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Camus, a Romance
Elizabeth Hawes’s passionate pursuit of Camus began with her college thesis. A biography-memoir, Camus, a Romance reveals the man behind the famous name: the French-Algerian of humble birth and Mediterranean passions; the TB-stricken exile who edited the World War II resistance newspaper Combat; the pied noir in anguish over the Algerian War; the Don Juan who loved a multitude of women; the writer in search of a truer voice. These form only the barest outlines of the rich tapestry of Camus’s life, which Elizabeth Hawes chronicles alongside her own experience following in his footsteps, meeting his friends and family, and trying to enter his solitude.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2009
31 people are currently reading
306 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Hawes
16 books18 followersElizabeth Hawes was an American clothing designer, outspoken critic of the fashion industry, and champion of ready to wear and people's right to have the clothes they desired, rather than the clothes dictated to be fashionable. In addition to her work in the fashion industry as a sketcher, copyist, stylist, and journalist, as well as a designer, she was also an author, union organizer, champion of gender equality, and political activist. She was married twice, first to Ralph Jester in 1930 (divorced 1934) and secondly to the film director Joseph Losey in 1937 (divorced 1944), the father of her son Gavrik Losey. Along with Losey, she was blacklisted in the 1940s.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 20, 2010
(Disclosure: I was requested to read and review this biography)
Say you’re a college student studying philosophy and you spend hours trawling through Kant and Heidegger and Plato and even Sartre and maybe a female philosopher now and then and then you hit upon Camus with his melty good looks, his melancholy expression and his cute out-of-proportion ear. You are going to sit up and pay attention. He looks approachable, modern, if a bit retro. There’s no denying Albert Camus was an attractive man, a writer who was also a philosopher and moralist and who was fated to be an intellectual sex symbol. If he’d been American, Marilyn Monroe would have eaten him whole.
Elizabeth Hawes was writing her thesis on Camus when he died in a car crash. In college, she developed an obsession for him that lapsed, but never died out. Later in life, her passion was rekindled when she read the posthumous “The First Man.” She resolved to write a biography, one that would allow her to actually befriend him, even find intimacy with him. Her own motives figure in the book, and I couldn’t help but ask– is Hawes a stalker? It is a bit off-kilter how she goes off in search of Camus “the man,” how she sometimes feels they’re walking along together, or she remembers one of his jokes and laughs. It’s only her professed admiration for Camus that makes sleuthing seem occasionally like stalking. Many biographers are motivated by a desire to get closer to their subject, they just don’t come out and say it.
Despite her confessed idolization, she’s not a gusher. She gives the reader enough distance, and a number of times when she entered the book I was HAPPY to see her. I admired her devotion and scholarship and it was interesting to learn more about Camus. Still, Hawes’ obsession wasn’t contagious. I didn’t feel smitten. I thought Camus’ philandering, for example, was a huge weakness. I didn’t want to mother him through his tubercular suffering. When the big blowout between Sartre and Camus went down, I don’t think he handled it well, even though I sided with him. (Sartre, what an asshole! And with time Camus is vindicated, a major part of the conflict having centered on Sartre’s support of Stalin(ism). As it’s revealed what a monster Stalin is, Sartre defends himself by saying he was “right to be wrong.” Gawd, as my 10-grade English teacher would say: ship him off to 1950’s Russia and we’ll see how he feels about it then!)
I enjoyed this book. I learned a lot. I never knew Camus was a bosom buddy of the poet René Char, and I never really knew the fallout with Sartre had so much to do with communism. For all the warmth Hawes’ book brings to Camus, however, nothing brings him to life like his work. Two-thirds through this I picked up “The Stranger” and remembered what made Camus marvelous. Not his ear or his tuberculosis or the sultry cigarette dangling from his mug, but his writings.
Say you’re a college student studying philosophy and you spend hours trawling through Kant and Heidegger and Plato and even Sartre and maybe a female philosopher now and then and then you hit upon Camus with his melty good looks, his melancholy expression and his cute out-of-proportion ear. You are going to sit up and pay attention. He looks approachable, modern, if a bit retro. There’s no denying Albert Camus was an attractive man, a writer who was also a philosopher and moralist and who was fated to be an intellectual sex symbol. If he’d been American, Marilyn Monroe would have eaten him whole.
Elizabeth Hawes was writing her thesis on Camus when he died in a car crash. In college, she developed an obsession for him that lapsed, but never died out. Later in life, her passion was rekindled when she read the posthumous “The First Man.” She resolved to write a biography, one that would allow her to actually befriend him, even find intimacy with him. Her own motives figure in the book, and I couldn’t help but ask– is Hawes a stalker? It is a bit off-kilter how she goes off in search of Camus “the man,” how she sometimes feels they’re walking along together, or she remembers one of his jokes and laughs. It’s only her professed admiration for Camus that makes sleuthing seem occasionally like stalking. Many biographers are motivated by a desire to get closer to their subject, they just don’t come out and say it.
