Camus
Chapter One
camus's life
One of Camus's most fascinating protagonists, Jean-Baptiste
Clamence, the self-styled "judge-penitent" of The Fall, proclaims
that "charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having
asked any clear question" (F, p. 56). Camus himself possessed such charm.
A handsome man, who might be described as a better-looking version of
Humphrey Bogart, Camus looked and lived the part of "the existentialist,"
and in many respects he was the very embodiment of the cultural
reputation that the intellectual came to have in France following World
War II. Unlike most great thinkers, whose personal lives can be easily
relegated to a long (or, perhaps, not so long) footnote, Camus lived a
fascinating, complicated, and, ultimately, conflicted life. As with all
highly accomplished human beings, Camus not only had an interesting
mixture of qualities, but the strengths and weaknesses that constituted
these qualities were often intertwined. Rightly depicted shortly after his
death as "the present heir of that long line of French moralists whose
works perhaps constitute what is most original in Fr ... read full excerpt from Camus ebook
