This book is half amazing, half retarded.It's written with a really astounding aesthetic sensibility; all worldly things are described so vividly that you feel as though you're right there. The mundane world -- running to catch a tram as you dash to lunch from the office, spending a Sunday with your new girl, sharing some wine with your disreputable neighbor, the sights and sounds of Algiers in the 1940s -- has never been more elegantly handled.But the murder and the trial are completely fucking retarded. They're too retarded to even make a compelling philosophical point. The guy, a pieds-noirs Frenchman, was part of a party that was literally stalked by a gang of Arabs. When he went out for a walk, he was menaced by one of those Arabs, who blocked his path and drew a knife. He shot the Arab, and then hit him a few more times for good measure -- which is literally SOP for evey cop in the US.So my problems are:(A) This is a straightforward matter of self-defense and he should never have been arrested.(B) His lawyer was the most retarded character in literature.(C) The judge was retarded, and the prosecutor was evil.(D) Even if B and C are maximally true, IRL they NEVER would have given a Frenchman the death penalty for killing an Algerian Arab, even if the act was premeditated and done in cold blood.(E) He muses about looking forward to his public execution, but public executions were abolished by the French in 1939.So the whole thing is weirdly artificial and contrived.What's more, the book is written in the first-person, as a memoir. But he was in jail and without means to write -- and what's more, when the book closes, his appeal is still pending, and the prison chaplain is "sure that it will succeed." So why is everybody so confident that he's executed?
Bump.Also I found that Houellebecq's Annihilation was very similar in overall theme and structure to The Stranger, but less contrived. And, weirdly, with a protagonist who has a much stronger internal self-representation, but a flatter and rather more dreary view of the outside world -- a product of our times, I suppose!
I read it a few weeks ago and while I might not have caught every bit of subtlety in there (I read the French version) it also came off as really contrived to me. What bothered me most was how the protagonist does a lot of stuff without any thought or motivation like writing the letter for his neighbor (why would he do that?). I guess this was necessary so that the author could make his point, whatever it was. There's a word for this kind of really obvious contrivance IN TSCHERMANY: "hanebüchen". Popped up a few times in my head while reading.
>>25427368My impression was that the neighbor was essentially illiterate -- or was, at any rate, incapable of producing a suitable letter that wouldn't read as though it were written by a preschooler. The protagonist, an educated clerk at a logistics firm, evidently understood this and wrote the letter as a favor, perhaps in exchange for dinner and that bottle of wine. And, besides, the letter didn't really say much besides "I love you let's get back together!" That the matter was raised in the protagonist's trial was dumb as fuck, though. The first half of the book was god-tier, but the second half was just brain damaged, unless you headcanon that he was acquitted on appeal and his lawyer was disbarred, lol.
>>25426480>self-defenseNo. He went after the Arab with a gun (there is no self-defense when you are looking for trouble); he also shot, what, 3 times? on a guy sitting. His life was never in danger.It's crazy how wrong people are about self-defense laws.
>>25426480In france minorities are the brahman caste and it is a capital offense to defend yourself against one of them.
Camus gushes over Kafka a lot in TMoS so I always assumed the trial bit from the Stranger was sort of imagining what it would might be like if the Trial actually had a trial
>>25427638Why was the Arab there, in that part of the country? The Arab was part of a group which was literally stalking the protagonist's friends. The protagonist was out for a walk and was making for a creek, when he was menaced by the Arab -- who not only had a knife, but had that knife unsheathed in his hand. There were no witnesses, besides. There's no way this isn't construed as "self defense" in any country.
