Four Books

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Stranger follows a man as he commits a terrible crime and his following trial. It’s short, only around 123 pages. The story is interesting even with spoilers but I’ll avoid them anyway. The narrative isn’t my selling point, however. The narration is what hooked me. It haunts and comforts me. He speaks in these short, matter of fact, sentences. They are detached. Disinterested. Yet, the content is, or at least ought to be, clouded in emotion. The book opens with our first person narrator saying, “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.”

He speaks as if he is not aware one could have an attachment to such a thing. That tone continues for the entirety of the novel, until the very last scene. You are with him, in his thoughts, as he commits a crime for the mildest of reasons. He doesn’t seem ashamed of it. It is what happened. That is all. I can’t say he strips the scene to its bones because I am sure he feels there was nothing there to strip. It was always just the bones. As we come to his trial, much of the discussion is around his detachment. In the final pages, there is a release. The narrator has only acknowledged the world as it presented itself to him. Now he acknowledges what it is to him. 

“As if that blind rage has washed me clean, rid me of hope: for the first time, in that night alive with the signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”

The closing monologue has stuck with me, I read it a few times a year. The Stranger was the first book that had an impact on me. It felt like the novel hollowed out my chest and then screamed into its void. I can attribute this book to inspiring my reading journey. I don’t know if I had spent much time confronting the absurdity of the world we live in before. Camus shows you what that looks like. He lays the world out bare so you can see it. The Strange showed me something I had never looked at directly. It taught me something I already knew.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus is from Camus’ cycle of the absurd, the same one as The Stranger. It's an essay on the “one truly serious philosophical problem.” If the world can only present to you its gentle indifference, should you choose to live in it? If the world is absurd, meaningless, indifferent - why live? The essay answers this question with a series of examples and arguments.

If the world is inherently meaningless, what can be done? Camus suggestions there are a few options: suicide, religion, and revolting. You can agree with the conditions of the universe and take your own life, embracing the empty death you were always headed towards; you can take Kierkegaard's leap of faith and trust that some religion will give you the meaning you need; or, you can revolt against the absurd altogether. 

“That revolt gives life its value. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores its majesty to that life.”

The essay concludes with what has become Camus’ most famous quote: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” This line has found a place in pop culture and I hope those reciting it find the same emphasis in the word must as I do. It isn’t that you can or even should imagine Sisyphus as happy - rolling his stone to the top of the mountain endlessly. But you must imagine him happy. Any other picture of him is misguided. 

This text has shaped my worldview more than any other individual writing. For those who have not opted into religion or suicide, you feel like there is nothing. But, as Camus points out, you have yourself. And you can revolt against the absurd.  As I write this, I see a messy row of trees across the street. They are there, they exist. It can feel like revolting does not create meaning, it just ignores the question, but I think it does. Not only does it create meaning but that meaning is just as real as the trees.

Similar trees, experience is something - I’m not sure what it is but it exists. My perception of the tree is as real as the tree itself. My perception of the tree, my reaction to the tree, and my memories of the tree all exist. Any meaning I might have or belief also exists. They are part of my experience which is just another existing thing. Meaning can always exist. It only comes from myself and only in the moment I believe in it. A tree that rotted away centuries ago does not still exist. Unlike the tree’s physical existence, the universe cannot create my experience - it can only be the catalyst for them. I can accept the thoughts of others but that is a decision I am making, conscious or not. Nothing can create purpose for me. I must constantly define my own purpose at every moment.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl makes me regret every time I’ve recommended a book that wasn’t Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It is a memoir of a psychologist who was working on a manuscript for his novel meaning-focused therapy at the start of the second World War. In the book, Dr. Frankl tells his story of being thrown into a concentration camp and the interaction he had with fellow inmates up and through the end of the war.

It’s a heavy book. The atrocities he describes seem so horrible they are hard to imagine. If the words are this impactful, I cannot begin to imagine the events themselves. But Dr. Frankl does not have to imagine them. All he has to do is recall them. Despite the blinding tragedies, he is able to analyze the events and the people’s responses to them through his unique perspective.

