by Olivier Todd
Todd shows us a Camus who struggled all his life with irreconcilable conflicts—between his loyalty to family and his passionate nature, between the call to political action and the integrity to his art, between his support of the native Algerians and his identification with the forgotten people, the poor whites. A very private man, Camus could be charming and prickly, sincere and theatrical, genuinely humble, yet full of great ambition.
Todd paints a vivid picture of the time and place that shaped Camus—his impoverished childhood in the Algerian city of Belcourt, the sea and the sun and the hot sands that he so loved (he would always feel an exile elsewhere), and the educational system that nurtured him. We see the forces that lured him into communism, and his attraction to the theater and to journalism as outlets for his creativity.
The Paris that Camus was inevitably drawn to is one that Todd knows intimately, and he brings alive the war years, the underground activities that Camus was caught up in during the Occupation and the bitter postwar period, as well as the intrigues of the French literati who embraced Camus after his first novel, L'Etranger, was published. Todd is also keenly attuned to the French intellectual climate, and as he takes Camus's measure as a successful novelist, journalist, playwright and director, literary editor, philosopher, he also reveals the temperament in the writer that increasingly isolated him and crippled his reputation in the years before his death and for a long time after. He shows us the solitary man behind the mask—debilitated by continuing bouts of tuberculosis, constantly drawn to irresistible women, and deeply troubled by his political conflicts with the reigning French intellectuals, particularly by the vitriol of his former friend Sartre over the Algerian conflict.
Filled with sharp observations and sparkling with telling details, here is a wonderfully human portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning writer, who died at the age of forty-six and who remains one of the most influential literary figures of our time.
Todd shows us a Camus who struggled all his life with irreconcilable conflicts—between his loyalty to family and his passionate nature, between the call to political action and the integrity to his art, between his support of the native Algerians and his identification with the forgotten people, the poor whites. A very private man, Camus could be charming and prickly, sincere and theatrical, genuinely humble, yet full of great ambition.
Todd paints a vivid picture of the time and place that shaped Camus—his impoverished childhood in the Algerian city of Belcourt, the sea and the sun and the hot sands that he so loved (he would always feel an exile elsewhere), and the educational system that nurtured him. We see the forces that lured him into communism, and his attraction to the theater and to journalism as outlets for his creativity.
The Paris that Camus was inevitably drawn to is one that Todd knows intimately, and he brings alive the war years, the underground activities that Camus was caught up in during the Occupation and the bitter postwar period, as well as the intrigues of the French literati who embraced Camus after his first novel, L'Etranger, was published. Todd is also keenly attuned to the French intellectual climate, and as he takes Camus's measure as a successful novelist, journalist, playwright and director, literary editor, philosopher, he also reveals the temperament in the writer that increasingly isolated him and crippled his reputation in the years before his death and for a long time after. He shows us the solitary man behind the mask—debilitated by continuing bouts of tuberculosis, constantly drawn to irresistible women, and deeply troubled by his political conflicts with the reigning French intellectuals, particularly by the vitriol of his former friend Sartre over the Algerian conflict.
Filled with sharp observations and sparkling with telling details, here is a wonderfully human portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning writer, who died at the age of forty-six and who remains one of the most influential literary figures of our time.
Reviews-
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November 3, 1997
"There is only one serious philosophical problem, which is suicide," wrote French novelist, essayist and dramatist Albert Camus in 1940. He was in Nazi-occupied Paris, where he lived in a "hideous and distressing world." But newly married to a loyal woman to whom he would be repeatedly unfaithful, he boarded a ship with her at Marseilles to honeymoon in his native Algeria. As for suicide, he had been inviting death for years, stresses French freelance journalist Todd, encouraging his chronic tuberculosis with tobacco and drink and a lifestyle that exacerbated his symptoms. Although Camus often questions in his writings whether existence was worthwhile in an absurd world, he made the most of his opportunities. He had a harmless role in the WWII French Resistance, putting out an underground newspaper, Combat, while circulating his manuscripts and involving himself in Parisian theater. With the departure of the Germans, he began publishing his plays and stories. Despite a series of affairs, divorce and a second marriage, Camus found time to write philosophical works, plays and three major novels, The Stranger, The Plague and The Fall. The Nobel Prize was awarded to him in 1957 when he was still a month short of 44, the youngest writer so honored since Kipling. "My life," he wrote in 1941, "is based on the idea that I have something to say and that I will be freed from everything when I have said it." A little more than two years after the Nobel honors confirmed that he had indeed said it, Camus was killed in an automobile crash. Todd's exhaustive biography, which aims--and succeeds--in presenting "the man" and not just the writer, has been shortened for its English translation, which refers readers to the French edition for notes, sources and bibliography. Photos. -
August 1, 1997
A best seller throughout Europe; from an award-winning journalist. -
Starred review from November 1, 1997
Camus often told friends, Todd reveals, that "nothing was more scandalous than the death of a child, and nothing more absurd than to die in a car accident." And, prophetic as such comments can become, Camus, one of the chief proponents (with Beckett and Ionesco) of the philosophy of the absurd, died in such an accident. He was 46 and only two years before had won the Nobel Prize. Todd's excellent analysis of the writer's life exemplifies the man for whom thought and action were one. Readers familiar with Camus' work will find many occasions to plunge back into it, for Todd evokes the writer's very language just recording his concerns: Camus' love for "sunny, sensual places" prompts a longing to be reading "Summers in Algiers," or the discussions of absurdity are so strong that one recalls the petty predicament of Meursault in "The Stranger" or the high seriousness of "The Myth of Sisyphus." Todd ends up with a well-drawn picture of Camus the tortured artist, the moralistic intellectual under fire by Sartre and that crowd, the avid lover of women. The book is a best-seller in France. It is, too, a finely executed biography of a world-class writer, one that readers and thinkers will ponder and enjoy. ((Reviewed November 1, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.) -
November 15, 1997
There are very few biographies as meticulously researched as this one by journalist and author Todd (Cruel April, LJ 8/90). In some cases, the research leads to stretches of very tedious reading, but the book's smooth narrative flow mostly prevents that and makes for a rich description of Camus's life in colonial Algiers, wartime Paris, and his relationship with his immediate family, wives, and lovers. Todd's use of personal correspondence, interviews with family members, and previously unused public records reveals a complex man who was a philosopher, novelist, literary editor, and journalist slowly dying of tuberculosis and at odds with fellow French intellectuals over his political beliefs. Set against the historical background of French North Africa, Occupied France, and the postwar Paris literary scene, Camus vividly comes to life almost 40 years after his tragic death in an automobile accident. Recommended for specific collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/97.]--David Lee Poremba, Detroit P.L.
