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Just stumbled across some words of Albert Camus and whilst they make excellent social media quotes, I think he could be actually on to something! Has anyone read any of his books? Are they accessable or are they hard work?

Not read much by him but I’d say some books are more accessible than others (although the more accessible ones I’ve read are short novels that perhaps need more work to interpret the underlying philosophical themes). The more academic ones are predictably drier. Can’t remember titles off the top of my head I’m afraid and we’ve just moved house so they’ll be buried in a box somewhere. 

For a relatively accessible and casual summary of his main works there is a podcast called Philosophize This which I’ve quite enjoyed. It works through key philosophical works from the ancient Greeks to modern day - there are a lot of episodes to get through if you enjoy it and I found a lot of it very thought provoking. There’s a  few episodes on Camus. 

They are definitely worth reading but can be hard work -the earlier pieces can be very obscure. More art or literature than philosophy. This resembles some of my experience reading Camus:

“Just when I’m about the fling the book in the corner there are passages of comprehensible description, which just about manage to keep me reading. Sometimes of great beauty.”

From this blog post, which give you a clearer idea of what you might be getting into:

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/essays-from-the-myth-of-sisyphu...
 
The later work is much less wilfully obscure. 

L'etranger is a good place to start. I sort of stopped there too.

I suspect a lot of people start there and go no further. I have a vague recollection of reading The Plague many years ago, without it making very much impression on me. 

The Plague is very good and straightforward, I would happily recommend it to a bright teenager. The Outsider also an easy read if a little more opaque. But read them in this order, as otherwise you might be put off. 

I read The Plague (La Peste) a while ago. It was an easy enough read and at the time I was a bit meh. Just nothing that gripped me about it. However, post lockdown I've often found myself recognising themes from the book, so it made more of an impression on me than I'd realised.

For Camus, Start with the stranger, it's a short novel and easy to read. If you want non fiction then the myth of Sisyphus is reasonably accessible. If you want another novel of his then the plague is probably your best bet. Exile and the kingdom is a selection of short stories which is good. The Fall is similar to the stranger in some ways, I quite like it but I'd start with the stranger if I was you.

Nausea by JP Satre is often lumped in the same reading list, quite rightly. You can read the stranger just as a novel without much philosophical thought or you can analyse it for eternity. Satre's prose is a bit more openly philosophical and introspective, Camus is more "feely" (for me anyway). Notes from the underground would be another existential classic, and one of the few short and accessible things Dostoyevsky wrote.

If it's absurdism you want though, then Catch-22 by Heller and the Trial by Kafka are more towards that genre whereas Camus and JPS straddle existentialism to a greater degree (in my opinion). Vonnegut also falls into the absurdist category, and is arguably more enjoyable to read. The Hitchhikers guide I would also say falls under absurdism, and again is an enjoyable,  easy read.

The stranger is a short book and if Camus has caught your eye, it would be well worth giving it a go, but get slaughterhouse five or breakfast of champions as well, so you have something to go at if you don't enjoy it!

I agree with your view on The Plague.

Plenty of absurdist plays to go at too - and the texts often make for accessible and enjoyable reads. They're also frequently extremely funny. For example Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days; lots of early Harold Pinter such as The Room, The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter and The Caretaker; Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

And after that, if you want to see Heller’s absurdism taken to an even darker place then I recommend his novel “Something Happened”, a very savage takedown of 50s corporate America. 

The Plague is only worthwhile if you fully engage with the characters and the situation. The world is going to hell in a hand-basket (as we've been discussing in the state of the UK thread); What would be your reaction. What are the reactions of the various characters carefully constructed by the author.

Is action meaningful. Are you a nihilist, an absurdist, or someone who has faith.

It was a set book for French exam as a kid, and has stayed with me ever since; I think it's great.

A Happy Death was the first novel by Camus that I read. It was only published posthumously & is, I think, seen as an early version of The Outsider, which I read next, followed by his collection of short stories & then The Myth of Sisyphus (which I was less keen on)

The next link contains spoilers (as do some of the BBC Sounds features I mention afterwards) ...