Nietzsche once said, as Dr. Fankl quotes in Man’s Search for Meaning, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” This largely describes Frankl’s perspective. He describes the conditions of different prisoners, explaining that the ones who had a reason to survive, were more likely to survive. It was the hope itself that kept them alive. There’s a wonderful poem by Emily Dicksons, ‘Hope’ Is The Thing with Feathers:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

You don’t need to know the word to the song of hope to sing its tune. There will always be reasons to lose hope but there will never be no hope. Even in extremity, it will never ask a crumb of you. 

Dr. Viktor Frankl’s stories are best heard from him. I won’t pull any anecdotes out of it. All the books I talk about here are life changing to me but if I had to recommend one, it is Man’s Search for Meaning. It’s a short read, I promise you’ll be better for it.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

I first heard that Emily Dickenson poem from John Green; an author, YouTuber, community leader in global healthcare advocacy, and enjoyer of third tier English football.  The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green is a collection of essays about history and the author's personal experience. It hides its messages and autobiographical stories behind a fun gimmick - reviewing assets of the human centered planet on a five star scale. He gave Scrath ‘n’ Sniff stickers 3 ½ stars, for example, and cholera 1 star. The review format is a gentle poke at the absurdity of 5 star reviews but mostly an excuse to talk about interesting things that make up our world.

In his review of Indianapolis, Green quotes fellow Indianapolis writer Kurt Vonnegut saying, “What people like about me is Indianapolis.” What I like about John Green is his love for Indianapolis. His deep-seated love for Indianapolis is beautiful and contagious. He describes an egregious, strip-mall infested, intersection less than a mile from his home as “a great American intersection.” I’ve visited that intersection, in fact, and I will grant that “American intersection” half of his claim. Other than the surprise that a bookstore on it has copies of The Anthropocene Review on display with no signage indicating the significance of it being on this very corner - I didn’t see anything special about it. The access points for the Starbucks might be uniquely confusing but other than that it was a stock, off the shelf, American intersection. And yet - there I was. Visiting an intersection. I can’t say that’s something I’ve done before. Outside of Shibuya Scramble Crossing, a great Japanese intersection, I don’t think there are others I would go out of my way to visit. 

John Green’s appreciation of the intersection of 86th and Ditch made it great. Green mentions in the same chapter that Indianapolis is such a thoroughly generic American city that fast food restaurants often test new menus there to gauge how the average American will respond to it. And somewhere in one of those drive-throughs, is American author John Green. He is in love with his city. He’s found niches and corners in it that make me want to move there. Although, that says more about Green’s writing than it does my likelihood to move to Indianapolis.

When I say what I like about John Green is his love for Indianapolis, I don’t just mean the city. He uses Indianapolis as a generic but irreplaceable city in his essay. I use it to describe his deep passion in things I might find mundane. The Anthropocene Reviewed could even be described as a series of case studies of the mundane. I had heard of Nathan’s Famous hotdog eating contest but had no opinions or attachment to it. Green shines the light on the mob mentality the event has brought out of us, as the crowd turns on a Japanese contestant, calling him “Shanghai Boy” and telling him to go home. He also brings up George Shea, who he claims to be the last great carnival barker. Shea’s introductions for contestants range from “America itself” to “When we are young, we drink our coffee with milk and sugar. And as we age, we drink it with milk only, then we drink it black, then we drink it decaf, then we die. Our next eater is at decaf.” From the board game Monopoly to Canada geese to humankind’s capacity to wonder - Green brings an unexpected history, attachment, and perspective.

There is a famous moment in the history of existential philosophy where Raymond Aron held up a drink to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and said"...you can make philosophy out of this cocktail!” (per At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell). I imagine John Green holding up a Starbucks cup and saying “You can make melancholy out of this cappuccino!” and I would be eagerly awaiting what he had to say about it. 

Conclusion

There are a lot of books that have shaped my worldview, there are also a lot of non-books that have shaped it. I chose these four to retrospectively describe a narrative I’ve formed.

The Stranger opened me up to the absurd. The cold honesty of the push and pull of the world around us. The lack of reason for the extremes of life that I can’t imagine being random. The Myth of Sisyphus expanded on the idea and gave me a framework for understanding what facing the absurd means. Man’s Search for Meaning showed me that even in the most extreme situations humanity knows, you can still rebel against hopelessness. The Anthropocene Reviewed met me where I was at and showed me how to find meaning in the small corners of my life. Meaning is there and so is hope but only I can find it. I hope you find yours too.