Albert Camus: A Very Short Introduction. By Oliver Gloag

Abstract

If I had to choose a single book in English that introduces Albert Camus’s complex philosophical and literary enterprise, it would be John Foley’s Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), which gives a fair and scholarly account of the philosophical, political, and personal issues that troubled Camus, allowing readers to form their own opinion of dilemmas and criticisms that have repeatedly been raised by scholars. The appearance of Oliver Gloag’s recent introduction to Camus does not change this evaluation. I would even strongly recommend reading Foley, as well as another excellent study, David Carroll’s Albert Camus, the Algerian: Colonialism, Terrorism, Justice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), after, or perhaps instead of, reading Gloag. The book under review here has some interesting parts, and sets a clear goal of presenting Camus as a conflicted and ambiguous thinker. Gloag is convincing in his claim that these ambiguities are an essential and integral element of understanding Camus. The last chapter of the book, in which the author lists and criticizes various political misappropriations of Camus’s thought, is especially deserving of attention. However, the major problem I have with Gloag’s book is the inadequacy of the title to the analysis that is offered. This is not an introduction to Camus, if we agree that the essential purpose of an introduction would be to provide the reader with some basic knowledge on the enterprise of the researched intellectual. In fact, Gloag too often does not allow the reader to be introduced to Camus, as he hastily offers interpretation, rather than a selection of possible ways of seeing Camus. Although he concedes that there are different ways of seeing L’Étranger (1942), he devotes only a passing mention to Carroll and Robert Zaretzky, focusing primarily on the consensus with the long tradition of postcolonial critique of Camus’s novel, including the issues raised by Edward Said, Pierre Nora, Azzedine Haddour, and Conor Cruise O’Brien. And when Gloag discusses the famous essay on the absurd, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942), he concludes that ‘the absurd becomes an ideology of individual acceptance which leaves out social and historical conflicts’ (p. 55), merely restating what Francis Jeanson and Jean-Paul Sartre thought of the essay, when trying to prove the ineffectiveness of Camus’s position in politics, rather than offering other possible ways of seeing how the concept of absurdity could have been understood as the foundation for individual revolt leading to social and political change. Furthermore, Gloag’s research of sources seems inadequate. Any informed reader knows that the statement attributed to Camus, ‘I believe in Justice, but I will defend my mother before Justice’ (cited p. 100), is a distortion of what Camus had actually said in 1957. In summary of the book, Gloag is justly concerned that ‘Western politicians present a simplified version of Camus’ (p. 106). I wholeheartedly agree. But to counter simplifications, one has to offer a balanced, fair vision of the character. And to me this is seriously lacking in Gloag’s introduction, which too frequently condemns, rather than understands, Camus.