Olivia: Most people think Albert Camus’s The Stranger is the ultimate story of a cold, emotionless man. But the book itself was born from an act of fiery, intense passion: Camus, a broke 25-year-old, literally burning his entire past in a tiny stove to make way for it. Jackson: Wait, literally burning his letters? That's the origin story of the most detached character in literature? That feels like a paradox. It’s like finding out the Grinch’s backstory is that he ran a puppy rescue. Olivia: Exactly! And that dramatic act is the real-life prologue to the book we’re diving into today: Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic by Alice Kaplan. Jackson: And Kaplan is the perfect guide for this. She's a Sterling Professor of French at Yale and a total expert on this period. It’s not just a book report; she went deep into the archives for this. It's received rave reviews for being this compelling companion to a novel that has, as Kirkus said, "stayed strange." Olivia: Precisely. She treats the novel like a person, giving it a full biography. And that story starts with a young, struggling Camus in colonial Algeria, long before he was a Nobel Prize winner. It begins with failure, with a manuscript he had to abandon, and with that symbolic bonfire. Jackson: That’s a much more interesting start than just 'a genius sat down and wrote a classic.' It feels more human. So this book wasn't a planned masterpiece? Olivia: Not even close. And that’s our first big idea: the accidental and gritty genesis of The Stranger. It was an evolutionary accident, born from the ashes of another, very different book.

Jackson: Okay, so before the iconic, detached Meursault, who was Camus trying to write about? What was this failed first attempt? Olivia: It was a novel called A Happy Death. And its protagonist, Patrice Mersault—note the similar name—is the polar opposite of the Meursault we know. This guy is full of passion, angst, and a very clear, if twisted, philosophy. Jackson: Twisted how? Olivia: The plot is... well, it's a lot. Patrice Mersault decides that to achieve true happiness, he needs financial freedom. So, he befriends a wealthy, disabled man named Zagreus, listens to his philosophical ramblings, and then murders him to steal his fortune. Jackson: Whoa. So you're telling me Meursault was almost a guy who murders a paraplegic for his money to go on a European vacation? That's a totally different vibe. That’s not absurdism; that’s just a true crime podcast. Olivia: Exactly. It was clunky, overly philosophical, and Camus knew it wasn't working. He sent it to his mentor, Jean Grenier, who gave him some pretty harsh feedback. He basically told him it was a mess. And Camus, to his credit, listened. He put it away. But the real turning point was that bonfire. Jackson: Right, the burning of the past. Tell me more about that scene. I'm picturing this young, intense writer in a dark room. Olivia: It was October 1939, in his mother’s tiny, impoverished apartment in Algiers. His mother was deaf and nearly mute, so the home was filled with this profound silence. Europe was on the brink of war, he was broke, and he felt weighed down by old relationships and political disillusionments. So he dragged out two trunks of old letters—from girlfriends, teachers, friends—and fed them to the flames. Afterwards, he wrote to his fiancée, "I have five years less weighing on my heart." Jackson: So he's literally clearing out his emotional baggage. It’s like a ritual. But how does that lead to Meursault? They still seem like polar opposites. Olivia: Because by abandoning the self-conscious, philosophical striving of A Happy Death and clearing his mind, he created a space for a new kind of character to emerge. Kaplan shows through his notebooks that Meursault wasn't 'invented' so much as 'discovered.' He started writing about a man who "doesn't want to justify himself." A man who lives in the present, who observes without judging. Jackson: A man who wouldn't write long, angsty letters to be burned later. Olivia: Precisely. Meursault was the anti-Patrice. He emerged from Camus’s subconscious. Camus himself said, "Sometimes I need to write things that escape me in part, but which are proof of precisely what within me is stronger than I am." Meursault was that thing. He was an accident, but a necessary one. Jackson: That’s fascinating. The idea that you have to kill your darlings, or in this case, burn your old loves, to find your true voice. But the voice of Meursault is so tied to the events of the book, especially the murder and the trial. It feels so real, so specific. Olivia: And that's because it was. While the character may have emerged from his subconscious, the plot was ripped straight from the headlines and the courtrooms of colonial Algeria.

