A stupid little life...
I'm convinced there is some sort of cosmic connection between my family and Albert Camus. He was born on my brother's birthday, and he died on my birthday. (Doesn't he appear to be overwhelmingly dignified?)I became closely acquainted with the man during a "Literature & Existentialism" class I took last spring. Turns out, the class didn't really count for anything credit-wise, but it was pretty fricking cool.
If you haven't read "The Guest" or The Stranger, check them out. Although I'm sure a lot of you might have run across them in a high school English class or a college course... Camus also developed The Myth of Sisyphus, based on Greek mythology, to support his philosophy of the absurd. Sisyphus was a man sentenced by the gods to spend his life pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to have the boulder roll back down as soon as he was finished. And so he would begin again...the absurd man, a mechanical life.
If you want to read my "Literature & Existentialism" term paper on Camus' philosophy of existentialism/absurdism as present in the film American Beauty (it also draws major parallels between the main character Lester Burnham of American Beauty and the main character Monseiur Meursault of The Stranger), I'll e-mail it to you. That was a fun one. I'm sure you're intrigued.
Mr. Camus, what does it all mean?
posted by quank at 11:06 PM
5 Comments:
Sounds good, I'd like to read it... And sound like a pretty rad class, comparing French Lit to American Cinema...
If you (or others) want to read a Law Review article about the legal implications of the purchase of a Creed concert ticket, I can provide you with that...
we didn't concentrate so much on film in the class; that was just what i chose as my term paper (we could choose anything on God's green earth).
however, we went back and forth between the philosophy and literature of existentialism and ended up studying/reading some pretty kick ass stuff. i would most likely recommend all of the literature that is listed below:
philosophers:
camus
sartre
kierkegaard
nietzsche
gabriel marcel
barrett
de beauvoir
literature:
1. "the guest," the stranger - camus
2. no exit - sartre
3. the trial - kafka
4. under the net - iris murdoch
5. a doll's house - ibsen
6. death of a salesman - miller
7. "looking for some dignity" and "love" - clarice lispector
8. notes from underground and the grand inquisitor - dostoevsky
9. the death of ivan illych - tolstoy
sorry if i'm getting too english-teachery on you, but if you want to borrow any of the above, or anything else, just let me know.
I laughed out loud when I read the words "The Stranger." I immediately thought of Dave Chappelle's Lil' Jon skit.
Have you read Sartre's "Nausea?"
To a certian extent, this book describes how I feel about much of the world around me...
i haven't read "nausea," but i have read a lot of "being and nothingness." that hurt my head.
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