Despite her confessed idolization, she’s not a gusher. She gives the reader enough distance, and a number of times when she entered the book I was HAPPY to see her. I admired her devotion and scholarship and it was interesting to learn more about Camus. Still, Hawes’ obsession wasn’t contagious. I didn’t feel smitten. I thought Camus’ philandering, for example, was a huge weakness. I didn’t want to mother him through his tubercular suffering. When the big blowout between Sartre and Camus went down, I don’t think he handled it well, even though I sided with him. (Sartre, what an asshole! And with time Camus is vindicated, a major part of the conflict having centered on Sartre’s support of Stalin(ism). As it’s revealed what a monster Stalin is, Sartre defends himself by saying he was “right to be wrong.” Gawd, as my 10-grade English teacher would say: ship him off to 1950’s Russia and we’ll see how he feels about it then!)
I enjoyed this book. I learned a lot. I never knew Camus was a bosom buddy of the poet René Char, and I never really knew the fallout with Sartre had so much to do with communism. For all the warmth Hawes’ book brings to Camus, however, nothing brings him to life like his work. Two-thirds through this I picked up “The Stranger” and remembered what made Camus marvelous. Not his ear or his tuberculosis or the sultry cigarette dangling from his mug, but his writings.
May 27, 2020
I love Camus. No author has had a greater influence on my life. And his book L'Estranger or The Stranger has no equal in books that influenced me. I read it in college and consider it one of the greatest reading experiences of my life.
So I was looking forward to this biography. Apparently, Elizabeth Hawes also loves Camus. So the subtitle of the book--A Romance--refers to her love for him. Keep in mind, she never met him, but, like me, she just loves him. Great. But to be perfectly blunt, I don't really give a shit. I wanted to read about Camus, not her. Her constant references to herself rarely helped. She even ended the book with herself, an unpardonable sin.
Here are a few takeaways about Camus:
His name rarely shows up in the familiar roundup of artists who suffered from tuberculosis, such as Keats, Shelley, the Brontes, the Brownings, Chopin, Chekhov, Mansfield, Stevenson. He probably would have had an early death anyway.
There was the unpleasant feud between Sartre and Camus. I am totally on Camus's side. Sartre was just a flat out dick. As my mother would have called him: "a peckerhead." Sidenote: I had a great mother.
I never realized Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Mandarins with characters modeled on Camus and Sartre. When Camus was asked why he didn't respond to her put down of him, he responded, "Because you don't discuss things with a sewer."
Camus was an Algerian. A big issue in his life is why he didn't take a firmer position on the war with Algeria. I'm okay with that and always have been. I understand and love diplomacy, negotiations, moderation. He believed there should be no negotiations with terrorists, and he believed in reconciliation. He probably missed out on the idea of preparing Algeria for independence long before this, just like with Vietnam.
Camus "could not support oppression in Algeria nor one that would abandon the Arab people to even greater misery and tear the French settlers from their age-old roots." He tried to be the voice of reason. He could not join any of the extreme camps but there was no middle group, so he basically withdrew. As he said, "the true cause of our madness lies in the ways and workings of our political and intellectual society, I have decided to no longer participate in the unending polemics."
His friend the Muslim writer Mouloud Ferraoun who worked throughout the war for Franco-Muslim solidarity in Algeria, was assassinated by the OAS, along with five other liberal educators in Algiers on February 1962. The OAS was a right-wing French dissident paramilitary organization.
Although Camus was stoic, an Algerian friend said he had been "hurt to the point of injury" by the attacks on his character. There are hints of "persecution and betrayal" in his letters.
It was this controversial remark that got him in trouble: "If a terrorist throws a bomb into the Belcourt market where my mother shops and it kills her, . . . in order to defend justice I would at the same time have to defend terrorism." He was even ridiculed for his attitude toward his mother.
Camus thought about refusing the Nobel Prize. He felt Malraux deserved it. He would face a new round of polemics and ridicule, especially about his mother comment and the sense that he did not deserve the Nobel.
Susan Sontag attributed Camus's appeal to his "moral beauty." His ethics and his desire to be ethical, what he called his "noble feelings in search of noble acts," is still what often draws people to him until today.
