Albert Camus's the Stranger (Barron's Book Notes) (Paperback)

by Lewis Warsh (Author) "Shortly before his seventeenth birthday, the author of The Stranger suffered a severe attack of tuberculosis..." (more)
Key Phrases: The Stranger, New York, Albert Camus (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A guide to reading "The Stranger" with a critical and appreciative mind encouraging analysis of plot, style, form, and structure. Also includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.

About the Author
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. He is the author of 30 books, including Shelley's Mythmaking (1959), The Visionary Company (1961), Blake's Apocalypse (1963), Yeats (1970), A Map of Misreading (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Agon: Toward a Theory of Revisionism (1982), The American Religion (1992), The Western Canon (1994), and Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996). The Anxiety of Influence (1973) sets forth Professor Bloom's provocative theory of the literary relationships between the great writers and their predecessors. His most recent books include Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), a 1998 National Book Award finalist, How to Read and Why (2000), Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2002), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (2003), Where Shall Wisdom be Found (2004), and Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005). In 1999, Professor Bloom received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism. He has also received the International Prize of Catalonia, the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico, and the Hans Christian Andersen Bicentennial Prize of Denmark. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 110 pages
• Publisher: Barron's Educational Series (April 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812035437
• ISBN-13: 978-0812035438
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #758,280 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Condemned for being honest, December 6, 1999

By	C. Colt "It Just Doesn't Matter" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The darkness and simplicity of this wonderful book are frequently misunderstood. Many readers find Merseault cold and emotionless, but this is not the case. Merseault displays emotion in his argument with the prison priest, and (big surprise) his feelings toward his mother.

Although he is put on trial for killing an Arab, Mersault is actually condemned for failing to grieve for his mother in public. Have any of you been to the funeral of an elderly realative? Sometimes, despite the emotions you feel for that person, the experience of the funeral is flat, meaningless and logical. All of the love came before the event and will come again many times later. But somehow a funeral leaves one dry and plain. Mersault experienced his mother's death for what it was: a dry and uncomfortable event. He did not put on a show for the people involved with the funeral or those who knew the deceased. His actions were plain and honest.

But Merseault does have feelings for his mother. When he learns much later that she had a lover in the elderly home she occupied he feels glad for her. That moment of empathy if an extrordinary act of comppassion. It is also a private one.

"The Stranger" reveals many simple truths about the kind of people we are and it raises questions about the inegrity behind our thoughts and actions. It is a wonderful book whose value is easily overlooked by people who only put stock in a verbose work.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite book of all time, March 28, 1999

By A Customer

A book about the "Absurd" hero... A man who can only enjoy the moment, with no thought of the future or the past, who does only what feels good at the moment... who is not ruled by the monotonous machinery of the world, who refuses to set routines... and yet becomes entangled in the impersonal machinery of society.

By the way, this book is about as un-autobiographical as is possible for a book to be. Yes, Camus grew up in Algiers and loved to swim, but he was primarily a thinker; he was utterly incapable of turning off his mind and thinking everything through. He philosophy was completely opposed to the Meursault's view of life. Yet, like me, he found in Meursault a certain honesty, of living consistently, without faking emotions and conventions. But it was ultimately against Meursault's attitude that Camus fought in his books and essays.

It is a philosophical novel, and no doubt people will be turned off by anything that challenges them, but definitely give this book a chance. It has more to say than all but a handful of books five times the length of this one. I read it almost ten years ago for school, and have read it a half dozen times since, as well as every other novel Camus wrote... those for my own enjoyment. Put aside that King book for a week and read one of the greatest books ever written.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book that speaks to your secret self...., October 15, 2000

By	"dgillz" (Sussex, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews

"The Stranger" is a wonderful little book, filled with deceptively simple language and actions. It's understated, very subtle, and except for the outright atheist vs. church stuff at the end, you've really got to work for it. You can pick it up, read it in a night, put it down, and refuse to be affected...but if you listen, the meaning is in there, deep and dark, not didactic, more like a whisper.

The apparent indifference Mersault carries strikes one as inhuman: shrugging off his mother's death, swearing off the church, agreeing to marry in a heartbeat, and, most poignantly, accepting his fate - a death sentence. But the things Mersault is trying to say through the gaps between what's actually on the page is simple: it's all arbitrary, we're fools on a ball spinning around a star, and contentment is the simplest thing to feel amidst chaos.

Although the murder and the trial, and definitely the funeral, are fantastic moral-bending existentialist scenes, what sticks with you in the dark of night, is as simple as the prose and also as endlessly complex: we're here, we'll never understand each other, we see what's most convenient to see, and we all die in the end anyway, whether or not our tenure here can be marked as "good" or "bad" or "moral". Not the most uplifting read in the world, but literature is a cruel mistress sometimes.