Yes, if it is a fact that people like to have examples given them, men of the type they call heroic, and if it is absolutely necessary that this narrative should include a "hero," the narrator commends to his readers, with, to his thinking, perfect justice, this insignificant and obscure hero who had to his credit only a little goodness of heart and a seemingly absurd ideal. This will render to the truth its due, to the addition of two and two its sum of four, and to heroism the secondary place that rightly falls to it, just after, never before, the noble claim of happiness. It will also give this chronicle its character, which is intended to be that of a narrative made with good feelings--that is to say, feelings that are neither demonstrably bad nor overcharged with emotion in the ugly manner of a stage play.
This is one of two paragraphs strangely stuck in this novel attempting to defend why he's gone about it the way he has. I can't say I'm sure of a better way but despite winning the nobel prize in literature it really didn't seem a good read.
One would think the plague itself would be a much better example of the absurd then such sidebars as this sad absurd man, a horrifically failed writer, who could have been stuck in a romantic comedy as well as he was put here.
This worry on Camus' part of being like a stage play, although I understand not wanting to be kitsch, something rings false, reminds me of this again.
After sparing us the nitty gritty for 200 plus pages he does finally describe in great detail the horrible death of a young boy. Seemed the way the novel should have been begun. The first 200 pags just cut out. Definitely a short story padded. This scene which was finally good didn't seem "overcharged". It seemed one of the few scenes that wasn't sleepwalking. As to what he means by "feelings which are demonstrably bad" but it seems like there are levels of kitsch at work here. Probably I should use another word. I'm still just using the word to mean unreal I think. Camus takes pains to avoid the unrealness of the stage play and in some ways is even way too honest while at the same time he seems to be avoiding some of what he would consider vulgar (which is to say he's selectively dishonest still).
Plus his main character is a stoic. It works for Vance, not for Camus'. Maybe if the setting was more fantastic. And the middle of a plague outbreak in full force could be fantastic. But he only vaguely tells us, he rarely ever shows us. He dilutes it so much.
No, the real plague had nothing in common with the grandiose imaginings that had haunted Rieux's mind at its outbreak. It was above all, a shrewd, unflagging adversary; a skilled organizer, doing his work thoroughly and well. That, it may be said in passing, is why, so as not to play false to the facts, and, still more, so as not to play false to himself, the narrator has aimed at objectivity. He has made hardly any changes for the sake of artistic effect, except those elementary adjustments needed to present his narrative in a more or less coherent form.
He seems so awfully earnest. But there is already plenty of nonfiction about the bubonic plague. I read about ten books in college for a paper. For fiction you have to be unreal to examine things actually worth examining. This isn't supposed to be journalism.
So "earnest," it's an awful word to me. To me it manages to express a sort of negative truthfulness, (where really the truth ought never be a negative thing...)
I really disliked this novel despite loving the idea of a novel about the plague told by the philosopher who introduced the idea of The Absurd.
