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| The Outsider (Penguin Modern Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Albert Camus
Creator: Joseph Laredo
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £3.57
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New (28) from £3.58
Avg. Customer Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 1028
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.4
ISBN: 0141182504
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780141182506
ASIN: 0141182504
Publication Date: February 24, 2000
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 `A familiar journey under a summer sky could as easily end in prison as in innocent sleep.' June 21, 2007
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
Camus wrote this short, sharp, perfect work out of his philosophical writing of the same year, The Myth of Sisyphus. Reading them together is the best way of understanding both Camus' thought and Meursault (The Outsider's protagonist), as Meursault exemplifies and develops many threads from the earlier essay.
Camus writes The Outsider in terse sentences, moving the story along on bare facts at times; "I caught the two o'clock bus. It was very hot. I ate at Celeste's restaurant, as usual. They all felt very sorry for me, and Celeste said, `There's no-one like a mother.'" And although delivered in first person, Meursault rarely indulges us in accounts of his feelings or reflections. Here though, a reading of the Sisyphus helps:
"This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers."
Camus was adamant we should not delude ourselves about our lives, or, and what amounted to worse, wish for another life (whether in the world or with a God). He called on us to regard "the implacable grandeur of this life"; through the dirty Christ of Meursault (in Camus' words, "the only Christ we deserve") and the elegiac beauty he manages so succinctly to evoke of Algiers, he draws out that grandeur.
Meursault can seem a difficult figure, but whatever you think of his morals (if he has any, I doubt it) or his attitude, it cannot be denied that he remains true to himself. And this "ridiculous fidelity" is what makes Meursault so admirable in the face of the pretence and premeditation of the world around him. He will not lie, he will not play the game, and for that, society (ie, the state) rejects him out of hand, inexorably. As Camus expounds in the Sisyphus, whatever cannot be understood requires thought, but to think is to be undermined, and that is something which the state, the power, and the people who base their identity upon its privileged position can never allow.
A brilliant book. Go read it many times.
 A Killing On The Beach December 21, 2006
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Purportedly written to examine what might become of a man if he never told a lie, it is no fabrication to say that Camus's short existentialist novel has stood the test of time.
Meursault is untroubled by his mother's death, unimpressed by the advances of a pretty girl, and stone cold to the idea of career advancement. When he remorselessly pulls the trigger he has finally broken every law, written or unspoken, that society holds. As the ultimate outsider he must face his sentence alone.
Camus's curt style (possibly aided by the translation) perfectly captures his anti-hero's hard, indifferent stance to the world.
excellent December 18, 2006
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a superb translation. L'etranger is one of my all time favorites and this really does it justice.
Outside the Inside December 15, 2006
3 out of 16 found this review helpful
My gnomic title is much to ponder regarding this existential book. Existential means to do with existing and this book is to do with the existence of the lead character who is basically an outsider. Read it and think.
Great literature, contentious philosophy December 13, 2006
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
The Outsider's great achievement is that it presents a narrative in which all conventional rationality is stripped away - do that to a Tolstoy novel and you would be left with nothing. Classic novels (as we usually think of them) present a range of characters with transparent, reasoned explanations for their actions. Yes, characters have "emotions", but such emotions are weighed up and acted upon in a rational way. With The Outsider, Camus rejects all of this to explore a new branch of literature. He argues: when you ignore the charade of "rationality," subjective, non-rational motives remain as powerful forces. Meursault's story is driven solely by these forces.
Camus is challenging us: Look, here's a story that makes sense despite the absence of all the factors that motivate characters in classic novels. The things people really think cannot all be put into neat, rationalised paragraphs, bounded by quotation marks, as in a Tolstoy novel. Camus asks us: "Is this you?" The story pushes at the boundaries of plausibility so as to challenge us to examine ourselves.
The Outsider asks big questions but does not give any reasonable, normative answers. It's not in any sense a philosophical text or an introduction to philosophy. Though I'm sure many readers are inspired enough to go and speed-read Nietzsche, this probably won't yield a very big net increase in your understanding of the world. Philosophy is a scary subject and most people never realise that it is based, above all else, on common sense. A book that sometimes leads readers to the conclusion that "therefore murder is okay" defies common sense (it defies mine anyway) and so, no matter how cool it is, it should be thought of as dubious.
Take it as a novel, a bold experiment and a triumph. It's a masterpiece, but that doesn't mean you have to completely buy into Camus's absurdism.
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