Perhaps his best friend, Roger Quillot, committed suicide with sleeping pills. His wife also took pills but survived. Camus spent a lifetime denying suicide. Quillot explained his decision: "Will people understand if I say that our mutual choice of a voluntary death is an act of both liberty and the love of life in the fullest?" I don't know if anyone understands that, but I definitely do.
Camus's favorite writers were Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche.
Camus referred to dying in a car crash "une mort imbecile." How absurd is his dying in a car crash. He had train tickets but was persuaded at the last moment to drive with Michel Gallimard. Camus hated speed and cars. He was a passenger. It was a straight road. The car zigzagged off into a tree and into another one. Camus's neck was broken and he died instantly. Gallimard died later. The accident has never been fully explained.
So I was looking forward to this biography. Apparently, Elizabeth Hawes also loves Camus. So the subtitle of the book--A Romance--refers to her love for him. Keep in mind, she never met him, but, like me, she just loves him. Great. But to be perfectly blunt, I don't really give a shit. I wanted to read about Camus, not her. Her constant references to herself rarely helped. She even ended the book with herself, an unpardonable sin.
Here are a few takeaways about Camus:
His name rarely shows up in the familiar roundup of artists who suffered from tuberculosis, such as Keats, Shelley, the Brontes, the Brownings, Chopin, Chekhov, Mansfield, Stevenson. He probably would have had an early death anyway.
There was the unpleasant feud between Sartre and Camus. I am totally on Camus's side. Sartre was just a flat out dick. As my mother would have called him: "a peckerhead." Sidenote: I had a great mother.
I never realized Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Mandarins with characters modeled on Camus and Sartre. When Camus was asked why he didn't respond to her put down of him, he responded, "Because you don't discuss things with a sewer."
Camus was an Algerian. A big issue in his life is why he didn't take a firmer position on the war with Algeria. I'm okay with that and always have been. I understand and love diplomacy, negotiations, moderation. He believed there should be no negotiations with terrorists, and he believed in reconciliation. He probably missed out on the idea of preparing Algeria for independence long before this, just like with Vietnam.
Camus "could not support oppression in Algeria nor one that would abandon the Arab people to even greater misery and tear the French settlers from their age-old roots." He tried to be the voice of reason. He could not join any of the extreme camps but there was no middle group, so he basically withdrew. As he said, "the true cause of our madness lies in the ways and workings of our political and intellectual society, I have decided to no longer participate in the unending polemics."
His friend the Muslim writer Mouloud Ferraoun who worked throughout the war for Franco-Muslim solidarity in Algeria, was assassinated by the OAS, along with five other liberal educators in Algiers on February 1962. The OAS was a right-wing French dissident paramilitary organization.
Although Camus was stoic, an Algerian friend said he had been "hurt to the point of injury" by the attacks on his character. There are hints of "persecution and betrayal" in his letters.
It was this controversial remark that got him in trouble: "If a terrorist throws a bomb into the Belcourt market where my mother shops and it kills her, . . . in order to defend justice I would at the same time have to defend terrorism." He was even ridiculed for his attitude toward his mother.
Camus thought about refusing the Nobel Prize. He felt Malraux deserved it. He would face a new round of polemics and ridicule, especially about his mother comment and the sense that he did not deserve the Nobel.
Susan Sontag attributed Camus's appeal to his "moral beauty." His ethics and his desire to be ethical, what he called his "noble feelings in search of noble acts," is still what often draws people to him until today.
Perhaps his best friend, Roger Quillot, committed suicide with sleeping pills. His wife also took pills but survived. Camus spent a lifetime denying suicide. Quillot explained his decision: "Will people understand if I say that our mutual choice of a voluntary death is an act of both liberty and the love of life in the fullest?" I don't know if anyone understands that, but I definitely do.
Camus's favorite writers were Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche.
Camus referred to dying in a car crash "une mort imbecile." How absurd is his dying in a car crash. He had train tickets but was persuaded at the last moment to drive with Michel Gallimard. Camus hated speed and cars. He was a passenger. It was a straight road. The car zigzagged off into a tree and into another one. Camus's neck was broken and he died instantly. Gallimard died later. The accident has never been fully explained.
August 5, 2009
Not a traditional biography but more of an appreciation, and the slippery nature of the focus made for a few rough patches. But I have now revised my position on Camus, and in fact feel quite mislead about him and his works. He was most certainly not an existentialist, not a despair-ridden nihilist, and not a Sartre acolyte. He was a moralist with strong views on what should and should not be. The Plague is probably the work that most closely expresses his true philosophy and feelings, yet high school kids are subjected to The Stranger with side orders of alienation and the Death of God.
Also, I would add a note here about absurdity: Camus was afflicted with TB, but smoked his whole life. Yet, he died in a car crash. So no lessons there.
