ColumnRead a book. Sustain your mind.

I’m torn, often and about many things, including protests in the street. Make no mistake; I do support the movement(s) and those souls who hit the pavement (hello, Occupy) to make a newer and better world. I understand and have seen the power of dissent and today, with the issue of moving forward or backward once again looming large, I know I should be out there.

Yet it’s not unreasonable to ask, “Does it matter?” The world is an absurd place of cruel whims and monstrous scope, and finally, as the great humorist George Carlin once observed, “the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.” Given that the deck is by definition stacked against us (a delightful afterlife aside, if you wish), what can one really do and why, in fact, should we do anything at all? Go ahead and cue the snarky guffaws, but here’s the question: To be or not to be? It’s a good one, right?

Among other notables, Albert Camus (1913-1960) gave the query quite a go. In his Nobel Prize winning novels (along with his numerous short stories, plays and essays), the great (and oh so cool) French writer-philosopher examined authenticity and rebellion in the face of the power, the potential of the individual in an absurd and painful world, and the choices we all face about how (and if) to play the hands we’re so arbitrarily dealt. Good stuff. Serious stuff. Stuff that we would do well to revisit every once in a while as we watch the news and try to decide, “What is to be done.”

What’s special about Camus’ timeless stories is that they’re unafraid. Unafraid not only to present and confess our flaws in the context of life’s Sisyphean nature (his characters tend to be human, as opposed to traditionally heroic; some kind, some indifferent, some truly awful), but also unafraid to have us somehow march bravely on, albeit into a relentless wind of frigid and life-numbing “abstractions” (to Camus, generalizations rob the world of its humanity and nuance, and distort reality on the ground).

The three novels published during his lifetime (tragically cut short by a car accident) were The Stranger, The Plague and The Fall. Staples today in both literature and philosophy departments around the world, each has its own angle, coming at the Big Question(s) as different thought experiments staffed by particular personality types. The Stranger is the story of Meursault, an honest yet indifferent and unemotional man who finds himself accused of murder. The Plague tells us of Doctor Bernard Rieux’s work and life in Oran, a city decimated by death and cut off from the outside world. Finally, The Fall is the confession of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a well-respected citizen whose unflinching self-reflection leads to his own demise. (More on these titles below.)

The novels could hardly be called a triptych (though on a recent read I did notice a reference in The Plague to events in The Stranger), but together they circle around a single maypole of life’s hardest facts – events are often beyond our control, and absurdity, pain and even horror are part of the human experience – and beg the question of how to behave in light of such truths. The challenges of empathy, compassion and, ultimately, action are not easily met, of course, and it is in the stutter step between thought and deed that Camus finds his – indeed, our – drama. It’s a drama I recalled when I watched Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen on television as he lay bleeding in Oakland last October, a victim of rubber bullets unleashed by police during an Occupy rally.

Today, the Left and the Right do battle to the degree where progress (or even ideology) no longer matters as much as winning. Science deniers are at war with environmentalists as the ice caps continue to melt. Totalitarianism, racism, sexism, class warfare—all continue to draw our blood just as they did in Camus’ day and throughout history before him. And worse still, all of these events are simply absorbed (if not partly orchestrated) by a corporate class so dominant that we don’t even know what the light of day might look like anymore. I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but just as Camus’ characters were challenged, the question continues to be begged: Beyond even what to do—why do anything at all?

Camus’ fiction offers us two essential lenses through which to view the problem. First, the stories somehow stir up a compassion for ourselves and our existential dilemma that has us so torn about taking action given Carlin’s irritated dog observation. (Sorry, but you knew the “ism” was coming. For the record, Camus denied being that particular “ist.”) It’s not easy to jump into action every time your head tells you to, as life is not, it turns out, abstract. (Indeed, Camus himself entered a self-imposed intellectual exile during the last years of his life when he could not bring himself to side with the anti-colonialists in his native Algeria. His mother still lived there, he explained.)

Second, and most important, Camus refused to accept the question in terms of party or politics (Camus famously broke from his friend Jean-Paul Sartre when he took issue with the Communist Party’s approach to world changing), or “winning” (a fool’s quest) or even some objective good versus evil (Camus was an atheist). Rather, he dares you to act from your best lights, for no reason that can be known aside from what’s between you and you. The answer, he wants us to consider, is to be. For its own sake.

(Re)read Camus when you can. His novels are accessible and eloquent masterpieces, presenting big ideas and brimming with allegory. And here’s the good part – they’re totally entertaining. Riveting, even. And they’re guaranteed to get you asking the Big Question.

