Albert Camus, "The Rebel"
Wow, how fortunate is this? I finished this on Tuesday, but didn�t have time to write about it until now, when I have much more to say. But, to be fair, let�s break this into two parts:
PART ONE: INITIAL RESPONSE
Holy Hell. This gave me a headache. It started off decent enough during the first 25 pages, stating that this was a study into the nature of rebelliousness in individuals, but it quickly dissolved into character studies of various people from literature.
Okay fine, if it was from people I knew about I might be able to relate. But instead, Camus talks about various people from philosophy and literature that I�ve never read. I have to expect this, as I haven�t read every fucking book on the planet. I�ve read several other books that reference other titles, and sometimes I�ll decide to read these other titles as well. But this book (for the most part) presumes I�ve read every thing Camus has ever read, which I haven�t.
What happens is Camus keeps bringing up references that I have no idea about, and he doesn�t help me understand. Instead, he says things like �this is a classic example of Dostoyevsky�s character from �The Brother�s Karamazov,� and then moves onto a new subject. Huh? What character? What did this character do? Since I have no idea about the subject matter, I don�t have any incentive to find out what the hell he�s talking about.
He does this a lot, and with a lot of authors, both from fiction and philosophy. By the time I finished this book, I had no desire to read any of them, lest they be as flat and dull as this book.
Strangely enough, one of the authors he mentioned fairly often was Ivan Turgenev, whom I haven�t read, and after reading this, decided that I didn�t want to. That night I had a dream that Turgenev visited my bedroom to bitch me out for not reading his books.
PART TWO: REFLECTIONS
What Camus was really trying to bring up was the nature of rebellion and how most people won�t achieve it because of outside influences. So tonight, I went to the bar to try and finish up another book, and for some reason I could see what he was talking about.
We are a society built on social mores, and the one we don�t want to break is being alone. Everybody who showed up tonight (with the exception of one or two regulars � who were all old and fairly pathetic) came with friends � I didn�t. I did my normal thing of mixing people watching and socializing, reading when I got bored. But the place got packed tonight. I was trying to finish my book before midnight (I failed), so I wasn�t being very social, but I think I got more attention for being the �weird guy who reads books in bars� then I normally would. School is almost finished, hence more people going out.
And there�s the thing: These people thought themselves as rebellious. �Whoo, we�re going out and drinking in a dive bar� Tres rebellious! I mean, shit, that�s what I did, only I didn�t have to spend two hours getting ready.
As the night progressed and the drinks accumulated, people suddenly found themselves more daring, funny, attractive, whatever. A few people stopped to asked me why I was reading. �Because I find the rest of you boring,� I�d answer, half-joking.
They would return to their friends and makes jokes about me, some obvious, others assumed. It was like the guy who yells at you from his car, but only when there are other people to witness how cool they are. Whatever.
Anyway, my point, if I have one, is that I�d like to see any of these people (or anybody, for that matter) be willing to go out by themselves simply because they want to, and not because that�s what everybody else is doing. I think the majority of them would be too scared to show up to a social setting by themselves.
And I�d better end this now, as I�m choking on my own self-righteousness.
