Albert Camus: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: Very thorough, but gets bogged down with detail
Review: Although an accomplished and thorough book, it sometimes get bogged down in detail. However, it is a very carefully compiled and analytical book. Good selection of pictures and details of others artists in Camus' life. I enjoyed it greatly.

Rating:
Summary: This is the Single Best Camus Biography
Review: I think I most love this magnificent book because the chilly reception it has received mirrors the deeply ironic incivility the French elite reserved for Camus himself. One can love Camus for his words, his insight, and his passion, but I think I love him most for the fact that he was hated by idiots. It is this theme that runs throughout Lottman's wonderful biography, and it also seems to describe to an extent Lottman's own experience.

For nearly the last quarter of Camus's short life, he lived in disfavor amongst the Paris literati. And for what? Because he, virtually alone amongst French intellectuals, recognized early on the horror that was the true nature of the regime of Joseph Stalin(socialism being virtually an article of faith with the likes of Sartre and others in France at the time).

Lottman himself seems to have had a rather similar experience in his publication of this book. As he points out in his preface to this second edition, a cottage industry has evolved in France and elsewhere in Camus scholarship and criticism. However, though that body of work is deeply indebted to Lottman's research, his preeminent role is rarely acknowledged. I think this is probably because, like Camus, Lottman is an outsider. Neither man was a French native (Camus was an Algerian of mixed French-Spanish descent, Lottman is an American expatriate living in Paris) and neither is an academic by trade (Camus was a newspaper editor, novelist and a man of the theatre, while Lottman is a journalist). Thus, Lottman has seemed at times as unwelcome amongst the French elite as Camus did himself. Again the irony is too much; Lottman has received comparatively little recognition even though he himself is an extremely important cornerstone of current Camus research.

Anyway, this book for whatever reason has received little more attention here in the United States than it has gotten anywhere else, and I think that is a shame. It is a wonderful, readable book. Most importantly, it is non-judgmental and it is very deferential. By that I mean that Lottman nowehere preaches to us how we should understand Camus; as he himself says, the essence of an artist is not in his biography, but in his works. It is long, but has only that level of detail befitting an intellectual biography of this caliber.

For anyone who really wants to understand Camus's literature, a thorough understanding of his life--like Lottman's--is priceless.

Rating:
Summary: This is the Single Best Camus Biography
Review: I think I most love this magnificent book because the chilly reception it has received mirrors the deeply ironic incivility the French elite reserved for Camus himself. One can love Camus for his words, his insight, and his passion, but I think I love him most for the fact that he was hated by idiots. It is this theme that runs throughout Lottman's wonderful biography, and it also seems to describe to an extent Lottman's own experience.

For nearly the last quarter of Camus's short life, he lived in disfavor amongst the Paris literati. And for what? Because he, virtually alone amongst French intellectuals, recognized early on the horror that was the true nature of the regime of Joseph Stalin(socialism being virtually an article of faith with the likes of Sartre and others in France at the time).

Lottman himself seems to have had a rather similar experience in his publication of this book. As he points out in his preface to this second edition, a cottage industry has evolved in France and elsewhere in Camus scholarship and criticism. However, though that body of work is deeply indebted to Lottman's research, his preeminent role is rarely acknowledged. I think this is probably because, like Camus, Lottman is an outsider. Neither man was a French native (Camus was an Algerian of mixed French-Spanish descent, Lottman is an American expatriate living in Paris) and neither is an academic by trade (Camus was a newspaper editor, novelist and a man of the theatre, while Lottman is a journalist). Thus, Lottman has seemed at times as unwelcome amongst the French elite as Camus did himself. Again the irony is too much; Lottman has received comparatively little recognition even though he himself is an extremely important cornerstone of current Camus research.

Anyway, this book for whatever reason has received little more attention here in the United States than it has gotten anywhere else, and I think that is a shame. It is a wonderful, readable book. Most importantly, it is non-judgmental and it is very deferential. By that I mean that Lottman nowehere preaches to us how we should understand Camus; as he himself says, the essence of an artist is not in his biography, but in his works. It is long, but has only that level of detail befitting an intellectual biography of this caliber.

For anyone who really wants to understand Camus's literature, a thorough understanding of his life--like Lottman's--is priceless.