Also, I would add a note here about absurdity: Camus was afflicted with TB, but smoked his whole life. Yet, he died in a car crash. So no lessons there.
September 22, 2018
During the course of My Big Fat Reading Project I have read the three novels Albert Camus published during his life: The Plague, The Stranger, The Fall. I did not read them in order and all I really knew about him is that my father revered him. I wanted to know more.
Albert Camus also wrote plays and essays. He came to fame in the 1940s in Paris where he was initially close with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957. Three years later he died in an automobile accident. Each of his novels left a big impression on me.
I bought this biography when it was first published but never got around to reading it. Now that I am writing about 1960 in my own autobiography I decided the time had come.
Camus, A Romance is unique as biographies go because Elizabeth Hawes weaves in a memoir of her own. She covers her first infatuation with Camus's writing when she was a college student. She also recounts her journey, her research and her experiences in writing the book over nine years.
Naturally I learned much about the man, his times, his triumphs and his troubles. I discovered for myself why his novels had moved me so profoundly. Best of all I found the political philosophy that most closely aligns with my own.
I closed the book wishing we had someone these days to explicate so well what is going on. Lacking that, even from the grave this man brought me understandings I needed. He has much to say about terrorism and its causes. It was apt that I finished the book on September 11.
June 14, 2012
The book started well. This is an interesting concept: an subjective experience of another person's life through secondary sources -- books, writings, remembrances of others, and visiting of sites and locations. At the risk of being overly personal, both at the internal life of the author as well as the assumed interior life of Camus, this book tried to manage a tricky line between an objective analysis versus a subjective assessment. The writing is lyrical, occasionally careens toward sentimental, but manages to maintain a constant voice. What I have problem is the organization of this book -- too fragmental -- for an organized way to understand Camus. But I admit this may be my own limitation: perhaps the author assumes a ready familiarity with Camus's life as well as his work.
July 11, 2012
Loved it. Wish I had thought of this idea when I was writing my MA Thesis: part memoir, part literary criticism, part history, part biography. Well-written, intelligent and engaging. Looks at Camus the man and the historical and literary subject.
November 13, 2009
I love this indirect biography of Camus that is also an autobiography: the story of one woman's obsession with Camus. (I feel it too.)
April 3, 2023
Well, I know more about Camus than I did before reading this book, but I also know more about Elizabeth Hawes, and that wasn't one of my objectives. Even though Hawes has access to all sorts of documentation and details, the book felt to me to give only a superficial account of Camus' life. There are many references to his private life and some to his thought and ideas, but Hawes, whose aim in pursuing the project of Camus' biography is to get to know her hero better, confesses herself that he remains something of an enigma. And that's the impression the reader is left with. Perhaps a more "objective" approach would have provided a fuller picture.
June 1, 2020
A great book from Elizabeth Hawes about my favorite writer of all time, Albert Camus.
In addition to being a decent biography of the man (though purely on that value it must be said there are better books) the book is an expiration of Hawes’ own relationship with Camus as a reader and admirer.
Not a bad read at all and worth a look for Ardmore Camus fans.,
In addition to being a decent biography of the man (though purely on that value it must be said there are better books) the book is an expiration of Hawes’ own relationship with Camus as a reader and admirer.
Not a bad read at all and worth a look for Ardmore Camus fans.,
September 16, 2021
I loved this book. Camus is one of my favorite authors and I was thrilled to learn more about his life and his books.
January 31, 2010
Upon seeing this recently released book, blazoned with the name and likeness of a personal hero, I could not help but purchase it and read it.
Elizabeth Hawes has, to her infinite credit, done a great deal of research as she embarked on the journey to write this book. So much of her collected anecdotes from friends of Camus create a detailed sense of the man himself. One cannot fault the dedication of her enterprise. The book however, is in many ways exactly what it's subtitle implies it to be, and it is that which became a bit obstructive for me personally while reading it.
The journey was mostly personal, it would seem. So much of the author herself is written into the story of Camus' life, and as one moves through the early parts of the book it becomes apparent that one is not reading a biography, but rather a personal and opinioned examination of one mortal human being by another.
The chapters are not entirely chronological, but instead ordered primarily by theme with a secondary emphasis on actual succession. This makes it so that the narrative path of Camus life seems second in priority to the overall portrait of the man. It is an interesting approach, but it became a bit frustrating, especially towards the end, as it complicated stringing together the events of the man's life in order. While it help hammer home how personally resonant Camus' work was for Ms. Hawes, it certainly did not aid in the execution of good coherent biography.
