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shhchar's review
Note: mostly just abandoned because I have no idea where I put the book down and it's been months
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
nickolette's review
I love how un-preconditioned he is in his travels.
Those, at first glance, disconnected notes from a trip led my thoughts to wonder in two or three just as disconnected directions. On one hand, it made me remember all the little discomforts a trip is inevitably accompanied by. As they say, a journey is only glamorous in retrospective, and yet it's hard not let yourself swirl into that silly touristy enthusiasm. There is none of the latter in here. In order to be able to enjoy anything outside ourselves first we need to feel good from the inside, we must have the comfort of Health. The minimum necessary. This gets me back to the so called primitive cultures, poor people, kung-fu and the 90s action movies, where all one truly possesses is his own physical body - his only strength, the source of confidence and means of survival. But the European mind works differently. In the absence of discontempt there is no creative impulse; we need to bleed for it. And for Camus it's not about pleasure, it's about endurance.
On the other hand, I was thinking isn't there an ethical conflict in publishing works after the death of authors and without their explicit consent. Diaries, personal correspondence (Kafka's letters to Milena, Dora and the others, Joyce's letters to Nora), unfinished novels (Fitzgerald's Last Tycoon), and in that case – notes. Arrogantly intruding in their privacy and exposing them as if to make them more human will give us some comfort. In other words, to drag them down to our level. What if now they find new Salinger's writings?
Those, at first glance, disconnected notes from a trip led my thoughts to wonder in two or three just as disconnected directions. On one hand, it made me remember all the little discomforts a trip is inevitably accompanied by. As they say, a journey is only glamorous in retrospective, and yet it's hard not let yourself swirl into that silly touristy enthusiasm. There is none of the latter in here. In order to be able to enjoy anything outside ourselves first we need to feel good from the inside, we must have the comfort of Health. The minimum necessary. This gets me back to the so called primitive cultures, poor people, kung-fu and the 90s action movies, where all one truly possesses is his own physical body - his only strength, the source of confidence and means of survival. But the European mind works differently. In the absence of discontempt there is no creative impulse; we need to bleed for it. And for Camus it's not about pleasure, it's about endurance.
On the other hand, I was thinking isn't there an ethical conflict in publishing works after the death of authors and without their explicit consent. Diaries, personal correspondence (Kafka's letters to Milena, Dora and the others, Joyce's letters to Nora), unfinished novels (Fitzgerald's Last Tycoon), and in that case – notes. Arrogantly intruding in their privacy and exposing them as if to make them more human will give us some comfort. In other words, to drag them down to our level. What if now they find new Salinger's writings?
movealonghome's review
4.0
Strangely good fun. Read it if only to learn Camus went to a roller skating rink in New York and delighted in eating ice cream and often seemed to want to die!
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