Word: camus
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...almost tearful assertions of the author's worth. During their collaboration, in a moment of Beckett's despair for the fate of his efforts, Seaver blurts, "But Mr. Beckett. You're crazy! Don't you realize who you are? Why...you're a thousand times more important than...Albert Camus, for example!" We can chalk this up to youthful enthusiasm, but upon mature consideration Seaver begins his quasihagiographical introduction: "Samuel Beckett is, in my opinion, one of the two or three most important writers of the twentieth century." Isn't there enough of this on the flyleaf...
...hair or the heart. In his bestselling 1970 book Chance and Necessity, he argued that there is neither god nor grand design in the universe: "Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation". His critics found his philosophy chilling and pessimistic. But like his friend Albert Camus, he seemed to find a transcendent freedom in the lack of hope. "Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity," he wrote. "His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below...
...Albert Camus wrote that suicide is the essential moral question of the 20th century. Author Jessamyn West, 69, has spent a good deal of her life responding to the question...
This French-Arab attitude is partly a product of France's colonial policy of assimilation, and the repercussion of French and Algerian traditions and writing about "the Mediterranean genius." Camus once wrote, "North Africa is one of the few countries where East and West live together...the most essential element in the Mediterranean genius springs perhaps from this encounter unique in history and geography...the truth of a Mediterranean culture exists and manifests itself on every point...
...Camus's assumption that "East and West live together" in North Africa is extremely dubious, but his concept of "a Mediterranean culture" is still widely accepted by many Algerians. It is difficult to say whether the survival of this attitude is due to the survival of a colonial mentality or to incipient "embourgeoisiement" which patterns itself after its Western and particularly French counterpart. However, it is certain that the attitude prevails. It manifests itself in countless "Frenchisms"--styles of talking, gestures, clothing and writing. France still haunts Algeria, and chances are she will continue...