The Stranger (1942)

The story of Meursault, a French Algerian who tells of the events in his life with an emotionless indifference to, among other notable happenings, the death of his mother, The Stranger was Camus’ first novel. The main character’s mater-of-fact narration and tone present a man functioning only with the most coldly perceived understanding of what’s going on around him. Almost completely void of feeling, his detachment leaves him an outsider, or stranger, in his community, at once free from societal rules and yet helpless as a bobbing cork, as the storyline washes him this way and that. The novel pivots around his seemingly inexcusable murder of a local man and his inability to process responsibility or defend himself against those seeking to punish him for his actions. An exploration of free will and responsibility, The Stranger is spare and quiet, allowing fundamental philosophical ideas to appear in high relief while at the same time revealing Camus’ great storytelling capabilities.

The Plague (1947)

The Algerian coastal city of Oran is occupied (as wartime France is by Nazi Germany) by bubonic plague in this tale of human resilience in the face of an obscene and powerful enemy. Under this basic yet wildly intense premise, the city becomes Camus’ laboratory for an exploration of human behavior in the framework of life as possessed by random and cruel forces, requiring resistance in any possible form. The story revolves around Dr. Bernard Rieux, who helps lead the fight against the plague for no reason other than it’s his job to reduce human suffering. As abstract forces ranging from bureaucracy to religion saddle others around him, Rieux surfaces as driven by his own personal compact, unencumbered in his efforts to do the next right thing. A rich and gripping read, many consider The Plague to be Camus’ greatest masterwork.

The Fall (1956)

Camus’ last novel to be published during his lifetime (two others were published after his death), The Fall is the confession of self-appointed “judge-penitent” Jean-Baptiste Clamence. He tells his story to a stranger in a bar in post-war Amsterdam, beginning with his background as a successful and honorable defense lawyer (working on behalf of widows and orphans) in Paris. Through a series of random events, Clamence is exposed to his own hypocrisy and thus initiates what becomes a purposeful self-undoing as he attempts to bring his world into alignment with his own deep and human flaws. The once-great man pulls at the string of his inner failings to surely unravel his world and take charge of his own expulsion from his false Eden. As we listen in astonishment, we are confronted with the price of hubris and challenged by the weight of personal responsibility in a dark world where innocence is lost and rules are nonexistent.

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly column, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

InPrint: 10 Novels that Make You Want to Play Outside

InPrint: Gatsby, Paradise and the 1% – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pre-Occupation

InPrint: Not for Kids Only – 10 Young Adult Novels You Need to Read

InPrint: On the Road, Again – Revisiting Jack Kerouac

Top image: Mitmensch0812

The post InPRINT: Albert Camus and the Biggest Question of All appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnRead a book. Occupy your mind.

What is the endgame of the American Dream? If our cherished national narrative is indeed one of rags to riches, aspirations to the realization of prosperity, then what lies at the end of the rainbow if not a pot of pure gold? There are other performance metrics, to be sure, but it’s no secret that in the land of the free, we by and large define victory in terms of fame and fortune. Yet as winners’ dreams are realized, and the rich continue to get richer, there is clearly trouble in paradise.

As having vs. having less (and less) has once again fallen into extremely high relief, a small percentage of 99 percent have ”occupied” Wall Street, demanding the wealth be spread, the crimes be prosecuted and “the system” changed. Many in thought and some in deed have put what few eggs they have left in the movement’s basket, or at least in the enough! concept it represents. But American culture on the ground remains what it is. Turn on the television, surf the “news,” even read a bestseller, and ask yourself this: How do the rich occupy us? Why do we stare at them so? What part of our dreams have they already bought and paid for (along with an endless supply of our bows and curtseys and get-out-of-jail-free cards)?

Sociological and psychological data points notwithstanding, you would be hard-pressed to find a source that could offer more insight into the codependence between the 1 percent and the rest of us than the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gaze (or, for some of you, look again) through Fitzgerald’s lens and you’ll see deeply into the twisted folie that remains our collective dream. So much of his work explores how and why we deify and then, stunningly left out of the equation (we protest!), publicly eviscerate our champions and by proxy the system that keeps us (apologies to one in ten of you) on the not-quite-long end of the stick.

As for the how, try this on—it’s not from an OWS pamphlet. It’s from Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, published nearly a century ago. He was 23 and it was 1920, the dawn of the Jazz Age:

We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can’t. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It’s worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food.

Yes. You can say that again.

As for the why, Fitzgerald’s greatest work explores the relationship between the dreamer, the dream and those who occupy the choice seats. His main characters demonstrate what it means to desire and glorify wealth, and, like the poor dog that pursues the speeding car, what one can and cannot do with it on the rare occasion that it’s chased down. Moreover, he explores our illusions about money and prestige from the inside out, exposing how, free from day-to-day struggles, the wealthy can often exemplify the worst of our human selves, as they are set free to enjoy the hubris and vagary that come from not having to earn a living. Our desire as individuals to climb to such sickening “heights” provides the brilliant foil and tragedy in his fiction.