I would recommend this book be read alongside a more encyclopedic account of Camus in order to ease out some of the difficulty with continuity of events. It is however, very enjoyable and certainly opens up a deeper consideration of the roles our favorite authors can play in forming our own beliefs.
Elizabeth Hawes has, to her infinite credit, done a great deal of research as she embarked on the journey to write this book. So much of her collected anecdotes from friends of Camus create a detailed sense of the man himself. One cannot fault the dedication of her enterprise. The book however, is in many ways exactly what it's subtitle implies it to be, and it is that which became a bit obstructive for me personally while reading it.
The journey was mostly personal, it would seem. So much of the author herself is written into the story of Camus' life, and as one moves through the early parts of the book it becomes apparent that one is not reading a biography, but rather a personal and opinioned examination of one mortal human being by another.
The chapters are not entirely chronological, but instead ordered primarily by theme with a secondary emphasis on actual succession. This makes it so that the narrative path of Camus life seems second in priority to the overall portrait of the man. It is an interesting approach, but it became a bit frustrating, especially towards the end, as it complicated stringing together the events of the man's life in order. While it help hammer home how personally resonant Camus' work was for Ms. Hawes, it certainly did not aid in the execution of good coherent biography.
I would recommend this book be read alongside a more encyclopedic account of Camus in order to ease out some of the difficulty with continuity of events. It is however, very enjoyable and certainly opens up a deeper consideration of the roles our favorite authors can play in forming our own beliefs.
February 21, 2013
I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't finish this book, no matter how much I love Camus, the author. I got to page 193 and gave up. Hawes is in love with Camus, like literally, and her sentimentality and romantic idealization throw the book off base. Even when she's talking about his faults, it's as though she wants to slightly scold a boy child. She takes it pretty easy on him. Now, like I said, I love Camus and have read most of what he's written. I consider The Plague to be the greatest novel ever written. I even love A Happy Death! But this book simply bored me. And it bothered me a little too. Hawes seems like a stalker in this book. It took me out of my comfort zone. She's a little too engrossed in her subject. But, boy, could she have written a more scintillating book! It was just flat out boring, and in the end, that's why I couldn't bring myself to finish it. Pity. I'm giving it three stars instead of two because of the subject matter.
May 21, 2010
Though I like biography and learning the details of people's lives, I feel as if this one was intended only for the most devout of followers of Albert Camus and those steeped in the politics and philosophies of his times in France and North Africa. I have read "the Stranger" probably 3-4 times, but none of his other works and I felt out of place, like an imposter trying to understand things way over my head. I would have appreciated it more if I'd read his other works.
The biography has definitely inspired me to read more of Camus work for sure and I look forward to doing that. My favorite parts really were quotations from Camus' writing itself.
Also, environment is huge for me too, and I also now feel a strong pull to visit Algeria's coast someday and explore its desert lands as well.
The biography has definitely inspired me to read more of Camus work for sure and I look forward to doing that. My favorite parts really were quotations from Camus' writing itself.
Also, environment is huge for me too, and I also now feel a strong pull to visit Algeria's coast someday and explore its desert lands as well.
October 30, 2010
Though the book begins with some interesting insights into the life of Camus, it fizzles out about half way through. Eventually the author finds herself repeating the same observations over and over again. The book reads like an exam answer from an overeager student who is unsure of which direction to take so they only know they are done when they have finally committed every last thing they know on the subject to the page.
February 10, 2010
This came highly recommended but I found the author to be rather irritating and had a tough time focusing on the subject. If you have never read of Camus's life its worth your time. He is often deemed to be one of the great thinkers of the 20th century but his life story is just as interesting. There are better studies out there like Oliver Reed's biography.
July 16, 2009
I'm sure I'm just jealous of the author's intellectual life and pedigree and that's why I couldn't fully enjoy this. Either that or I just found the structure of the thing unsatisfying. On the other hand, I kind of have a crush on Camus now too.
February 3, 2018
This biography/autobiography and (vicarious) love affair with Camus (whom Hawes never met) doesn't quite make it in any of those categories. Nevertheless, it's an interesting read about a magnetic figure in mid 20th century literature, theater and politics.
September 12, 2009
I knew very little about Camus before reading this book. An intriguing view of Algeria before its independence and of literary society in France. The pace of the book slowed down in the second half & I found myself skimming through most of it.
April 28, 2010
Excellent writing. I normally dislike a nonfiction where the writer inserts herself into the narrative, but for some reason it fits this book perfectly.
Read
August 1, 2010hamda
June 9, 2014
If Camus is important to you, this is a" must read".
May 26, 2020
pretty standard biography, appreciated the chapters on camus and char the most.
Read
July 30, 2009Not in the FCPL catalog
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