Biographically speaking, there is nothing as definitive concerning a man's life as the asides he speaks- to himself or while facing an audience. Letters and speeches written at the moment and not organized into a timeless work reveal more of a person's life and thought than any rote biography by an admirer. This is precisely what this book is. It does not explain Albert Camus. It reveals him. This is its first value. Here we find Camus' letters written during the war to a German friend, attempting to sift his love for his country despite its weaknesses and insanities. For himself and France Camus has tried to judge his own land and culture, to tap its vital bloodstream, discover its worth, and thus "absurdly" enter the larger family of mankind. For Americans, the book has an added value. Here is a man who speaks our own language, the traditional language of America in constant criticism of itself. And perhaps this explains the reading public's great affinity for this European. Finally the collected asides give us a greater insight into Camus' thinking. He details his war effort and distinguishes his support of killing from that of murdering. He etches his homeland, Algeria, attempting to preserve the familiar relationship of the past and the independence required of the present. Through his love of justice he exerts a forceful resistance against Christianity and Communism, though he respects both. Yet his passionate love of justice becomes quicksand and unveils his deep religious feeling. After all, as Camus says, "The only real artist then is God...all other artists are, ipso facto, unfaithful to reality". A statement in which he included himself. Certainly this is the most important book written about Camus, by one who knows best.
Pub Date: Feb. 13, 1960
ISBN: 0679764011
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1960
None
"If you can't deal with the morning, get out of the game." Maria Wyeth can't deal with the mornings or the long, disintegrating nights—she's been married to and divorced by Carter; she has a hopelessly damaged four-year-old and the insistent, regretful memory of an abortion; she's made a film or two; and she drifts from Hollywood to New York to Las Vegas and from bars to motels.In fact she's the kind of girl whom one of her looser contacts will call up and say "Did I catch you in the middle of an overdose" and this is the kind of scene which is "beaucoup fantastic." You may remember Run River (1963) which was about another scuffed spirit like Maria whose dissolution was as complete. But even though you have every reason to suspect that this is an ephemeral form of survival kitsch under its sophisticated maquillage, you won't be impervious.
None NonePub Date: July 13, 1970
ISBN: 0374529949
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1970
PERSPECTIVES
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A short, elegant tale about female desire and societal expectations.
An aspiring writer finds a way to live the life she’s always wanted.
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”—and that sentiment echoes through Cain’s (Creature, 2013, etc.) debut novel. The protagonist, Vitória, a young and bright museum cleaning woman, spends her days dreaming about writing. In the moments between scrubbing toilets and floors, she writes descriptions of paintings and notices the world around her. Soon she is plucked from her life by a rich husband and placed into another. Her new life is complete with a large house, a personal study, and a maid, who serves as a constant reminder of her own upward social mobility. Despite her good fortune, Vitória is unhappy. At one point, Vitória wonders about her good luck and how she was “saved” from a wholly different life. She writes about a glue factory where women work and horses are sacrificed: “We should memorialize the horses, remember them truthfully, and the women who have to spend their days in that way....I have benefited from a woman who never stops working, walking back from the factory in the morning and the night.” She recognizes the sacrifices women make and, more importantly, the ones she no longer has to make. Deeply rooted in the literary tradition, the novel inconspicuously references works like Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Octavia Butler’s Kindred and explores themes like class and gender. With its short, spare sentences, Cain’s writing seems simple on the surface—but it is deeply observant of the human condition, female friendships, and art.
A short, elegant tale about female desire and societal expectations.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-14837-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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