As novelist and playwright, moralist and political theorist, Albert Camus after World War II became the spokesman of his own generation and the mentor of the next, not only in France but also in Europe and eventually the world. His writings, which addressed themselves mainly to the isolation of man in an alien universe, the estrangement of the individual from himself, the problem of evil, and the pressing finality of death, accurately reflected the alienation and disillusionment of the postwar intellectual. He is remembered, with Sartre, as a leading practitioner of the existential novel. Though he understood the nihilism of many of his contemporaries, Camus also argued the necessity of defending such values as truth, moderation, and justice. In his last works he sketched the outlines of a liberal humanism that rejected the dogmatic aspects of both Christianity and Marxism.
On a purely literary level, one of Camus’s most original contributions to modern discourse is his distinctive prose style. Terse and hard-boiled, yet at the same time lyrical, and indeed capable of great, soaring flights of emotion and feeling, Camus’s style represents a deliberate attempt on his part to wed the famous clarity, elegance, and dry precision of the French philosophical tradition with the more sonorous and opulent manner of 19th century Romantic fiction. The result is something like a cross between Hemingway (a Camus favorite) and Melville (another favorite) or between Diderot and Hugo. For the most part when we read Camus we encounter the plain syntax, simple vocabulary, and biting aphorism typical of modern theatre or noir detective fiction. By the way it’s worth noting that Camus was a fan of the novels of Dashiell Hammett and James M Cain and that his own work has influenced the style and the existentialist loner heroes of a succession of later crime writers, including John D McDonald and Lee Child. This muted, laconic style frequently becomes a counterpoint or springboard for extended musings and lavish descriptions almost in the manner of Proust. Moreover, this base style frequently becomes a counterpoint or springboard for extended musings and lavish descriptions almost in the manner of Proust. Here we may note that this attempted reconciliation or union of opposing styles is not just an aesthetic gesture on the author’s part: It is also a moral and political statement. It says, in effect, that the life of reason and the life of feeling need not be opposed; that intellect and passion can, and should, operate together.
Perhaps the greatest inspiration and example that Camus provides for contemporary readers is the lesson that it is still possible for a serious thinker to face the modern world (with a full understanding of its contradictions, injustices, brutal flaws, and absurdities) with hardly a grain of hope, yet utterly without cynicism. To read Camus is to find words like justice, freedom, humanity, and dignity used plainly and openly, without apology or embarrassment, and without the pained or derisive facial expressions or invisible quotation marks that almost automatically accompany those terms in public discourse today.
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