The Stranger

Albert Camus, 1942 (1998 translation) Date Read: 7/25/22

I went to high school in the 1990s. I remember Nine Inch Nails being cutting edge, breaking rules and boundaries. It was a sound nobody had ever heard before. At one point, Closer was the filthiest song I'd ever heard (and I grew up a Prince stan).

A couple months ago I was talking about music with my sons and I played some Nine Inch Nails for them. They were like, wow okay emo-king. They laughed at it, because today, 30 years later, it is no longer cutting edge. It's, as my Grandma Dorothy would have said, "different just like everybody else".

I tell you this story because that is how I feel about this novel. I bet it was really new and cutting edge and different in 1942. It is certainly different than the novels of the prior generations. However, it has now been done to death! Of Mice and Men and The Catcher in the Rye are two examples. There's no story arc, no character development. The entire novel is simply a setup for the author to have his character monolog.

In this case, Camus wanted to monolog about atheism. As an atheist (and recovered Christian), I found his arguments trite. It's been hashed out a million times by every Reddit atheist out there. But again, in 1942 it was daring.

Essentially, I found the novel boring. It would have been impressive when it was new, and I'm quite sure there are literature professors capable of dredging its depths for entire semesters. But I am not, in 2022, impressed.

Length: 117 pages (Everyman's Library edition)

Rereadability: if it wasn't so short, I wouldn't have finished it

Classic: in the sense that it is outdated and from another time, yes.