Albert Camus - The Outsider

The Outsider written by Albert Camus was published in 1942, his first novel, it is a mind-blowing piece of literature; it really allows you to look at life from a slightly different angle and is a major work of philosophy, dealing primarily with absurdism.

 

The book is used by Camus to explore the theory of the Absurd: a paradox which deals with the idea that although, as humans, we cherish life and value existence highly we are all destined to die and are conscious of our own mortality. Everything we do is futile in the face of this mortality. How can anyone enjoy life knowing that they are sentenced to death? Something like unhappiness is easy to deal with as we know that happiness will follow: we've been unhappy before but we have also been happy and we know that the two follow one another (Parmenides), but any enjoyment of life is impossible due to the meaningless of it. To illustrate this, Camus sentences his main protagonist Meursault, to death and the book follows the life of this character before and after the sentencing. 

The Outsider is set in the author's own birth place of Algeria and chronicles a short period of the life of the main protagonist's life leading up to his untimely death. The book is split into two sections. Part one details the funeral of the protagonist's very recently deceased mother and Meursault's murder of a local man while the second part follows the same character's court trial for murder. In this way, Meursault confronts death in three distinct ways including facing up to his own end. The book leaves the reader uncertain about the nature of Meursault; although it is written in the first person he gives nothing about the his own interpretation of events and has a complete emotional detachment from what is happening around him:

 "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday." pg.3

The reasons for this detachment depend on the reading of the book one adopts. It is maintained throughout witnessing his own mother's death, the murder and his own road death trial. One interpretation for example, is that the character suffers from asbergers or autism to some degree; unaided and misunderstood as he stumbles through his own life and causing the reader to feel wonder, empathy, frustration as they read:

"And the more I thought about it, the more I dug out my memory things I had overlooked or forgotten. I realised then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored. In a way, it was an advantage." Part 2, Chapter 2, pg. 79

If the book has a bizarre feel to it it overall, this can be explained in part by the fact that it is used by Camus to explore the theory of the Absurd. I find the theory of the Absurd and the way it is expressed through this book fantastic. Reading the book as an exploration of the theory: Meursault's emotional detachment is explained in an instant. This paradox deals with the idea that humans cherish life and value their own existence highly; they seek happiness, comfort and perhaps knowledge and more. Despite all this thirst for living, when all is said and done, we are all destined to die and everything we do becomes futile in the face of or own mortality. How can life have any meaning for you if you are aware that you will die. Coping with unhappiness is possible: we know happiness is sure to follow, but the meaningless of life means any enjoyment of it is impossible.

Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives

I just finished Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. I first came across the author through an article that my Dad gave me about him a couple of years. It was this book, translated in 2008, that brought his name to the attention of the English speaking world. He died in 2003 and was only truly recognised internationally, after his death.

The book focuses on  two Mexican poets, Arturo Bolano (a ficticious alter-ego of the author) and Ulises Lima and documents their search, over twenty years, for Cisarea Tinajero, a mysterious dissappeared writer and founder of the real vicerismo movement. It is told in three parts. The first and last are diary entries by a young student who, through his involvement in Bolano and Lima's gang of real viceralistas, ends up leaving Mexico  DF with the two. The main, central part of the book consists of a series of various freinds' and acquaintances' accounts of meetings with and reflections on Bolano and Lima, and their lives between 1976 to 1996.

 The central part of the book is an audacious undertaking, in terms both of the scale of what it chronicles -twenty years of searching through Mexico, Spain, France, Israel and even Africa- and in the narative technique used to tell this. Some of the writers give numerous accounts, others appearing just once; some are a couple of paragraphs while others are over twenty pages long. What impressed me most was Bolano's ability to adopt the persona of these fictitious characters, and use them todescribe a certain period of one or the other of Lima or Bolano's lives. One character simply retells tales that Bolano told him. Fantastic tales and short stories in their own right. Another character is asked by Bolano to assist him in a duel with a critic who Belano feels has misrepresented him.  Later in the book, there's a passage from a woman whose spare room Belano rents. She's a body builder who falls in love with Bolano, but with whom Bolano has little, if anything, in common. Sometimes I found myself stunned by the brilliance of these first person naratives. The content is so rich, giving you an awful lot to dwell on.

