Albert Camus ( 1913-60)

     One of the more notorious of the pied noir born in Algeria, Camus rose from dire poverty to international fame as a philosopher, novelist, dramatist, and political analyst, winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.
     Noted for his links with existentialist writing and philosophy. It is a philosophy that claims that man's existence is of primary importance, so that appeals to transcendental notions of spiritual salvation through whatever means are useless. Often mistakenly equated with nihilism. This does not mean, however, that it is necessarily a nihilist (nothingness) philosophy. There is an inherent dignity in the human situation, but it is one that rests on an uncompromising search for authentic values--not a mere acceptance of values inherited from the past, from a religion, from a national ethos, etc. A key word scholars use talking about Camus is absurd, but one might qualify this as the Norton does on 2570. Other key words might be engagement, and revolt. These signify a strenuous and worthwhile attempt to make life choices that are vital and important and concerned with preserving a kind of humanity that might get lost in systems and in institutions.
     The word that might circulate significantly about this story is colonialism. It is clear how this applies in the story, and also in Camus's life. For he was born of French parents in Algeria, and had a childhood not of privilege living as French in Algeria, but as impoverished. Thus in the struggle of Algeria for independence from France, he managed to be sympathetic to both factions.
     It is, perhaps, a balance that is found in the most troubling and evocative literature, a refusal to take sides that imposes itself on the reader--who thus becomes the arbiter of the situation, or is left also in a state of sympathy for seemingly incongruous factions--generating a lively sense of ambiguity.