Edward J. Hughes (1) (1953–)

The Cambridge companions are a well established series of books that feature critical essays from contributors, covering such topics as: single authors, literary and national movements, philosophy and culture. Having now read a couple of Camus novels, some plays and essays as well as Olivier Todd's biography and Philip Thody's a study of his work I was curious to see if the Cambridge companion would add anything to my reading experience of Camus. The short answer is that it did.

This Cambridge companion was published in 2007 and all of the fourteen contributors could be considered as contemporary with the publication date. The essays are divided into three sections; Biography and influences, Themes preoccupations and genres and texts and contexts, in addition there is an introduction by Edward J Hughes and a short Postface to round things off, he also edited the volume. There is also a chronology of significant events in Camus' life, a fairly detailed list of his publications and a big enough guide to further reading to keep most completists happy for years to come. I found all the essays readable and was pleased to find that it was editorial policy to show all quotes from Camus' writings in their original French with an English translation immediately following.

The first section: Biography and Influences containing three essays interested me the least, but this was because it added little that was new to my previous reading. It was the seven essays in the second section: Themes, Preoccupations and Genres, that really made the book come alive for me, because it took the debate about Camus further than I had travelled before. An excellent essay re-interpreting Le Mythe De Sisyphe started the ball rolling (pun intended) as David Carroll examines Camus' ideas on the Absurd relating them to the world in which he lived (Second World War) and then assessing how much value they are in todays world. Christine Margerrison in her essay Camus and the Theatre asks why it was that Camus is not recognised as a major playwright. Camus loved the theatre and founded his own theatre group, he said that he loved the feeling of working with other people to produce a play, but his own plays had mixed success at the time and are not so often revived today. Jeanyves Guerin follows with a lively essay on Camus the journalist, that makes me want to go out and find some of his articles to read for myself. However the highlight of this section and perhaps the highlight of the book are the three essays that assess Camus as a thinker and moralist. Camus and Social Justice, Camus and Sartre the Great Quarrel, and Violence and Ethics in Camus, all point to Camus as a man left behind in the intellectual debate in post world war Europe. They are critical in various degrees of his stance as a moralist and almost condemnatory of his position in the debate on colonialism. He was seen at the time as a supporter of colonialism because of his eventual refusal to support the Algerian Uprising. His position on these issues is re-examined in the light of events following the Algerian independence movement and there is now more understanding of his efforts to bring people together and tacit support for his vitriolic condemnation of those who saw abstract principle as more important than human interrelationships. It is a debate that became fundamental to much of what Camus wrote during the final phase of his life and as such is of great interest to the Camus reader.

The final section Texts and Contexts starts of with a humdinger of an essay by Peter Dunwoodie who looks at Camus ideas on Mediterranean culture and how this influenced his early essays and his first novel L'Estranger. It also points forward to his later difficulties with the Algerian question and his seemingly ambivalent attitude to the arab/muslim world that doesn't quite fit into Mediterranean hedonism. I had to read Dunwoodie's essay twice, to come to grips with his ideas, but it was well worth the re-read. There follows a workmanlike essay on layers of meaning in The Plague and a good essay on withheld identity in The Fall, but as to how relevant this essay is, I will be able to judge better when I get to read The Fall and this brought home to me that to get the most out of theses essays you will need to have read at least some of Camus and be interested to know more about his place in literature and the thoughts that drove his creative spirit.

If this volume in the Cambridge Companion series is representative of the standard of criticism then I am eager to read more. They would not serve so well as an introduction to an author or genre, but would come into their own for those readers wishing to dig deeper. A Five star Read.… (más)