandably, have the time or inclination to read only one biography of Camus, I would instead recommend Elizabeth Hawes's "Camus, A Romance" (despite its idiosyncrasies, which I mention in my Amazon review of that work). Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

This book provides an interesting portrait of someone whom most would now qualify as one of the more interesting (if not most important) authors of the twentieth century. This book documents his early life (somewhat disappointingly for anyone who has read 'The First Man'-- Camus' own account) through his dallainces with careers and women to his litery triumphs.

This is a well-written and researched book, with the only negative from me that Camus comes out a lot less heroic and a lot more bitter and stereotypically hepcat and existentialist, which was a disappointment for I, who had raised him toward being a god....

A must read for anyone interested in Camus....

One hopes that the French edition, which is 400 hundred, not 100, pages longer, is considerably better, but I find that hard to believe. The writing is unacceptably choppy and awkward, with paragraphs springing from nowhere and sentences shifting from one grand topic to another without stopping. It's almost laughable. Chock full of details and totally lacking in style or spirit, this book will only be useful to those seeking a blow by blow chronology of Camus' life - and the chronology is uneven at best (many times Todd goes back several months without clear indication).

Poor writing wouldn't be a problem if there was at least a point of view, but Todd offers us none, preferring instead to recounting facts and quoting at length from Camus' letters. The fact that Camus was such a crystalline writer only makes this book seem like more of an insult.

I was hugely disappointed by this book. (...)

My feelings are mixed, possibly due to omissions in this version. While NOT "captivating," Todd's work is (mostly) solid and contains great detail; he even captures some of Camus's humor, often ignored.

Where this suffers: the inadequate framework for understanding Camus in the 50's -- when intellectual France was pro-Communism, and Camus stuck out his neck and denounced what Stalin/Communism was doing. This was radical in Paris. While Todd documents that Camus was trashed, he glosses over the backstory: leading the smear campaign were Camus's former "bonnes amies" -- intellectual heavyweights Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Todd hints at this, but portrays Sartre (p. 310) as not a Communist. That is a very dubious assertion.

Sartre and de Beauvoir were certainly LOUD cheerleaders--sponsored to travel to the Soviet Union and writing cheery reports. Camus called them on it: he was upset about the gulags and forced Sovietization of territories, but they maintained it was necessary for communism to take hold, which is where their breach began. This is really skirted over in this edition. Until 1956 (when Stalin/Moscow brutally crushed the revolt in Hungary, thousands literally crushed under the tanks) when Sartre was forced to condemn Moscow, he had been loudly pooh-poohing Camus's anti-Stalin stance; even afterwards, he was Marxist.

Todd, imho, does not capture how utterly devastated Camus was over this betrayal by his ex-friends Sartre and de Beauvoir, who also led the condemnation of Camus when he won the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature: Sartre so trashed the award, that when HE won the Nobel in 1964, he had to reject it (though rumor has it he asked if he could have the prize money anyway).

Camus, who was overly-sensitive and prone to obsession (especially re Sartre) retreated from Parisian society, felt persecuted, traveled lots and moved to Lourmarin in large part because of Sartre and de Beauvoir and their smear campaign (including de Beauvoir's novel the Mandarins): but you just don't get the full impact of that constant trashing from this book.

The last chapters in general read "thin" to me: while Todd devoted two pages to the January 28, 1959 opening of "The Possessed," he doesn't fully convey what a HUGE deal it was for Camus: for two years, ever since winning the Nobel (which for him was an albatross) he had been suffering writer's block and wallowing in self-doubt. This production -- which even received a glowing review from Time Magazine -- was Camus's first post-Nobel victory. It restored his confidence so that he could turn back to The First Man.

And in general, I'm not sure that Todd adequately shows what an international celebrity Camus had become, or why. Camus, a gifted fiction writer, dared to take a stand, even unpopular ones (though history has vindicated him), and he demanded that people question authority -- although sometimes his writing was obtuse, particularly in The Rebel (the tome for which he dearly paid). Even though the facts are presented, I'm not sure that Todd clearly shows how obsessed Camus was with death, or that (according to carnets) he played around with ideas of reincarnation or at least "Eternal Return."

This book, while talking about his numerous affairs, ignores Camus's mixed feelings about sex, which he sometimes condemns and nearly swears off of as an energy drain in his carnets. (Would he today be considered a sex addict?) And you don't really understand why he was such a successful lothario -- was it simply his good looks? I suspect there was more -- and while perhaps it goes outside of the realm of a biography, I wish this book provided more insight about why Camus was so devastating for women. (Was it the way he looked at them, did he give them funny nicknames, was he blessed/cursed with an intoxicating smell, was he amazing in bed?)

Nevertheless, one does walk away with a clearer understanding of what made the man, even though some of his main obsessions (to judge by his notebooks) are barely mentioned. While it feels "incomplete," this the finest biography I've yet read of Camus. Now to learn French and get the whole story.

Camus is not the easiest of writers to categorize. Both philosopher and literary figure, his world is fraught with too many pitfalls for the casual glance. On top of everything else, his early personal life was very hard, his father a fatality in the First World War when Camus was one, his mother illiterate, and he tubercular from high school. How then did this frightened child emerge to become the second youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize?
To chronicle this achievement requires manifold skills, which Olivier Todd has in abundance, and with which he succeeds. The only reason for not giving this book five stars is a personal predilection for giving five stars only to the most excellent. This is a good book, an exceptional work. Todd delves into existentialism with gusto, presenting that philosophy and Camus' version of it quite concisely. I think the only place where this book falters is in the psychological, the motive for Camus' writing. One can connect the dots, but sometimes I would have liked just a little bit assurance. Still, not to be missed for anyone who has any proclivity for this person, thought, or era.

If you ever wanted to know anything about Albert Camus, this is the book to read. An exceptional job of research and writing. I hated to see it end. Oliver Todd is an excellent writer and his book a joy to read.