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A review by rhys_thomas_sparey
A Happy Death by Albert Camus
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
A slick and striking anti-eulogy for optimism and an important prelude to L'Etranger.
There is a kafka-esque quality to the tragic life of the protagonist, the banality of his life being absurdly inescapable. How can one then will happiness into it? When the oppurtunity presents itself, it is morally questionable and the solution is ironically underwhelming.
Herein lies the great genius of Camus, summarised in little over a hundred easily digestable pages: on the surface, he can appear counter-revolutionary, but it is not that one necessarily should exploit others or that social justice is futile. It is just that the former is intrinsic to a capitalist economy and the latter is opposed to it.
Much like Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, Camus is interested in how this absurdity is felt and rationalised at a personal, visceral level. The protagonist never truly wills happiness; the closest he gets is a vague grasp of the concept earned through a diseased and isolated death.
So, A Happy Death rewrites Fyodr Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground? It is a satire of utilitarianism? Not in the sense that the protagonist's happiness comes neither from willing it or ignoring it; happiness ebbs and flows like the tide and is determined in large part by broad structures of socio-economic inequality. It is absurd, and Camus describes it beautifully. This is what makes it anti-eulogistic of optimism.
But Camus never submitted it himself for publication and recycles the same characters and themes for L'Etranger, which elaborates the same subject matter more eloquently, more effectively, and in greater depth. Nevertheless, A Happy Death, I feel, packs more of a punch, with more charm and more of an edge, Camus' philosophy encoded as much into how he writes as what he writes.
There is a kafka-esque quality to the tragic life of the protagonist, the banality of his life being absurdly inescapable. How can one then will happiness into it? When the oppurtunity presents itself, it is morally questionable and the solution is ironically underwhelming.
Herein lies the great genius of Camus, summarised in little over a hundred easily digestable pages: on the surface, he can appear counter-revolutionary, but it is not that one necessarily should exploit others or that social justice is futile. It is just that the former is intrinsic to a capitalist economy and the latter is opposed to it.
Much like Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, Camus is interested in how this absurdity is felt and rationalised at a personal, visceral level. The protagonist never truly wills happiness; the closest he gets is a vague grasp of the concept earned through a diseased and isolated death.
So, A Happy Death rewrites Fyodr Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground? It is a satire of utilitarianism? Not in the sense that the protagonist's happiness comes neither from willing it or ignoring it; happiness ebbs and flows like the tide and is determined in large part by broad structures of socio-economic inequality. It is absurd, and Camus describes it beautifully. This is what makes it anti-eulogistic of optimism.
But Camus never submitted it himself for publication and recycles the same characters and themes for L'Etranger, which elaborates the same subject matter more eloquently, more effectively, and in greater depth. Nevertheless, A Happy Death, I feel, packs more of a punch, with more charm and more of an edge, Camus' philosophy encoded as much into how he writes as what he writes.