The book is realist in its descriptions and has an incredible richness in terms of the language. I  have to admit that when I first picked up the book, I was overwhealmed. It had been a long while since I'd done much reaing in Spanish and it did seem a little daunting. It is certainly a book that you can return to, and understand more and more with time. It is the first book that I have read that is so closely tied to poetry and was an awakening, with regard to how beaurtiful writing can be. I'm now completely sold on LAm literiture. With Javier Marias and Jose Saramago, every book I pick up at the moment feels like it's the best book I've ever read.

Work Now, Climb later

Climbing has taken a back seat since arriving in Bandung. The first indication of this came perhaps just before Christmas, in the Harau Valley, in West Sumatra. My interest in the Harau Valley was first sparked by the casual mention of a group of self-sufficient climbers in the Lonely Planet and the subsequent Internet searches that gave a hazy view of definite climbing possibilities. The Valley is a stop-off on the backpacker trail, with the waterfalls of Lemba Harau incorporated into tours to the area around Bukkitinggi. It consists of a single road around which there are villages in a rural setting which back onto distant rocky outcrops. As you continue up the valley, the rock gets closer, the dwellings get fewer and sweeping 100 metre expanses of yellow orange and blue rock rising from emerald green rice fields continue kilometre after kilometre and lead finally to the village of Harau itself. We stayed at the Echo Homestay, a place very close to nature providing an ideal location from which to set out on day trips into the valley itself.

The Eiger Wall

While we managed to fit a visit to the place into a one week trip as well as cart a rope, shoes and harnesses along on the trip, we didn’t get any actual climbing in; in the three days we spent there we only took a look at the rock and the astounding scenery around from ground level. In retrospect it seems like a genuine missed opportunity, and in writing this I realize just how upset I am, while at the time it felt like we tried, although perhaps not with a full effort, to get onto the rock and get some climbing done. By the time we had psyched up to give it a go on the afternoon of the second day, the rain began and didn’t let up before we left to Danau Maninjau on the morning of the third.
While the circumstances and the rain were perhaps partly to blame I can’t help thinking that a fear of the prospect of having to down climb, of the bolts (which were for the most part in good condition), and of my unfamiliarity with the conglomerate rock all went together in creating a certain reluctance to climb and prolonged the climbing until it was, by accident, too late to do so. The trip to Maninjau made up for the lack of climbing for the most part.

In Bandung, we found a local climbing wall within the first week through a friend of Anja’s and went down a couple of times initially and then, when I started work I managed to get it together enough to trek down twice a week at 9 a.m. to have a rewarding pre-work climb. The wall is at a local outdoors shop Eiger on Jl. Cihampelas and by Indonesian standards is pretty good. It is a fully free standing 25 metre overhung, bendcrete-esque artificial wall with holds, bolts enough to get you to the top at about French 7a climbing. Inside, the shop has large glass windows looking into a small bouldering wall made of similar paneled climbing wall with a flat section, a stepped roof, overhung by about two metres and another by around one.

Coming from the UK and having worked at both The Edge in Sheffield and the Manchester Climbing Centre sets my expectations of how a climbing wall should be far too high. Having just one lead wall and small bouldering area at the Eiger Climbing Centre, both with questionable safety issues puts a slight damper on the whole experience. Still, the walls present enough of a challenge to keep me occupied. Throughout the month of March though, I haven’t been down. I put this down to the fact that I haven’t been out on rock since arriving in Indonesia. It really does kill the motivation. Let’s face it, indoor climbing just isn’t the same.

All in all, now that the dry season seems to be making a, appearance, I hope to be able to post some information about climbing around Bandung in the coming weeks and to be able to get motivation back up to the level it was prior to leaving the UK. Bandung has much in its favour in terms of climbing: the local competition climbers who, while perhaps being unable to go outdoors as much as one might hope, are always ready and willing to share a session. So Citata becomes less of a dream and more of a reality.