It’s interesting that neither The Outsider nor The Myth of Sisyphus – both discussed briefly at the end of the interview (with the philosopher Nigel Warburton) – are in Jamie Lomardi’s top five Camus books, which are listed at the start:

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/albert-camus-jamie-lombardi/.

BBC Sounds has quite a bit on Camus, & the In Our Time (IOT) episode on Existentialism also discusses him, the absurd, Sartre, de Beauvoir, & why the philosophy of existentialism was well suited to novels (which seems to fits with some of the general features of continental philosophy mentioned in The Continental-Analytic Split IOT podcast)

Off on a bit of a long tangent, here: the USA analytic philosopher Thomas Nagel has a different account of (& response to) The Absurd - the title of his essay (reprinted in Mortal Questions (MQ), extract below)*, in which he comments briefly on Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus in a couple of places. I think it’s fairly accessible but there’s a shorter & less formal version in his What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (last chapter: The Meaning of Life). (Birth, Death & the Meaning of Life – last chapter of The View from Nowhere – is a more challenging read than the first two, related chapters in the earlier MQ). These can all be previewed selectively on Google Books, along with the recent Analytic Philosophy and Human Life, the title essay of which provides an overview of his main interests:

Temperamentally [...] I have been drawn to aspects of [...] continental [philosophy] – [...] the sense of the absurd of the existentialists, and the inescapability of the subjective point of view of phenomenology. But I have pursued these interests in an analytic framework.

* The contrast between subjective / inner & objective / outer viewpoints is a theme that runs throughout Nagel’s work. It’s the clash between these that gives rise to the absurd, he says:

In ordinary life a situation is absurd when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension or aspiration and reality: [...] as you are being knighted, your [trousers] fall down.

[...]

[...] If there is a philosophical sense of absurdity, however, it must arise from the perception of something universal – some respect in which pretension and reality inevitably clash for all of us. This condition is supplied, I will argue, by the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as being arbitrary, or open to doubt.

We cannot live human lives without making choices which show that we take some things more seriously than others. Yet we have always available a point of view outside the particular form of our lives from which the seriousness appears gratuitous. These two inescapable viewpoints collide in us, and that is what makes life absurd. It is absurd because we ignore the doubts which we know cannot be settled, continuing to live with almost undiminished seriousness in spite of them.

I've just finished listening to The Plague during my commutes. I had to concentrate, but very enjoyable, with much to ponder given the different world views of the main characters. 

I was drawn to it after recently finishing two great and accessible books by Sarah Bakewell that you might enjoy: At the Existentialist Cafe and Humanly Possible. Camus comes up in both.

I certainly felt like I was "embracing absurdism" the last time I paid the exorbitant price of a pint in one of the existentialist cafes par excellence, Les Deux Magots.

I stumbled across 'The Myth of Sisyphus' along time ago. There was a big rock on the front cover. There is a chapter of about 5 pages which carefully, and for me, clearly describes the Myth, which has stuck with me. The chapter has the name of the book as its title. I have re read it from time to time over the years and appreciate its message. I've read a couple of his other short books but the messages and wisdom are too well hidden for my brain.

The Plague has one chapter that expresses Camus' (I guess) revulsion for capital punishment. It's worth it for that alone.

I read philosophy for my degree, and Camus was a big part of it.  Highly recommend The Myth of Sisyphus, it's approachable and gets to the heart of absurdism very clearly (I think).  In my opinion Camus has one of the best writing styles out the so-called existentialists.  Vintage does an edition of it that includes Return to Tipasa which is also a great essay.

Enjoy.  I found these ideas to be powerful and formative.

^this. However muddled in my head they may be, I've always related to the ideas of living a life that is rational and kind, finding meaning in my own choices and actions, and being content with obscurity. I've got that strongly from the works not only of Camus but also of Eliot and humanists across the centuries.

Thanks for mentioning Philosipize This. I had not heard of it and although I have only listened to the first two podcasts, they are interesting and delivered in an easy way.

Dave

I have read The Plague & The Outsider (x2) - really good. 

I have read the Myth of Sysyphus countless times over the years.  I find it a bit of an uphill battle which gets no easier.