Joe’s Comments (group member since Jul 28, 2020)

Joe’s comments from the Existential Book Club - Tempe, AZ group.

We are reading this book for May

Thanks for your thoughtful posting on Myth of Sisyphus. I'm sorry you missed our book club discussion last Sunday.

Our group read the Plague and the Fall last year; two of my very favorite novels. While I agree with you that Myth of Sisyphus is an eloquent explanation of Absurdity in human life, reading it still gives me problems. The consensus of the group Sunday was that Camus was a better novelist than philosopher.

Since he starts out criticizing his contemporary Existentialists one is tempted to regard this as a philosophical essay. But his arguments are specious, his portrayals of Husserl and SK mostly strawmen. If I change my perspective and regard his Myth more like SK's Point of View for my Work as an Author, I get much more out of it.

I tend to think of Camus in relation to his contemporary psychologists. Freud explained man's existence with his Will to Pleasure, Adler channeled Nietzsche's Will to Power, and Victor Frankl explained our Will to Meaning. I tend to think of Camus' answer to absurdity as a natural extension of Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning.

Frankl was not aiming for some transcendent meaning of Life, although some people can find meaning in religion. Frankl wrote about finding meaning in every moment of every day; in the courage to face life in spite of the ever present certainty that we all end up on the same dust heap.

If you haven't already read it, I strongly recommend Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Cafe (2016). It really helped me to understand Camus's relation to Sartre and de Beauvoir.

Hope you can make it to the next book club.

This book has always been difficult tor me to read. Camus is very eloquent but there's no clear argument to follow or criticize.

KIrill commented on The Fall, Night Train to Lisbon forms a nice juxtaposition with The Fall in that the character is the opposite of Clamence... He is an earnest professor of philology and classical languages, harassed and abandoned by a more worly wife... When he passes the girl on the bridge.... He looks back and when he sees her about to jump he rushes to her rescue... After she vanishes from the scene, he finds her cost, with a philosophical treatise in Portuguese in the pocket... Which causes him to delve into her mystery, the richness of the book and travel to Lisbon...

Our December book discussion of The Fall by Camus was held Dec 20, 2020. We were joined by Kirill Thompson and Joseph Danielewicz.

September book

Zama