Ladies and Gentlemen, pinch hitting for Faulkner, Albert Camus.

Yes, I was defeated by Faulkner, although only momentarily. I can’t continue reading his book right now, it’s too difficult and I’m in the midst of filing the first quarterly report with the SEC. Too much to handle.


I went to the bookstore the other day thinking I would get some Tagore, Solojov or someone else to help me get out of the Faulkner rut. They didn’t have most of the Laureates, Can you believe that? The best writers in the world and they don’t have their books, but ask for Palin’s, the unauthorized biography of Oprah or Obama’s audacity of… whatever, and they have them by the scores. Pathetic.

Anyway, they had Camus, and even though I’ve read “L’etranger” (in Spanish) years ago and found it an extraordinarily odd book –wonderfully written, masterful in what it conveys- that left me with a physical feeling similar to what you get when you see a dead animal on the side of the road, a mix of disgust and curiosity, I bought Camus’ book, as he was the first laureate that they actually had.

Well, it turns out that the book has three of his novels and some essays. I am now reading the first one, called “The Plague”, and it’s exactly about that, a plague that strikes the French town of Oran. It starts by killing all the rats and then it transfers to people. I’m right now in the middle of the worst of the plague, almost two hundred died just yesterday, but the most interesting thing is that the different characters' reactions run the whole spectrum from despair to resignation and everything in between.

His characters don’t really have any faith in God, the authorities, or even plain simple destiny. They are afraid to die –most of them- yet they refuse to let the plague really alter the way they live. It’s as if they had concluded that so long as they don’t acknowledge it, the plague doesn’t really exist. Sounds familiar? I think we do that all the time.

I haven’t gotten to the part where Camus makes his attack on the institutions of modern society, as all existentialists do. I know he will, he always does, but for now, I’m enjoying the read and eager to find out if… Well, I can’t give it away. You might want to read it.