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Sad to still feel so vulnerable. In 25 years I’ll be 57. 25 years to create a body of work and to find what I’m looking for. After that old age and death.
--Albert Camus American Journals (Camus died at age 46 in a car wreck).

Certain criteria make the rereading of a book an exploratory and self-fulfilling exercise. The book should be short enough to not bog a reader down. It helps if the book is in a foreign language, allowing the reader to tread water with reading knowledge of a language that is usually under-utilized in day-to-day interactions. Finally, the book needs to affect a reader and leave vastly different impressions in different stages of the reader’s life. Albert Camus�� ����ֳٰ����Բ���� fulfills all these criteria. It is like a Rorschach test that reveals the state of my soul. Thus, it is a book that never fails to surprise and enlighten, even now , a month before my 57nth birthday with-- according to a youthful Camus-- nothing to look forward to but “old age and death.��

Written in very common French in the simple past tense, the book is a shipping clerk’s first-person narrative. The clerk, Meursault (Salt of the Sea), commits a murder and feels judged by society. Such is the simplicity and brevity of Camus�� French that a motivated second- or third-year language student should be able to wade through this work, without the use of an English translation, the most famous of which is the Stuart Gilbert’s (with the iconic 70’s paperback cover that gets a cameo in the highly disconcerting film, Jacob’s Ladder).

Gilbert, a member of the James Joyce coterie, made significant alterations to the tone of the novel, giving Meursault a snide, dismissive tone that is completely absent in the original French. This abominable addition through alteration gained ����ֳٰ����Բ���� an era’s worth of fans, like the eminent blowhard Charles Bukowski, who identified with the glib and exceedingly “cool�� narrator who is hyper aware of societal hypocrisies and who “doesn’t like the police.�� Gilbert also elevates the language, translating the final word in the novel as “execration�� rather than “hatred�� (original French is “haine��). Translators cannot even agree on the seemingly straightforward title. Gilbert opts for The Stranger while later British translation use The Outsider. I side with the British here in that “outsider�� conveys more of a sense of alienation within one’s given society. In any case, Camus�� language is remarkably straightforward and can be enjoyed by any French language student as a review primer, especially since the book is novella length and easily broken up into easily distinguishable chapters and two parts.

����ֳٰ����Բ���� has been misunderstood—largely due to the translations—by generations of readers around the world. However, a lot of this misinterpretation is due to the age of the reader when the book is first broached, since it was often assigned in school and is among the early must-read works in many a budding budding writer’s awareness. Since it is deceptively easy to read and packs an emotional jolt where people think they instinctively “get it,�� very few people revisit the novel as fully mature adults. Hence the problem.

Younger readers are inevitably impressed by Meursault’s cool demeanor and are outraged by his predicament. He is seemingly judged during his trial for not being outwardly affected by his mother’s death and his comportment while in mourning rather than for the senseless murder he commits. Of course, Meursault masterfully narrates his plight with an airtight logic that blames situational factors for his crime, leaving the reader sympathetic to the protagonist and outraged at, supposedly, unreasonable societal norms. In ����ֳٰ����Բ����, society is on trial, not Meursault.

Lost in the boastful yet understated narration, especially for non-French readers, is the different class and race of Meursault compared to his unnamed victim. Like Camus himself, Meursault is a Pied-Noir, a member of French society born in colonial Algeria. Thus, although both Camus and his creation are, at best, lower middle-class, they are infinitely superior to the native Algerians, Moors and Arabs, who remain nameless in ����ֳٰ����Բ����. The Pied-Noirs are so superior to the natives that early critics pointed out that one would never face the death penalty for killing a native.* Early critics saw the novel as a veiled statement on occupation—Camus wrote it while France was occupied by the Nazis. While this point is obvious, critics also misclassified the book as “Existentialist”—a term Camus abhorred-- or “Absurdist”—which is a misnomer at best. If anything, Meursault is more clueless, a self-centered nihilist. Suffice to say, that, if we read this novel from a post-colonial perspective, we see a privileged occupier who commits a needless murder. The only “absurd�� aspect of the entire scenario is the Colonial French actually condemning a French citizen to death for killing a mere Arab. The point was brought home with resounding emphasis in Kamel Daoud’s eloquent 2013 rebuttal, Meursault, Contre-Enquête, where the Arab’s family is finally given a voice.