In his masterpiece, the compact and near-perfect The Great Gatsby, we witness a man who takes a stab at the heart of the beast, subjugating and even erasing his “common” reality to obtain the dream. So personally overwhelming is his quest, that its goal arguably becomes interchangeable with the idea of love itself. Of his great desire, Daisy, Jay Gatsby’s declaration followed by narrator Nick Carraway’s observation:

‘Her voice is full of money,’ he said suddenly.

That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. … High in a white place the king’s daughter, the golden girl…

Fitzgerald’s Nick Diver, tragic hero of the later, some say greater, and definitely more intricate Tender is the Night, is another 99 percenter who dares to stake a claim, this time through the form and family of the damaged and complex Nicole Warren. Sadly, as Nicole’s sister, Baby, notes, “When people are taken out of their depth they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they put up.” Does Nick really stand a chance?

What makes these characters—Gatsby, Diver, and Paradise’s Amory Blaine—so powerful is not simply their juxtaposition to wealth. That would be maudlin, at best, or simply trite (see pulp, then and now). Rather, the way in which they embody what we might now finally call the American Tragedy is by their extreme love-hate relationship with it all. Like we do with our “winners” today (be they Trumps, Hiltons or the vilest insider traders), these timeless icons elevate the dream masters, lifting them high to ogle and adore, allowing them their dalliances and their misdeeds. Why? Because they think that they can play, too – that the thrill can somehow be more than vicarious. But of course the game is rigged, and they find themselves left out, their noses pressed against the glass, the dream merely an illusion.

Today, as we rage against the 1 percent, it’s perhaps wise to ask ourselves, how did we get here? Why are there class crimes in progress with the violators and predators getting away Scott free, as it were? What is it about our dreams and heroes that has us insanely circling back here again and again, in a cultural and class dialectic that seems to lack any final synthesis? Perhaps it’s an expatriate like Fitzgerald who in the end can see it best. After all, by spending time outside the church, it’s easier to see how gods are created – and served.

Whether you’re considering a Fitzgerald refresher (no, not a martini) or wanting to pick him up for the first time, here are some quick takes on what are arguably his three finest novels:

This Side of Paradise, 1920

An immediate and mammoth success when it was published, Fitzgerald’s first novel is seen by many as the opening bell of the Jazz Age. The story is of Midwest-born, egotistical and aggressively social Amory Blaine, who travels east to boarding school and then Princeton to assume his rightful place in the world. Upended by superficiality and then the Great War (the storyline of his experience overseas is loudly absent), he struggles to find love and personal authenticity in the face of a warped and overbearing culture. An anthem for the youth of the day, the two-book, three-part story, was ahead of its time in experimental form (part of it is presented as a script) and reads as a highly charged, postmodern pastiche.

The Great Gatsby, 1925

Many have made the case that The Great Gatsby is the finest American novel. Perhaps rightly so. Returning war veteran Nick Carraway tells the story of his time in Long Island’s ritzy West Egg, where he moves in next door to a great mansion and its beautiful, enigmatic and larger-than-life owner – the fabulous Jay Gatsby. A taught and seamless narrative, Nick’s unfolding relationship with the mysterious Gatsby and the latter’s obsession with across-the-bay flapper Daisy Buchanan is pure American legend. Read this short, yet glorious novel in a single sitting. It is fundamental to who we are and quite possibly were destined to be from our first landing on this side of the Atlantic.

Tender is the Night, 1934

Fitzgerald’s last finished novel, Tender is the Night, wades deep into the heart of ethics and compromise as it follows the lives and marriage of Dick and Nicole Diver. Written in part during his wife Zelda’s hospitalization for schizophrenia, many events of this at times intricate and always-nuanced novel are clearly autobiographical. Tormented during its writing for many reasons, not the least of which his alcoholism, Fitzgerald sets up and then examines without mercy what appears to be the perfect couple of the late-1920s – French Riviera-bronzed, party friendly and easily loved by all who surround them. A rollercoaster of pleasure of pain and twisted and changing love roles, the novel is a flourish of language and storytelling, soaked in the psychology of love, wealth and “place.”

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly feature, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

InPrint: Not for Kids Only – 10 Young Adult Novels You Need to Read

InPrint: On the Road, Again – Revisiting Jack Kerouac

InPrint: Les Histoires De Paris & Two Novel Additions

Between the Lines: The Power of the Written Word

Top image: Bastián Despreciable Cifuentes♡

The post InPRINT: Gatsby, Paradise and the 1%: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pre-Occupation appeared first on EcoSalon.