Re: Re[2]: RARA-AVIS: Camus, Sartre, De Beauvoir. Who's
James Rogers (jetan@ionet.net)
Fri, 28 Aug 1998 22:25:04 -0500 (CDT)
At 10:54 PM 8/28/98 EDT, you wrote:
>Kind Rara-avians,
>Camus was not an existentialist: Meursault was an
extremely masculine
>sensualist who saw no need to explain but who became
verbose once jailed.
>Camus admired many Americans, mostly Faulkner, and the
only novel he wrote
>that even comes close to being considered hardboiled is
the brilliant La Chute
>(The Fall), a nasty send-up of those existentialists he
had fallen out with.
>Interestingly enough it wasSimone de Beauvoir of all
people who, in 1939,
>suggested to Sartre, who was struggling with several
drafts of La Nausee, that
>he use plotting techniques and style from American
hardboiled detective
>novels. So Sartre used them to enliven and popularize
his philosophy
>(existentialism, taken largely from
Kierkegaard).
>My PC has been down. Loved all 38 messages. Will respond
to other excellent
>points you made later.
>Reeves
>
>#
Well, this is correct as to Camus not being an
existentialist. However, he had enough in common with them that
I can think
of a least one survey existentialism text that mentions him in
that context.
More to the point, though, he appears to have made a statement
giving Cain's
_Postman_ some of the credit or blame for his coming up with
_The Stranger_.
And once you fhear of something like that, it's only natural to
looka t both
books in search of shared characteristics.
Your subsequent post is likewise correct in stating
that existentialism and surrealism are not interchangable
terms....although
I guess I missed the post where anyone confused the terms.
However, though I
don't really think existentialism enters into the hardboiled
area too much,
I can think of several hardboiled books that cross well into
the surrrealist
territory.
Interesting detail about DeBeauvoir and
Sartre...didn't know that.
James
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>
James Michael Rogers
jetan@ionet.net
Mundus Vult Decipi
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