As a ����ֳٰ����Բ���� reader gains some years, he or she presumably becomes aware of contemporary analyses of the novel. And, perhaps, along with the experience, the reader may have lost a mother; mine passed suddenly in 1997, greatly affecting later reads of ����ֳٰ����Բ����. Having experienced the loss of a parent, a reader might well feel a bit of discomfort at Meursault’s callous behavior and narration. The novels famous opening sentence, “Aujourd’hui Maman est Mort�� (Mother died today) takes on a whole other significance for a reader who has lost a parent, particularly if they think of their mental state the moment or day the loss occurred. Having this experience makes it much harder for a reader to buy into Meursault’s logic and emotionless prose. They rub wrong.

In at least three instances in Part I, Meursault utters the phrase, �� Ce n’est pas de ma faute.�� (pg. 30 and 32). “That isn’t my fault.�� Methinks Meursault doth protest too much. Along with age comes a reasonable amount of accountability. So much of Meursault’s predicament is indeed “his fault.�� He chose to enter a friendship with his neighbor, Raymond Sintès, a rumored pimp, and at the very least, a disreputable person. He even helped him write a letter so that Sintès might teach his Moor mistress a lesson: Fuck her and, before finishing, pull out, spit in her face, beat her a bit and then kick her out of his apartment (of course Camus�� narration of Sintès�� language understates these facts, but this is a sound interpreted translation). Really, who helps a casual acquaintance with a sordid task like this? Without even weighing personal responsibility? Is this the literary equivalent of “Bro’s before ‘Ho’s��? Meursault, seemingly without a significant peer group of his own, adds to this dubious behavior by bearing false witness against the Moorish girlfriend at the local police station. And, Meursault accepts Sintès�� offers of friendship which lead to a beach brawl and, then culminates with him shooting an Arab for no reason other than the glare of the sun—oppressive and omnipresent in almost every page in Part I of the novel. This startling act cuts short the protagonist’s freedom.

Cut to Part II of ����ֳٰ����Բ���� where Camus is in prison and on trial as a bunch of scolds and societal figures (priests and advocates) accuse him of being some sort of monster for not complying with societal and religious norms. As Meursault is deprived of his casual girlfriend’s body and the satisfaction of nicotine he becomes a complainer, bemoaning the unfairness of society in judging him ostensibly for needlessly killing another human being (and feeling no remorse), but—as the trial reveals—actually for not mourning his mother and seducing a former office acquaintance, his girlfriend, shortly thereafter.

Read in retrospect, as a seasoned adult accountable to society and its whims rather than as a righteous twentysomething, Meursault comes across as a clueless sniveler. He whines about not being able to get laid in prison and how he is deprived of cigarettes. To sarcastically quote another timeless work in first-person narration, “The Horror! The Horror!�� Meursault’s poorly concocted defense, at least as far as the reader is concerned, is that he shot the Arab because of the glint in his eyes of the sun from a knife held by the Arab (every bit as absurd sounding in this sentence construction as the defense is feeble). Nothing is ever Mersault’s “fault.�� He honestly feels that the world should not hold him accountable.

Felons in the United States have a common mantra, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.�� About two decades ago, I passed along an English edition of the book to a sailor acquaintance who had been to prison rather than college. He told me that he didn’t “buy for a second�� Meursault’s excuses. In this case, my friend’s street smarts serve as a better filter for criticism than my graduate school literary peers' exalted ability to do a close reading and critique of prose technique. They stand in awe at Meursault’s flawless narrative of unaccountability and disdain. Just stand before a judge a try to claim that you killed because the sun was in your eyes! See how far you get.

While my opinions on Meursault have changed as well as my feelings towards a society that condemned him, my reverence for ����ֳٰ����Բ���� as an outsider’s manifesto remains intact. Sure, pumping some guy full of five shots of lead for no reason may well lead to significant life diminishment! The true tragedy here is that Meursault never comprehends the need for his punishment, up to and including capital punishment. Meursault weaves a nice tale of societal persecution, but seen through the lens of post-Colonialism and basic human decency, one shouldn’t align oneself with a disreputable pimp and borderline acquaintance to help abuse his female friend who is presented as nothing more than chattel. And one certainly ought not just pick up a revolver and empty in a member of the occupied class. . .and then maintain innocence due to the stifling heat and glaring sun. If one does, poorly framed and concocted complaints about an absurd judgmental status quo will ultimately fall on deaf ears.

Having just reread this novella yet again, under the backdrop of humans behaving badly and fracturing societal norms needed for peace, I feel nothing but revulsion for Meursault and his cold logic. Bravo to Albert Camus for making me understand the Folly of my younger self as I am just short of the age where a young Camus condemns me to Old Age and Death.

*After reading a draft of this essay, my girlfriend posited that the title, ����ֳٰ����Բ������, could actually be a veiled reference to the murdered, nameless Arab and not to Meursault, an insanely perspicacious criticism that I’ve never heard broached before.