Jackson: Okay, so Meursault is born from this personal, internal struggle. But the book's most famous part is the trial. It feels so specific and absurd. Where did that come from? It couldn't have all been from his imagination. Olivia: It wasn't. Kaplan's research here is incredible. Before writing The Stranger, Camus was a young, hungry journalist for a leftist newspaper called Alger-Républicain. One of his main beats was covering the criminal courts. Jackson: So he was a crime reporter? Olivia: In a way, yes. And what he saw there was a masterclass in absurdity and injustice, especially when it came to the colonial power dynamics between the French and the Arab population. He saw how the legal system wasn't about justice; it was about reinforcing a narrative. Jackson: And that’s exactly what happens to Meursault. His trial isn't about the murder he committed; it's about whether he's a good, respectable Frenchman who cried at his mother's funeral. Olivia: Exactly. Kaplan uncovers these real-life cases that are eerily similar. There's the story of a man named Billota, a European who shot and killed his Arab neighbor after an argument about a hedge. A hedge! Jackson: Let me guess, he got off lightly? Olivia: His defense? He was "mentally diminished" and lacked an "exact notion of social obligations." The court bought it. He got a two-year suspended sentence. It was considered a joke, even at the time. Jackson: Wow. So Meursault's trial, where his personality is more on trial than the murder itself, is a direct reflection of what Camus was seeing every day. The prosecution focusing on him not crying at his mother's funeral... that's the kind of absurd character assassination he saw in real courtrooms. Olivia: It's a direct parallel. And Kaplan argues that this is key to understanding one of the novel's biggest controversies: the nameless Arab. For decades, critics, especially postcolonial critics like Edward Said, have pointed out that the Arab victim is nameless, voiceless, a mere prop for Meursault's existential crisis. Jackson: Yeah, that's always been the most uncomfortable part of the book. It feels like a huge blind spot. Olivia: But Kaplan suggests it might have been a deliberate, if provocative, artistic choice. In the real-life court cases Camus covered, the Arab victims were treated exactly like that. They were nameless figures in the background of the European perpetrator's story. Their lives, their families, their suffering—it was all irrelevant to the French court. Camus, by making his Arab nameless, might have been holding up a mirror to the dehumanizing reality of the colonial justice system. Jackson: Huh. That reframes it completely. It’s not an accidental oversight; it's a pointed critique. He’s showing the system’s injustice by replicating its coldness. That's a much more radical reading of the novel. Olivia: It is. It transforms the book from a purely philosophical novel about one man's alienation into a deeply political one about the machinery of colonialism. The absurdity isn't just existential; it's judicial. Jackson: And that political dimension is something that got both amplified and distorted in the book's afterlife, right? The story of what happened after it was published is almost as wild as the story of its creation. Olivia: Oh, absolutely. The book's life was just beginning. It was about to become an icon, a weapon in court, and a source of lifelong controversy for Camus.

Jackson: So the book comes out in 1942, in Nazi-occupied Paris, which is already a miracle. And it gets championed by none other than Jean-Paul Sartre. That must have been huge. Olivia: It was a turning point. Sartre's essay, "The Stranger Explained," basically cemented the book's place in intellectual France. He's the one who really framed it as this masterpiece of the absurd, connecting it to American writers like Hemingway. But the book's fame quickly spiraled into something much stranger. Jackson: And this is where it gets really wild. The book becomes this huge hit, an existentialist icon. But then you have the J3 murder trial in the late '40s. Olivia: Yes, the Panconi case. It's a shocking story. A high school student named Claude Panconi murders his classmate. And his defense in court is, essentially, "I'm Meursault. I killed without hate. You can't understand me unless you understand The Stranger." Jackson: That is insane. He used the novel as an alibi for his own lack of empathy. How did Camus react to that? That's every author's nightmare. Olivia: The victim's father wrote a desperate letter to Camus, begging him to condemn the boy's defense. But Camus refused. In a private letter, he expressed his horror but said he couldn't disclaim responsibility. He wrote, "My work... does not consist in accusing people. It consists in understanding them." He felt he couldn't side with the prosecution, even to save his own reputation. Jackson: Wow. That takes an incredible amount of moral integrity. To stand by the ambiguity of your art, even when it's being used for something so horrific. Olivia: It's a heavy burden. And it shows how the book took on a life of its own, far beyond his control. He became uncomfortable with its popularity. Kaplan notes that he initially resisted mass-market paperback editions. He even developed this sarcastic, dark humor about it. When he signed copies for friends, he’d sometimes write, "If you don’t want to be condemned to death, be sure to cry at your mother’s funeral." Jackson: That's hilarious and heartbreaking. He's mocking the very misinterpretation that made his book famous. He becomes a stranger to his own creation. Olivia: In a way, yes. He once wrote in his notebook after becoming famous, "What is a famous man? It’s a man whose first name doesn’t matter." He felt he was becoming "Camus," the icon, rather than Albert, the person. And the book was at the center of that transformation. Jackson: So the book's 'life' is this constant battle between what Camus intended, how people like Sartre interpreted it, and how it was used and abused in the real world. It's a story that never really ends. Even the English title was an accident, right? Olivia: A complete accident! The British publisher wanted to call it The Outsider to avoid confusion with another book. The American publisher, Knopf, had already gone to print with The Stranger. A miscommunication over corrected galleys meant the two English-speaking worlds got two different titles, a split that exists to this day. Jackson: It’s just one more layer of absurdity in the life of this book. Everything about it, from its creation to its legacy, seems to be a series of happy and unhappy accidents.

Olivia: And that's the genius of Alice Kaplan's book. It shows that The Stranger isn't a static masterpiece handed down from on high. It's a living document, shaped by the heat of the Algerian sun, the biases of a colonial courtroom, and the endless, often contradictory, search for meaning by its readers. Jackson: It’s not just a biography of Camus, it’s a biography of the novel itself. And like any life, it’s messy, complicated, and full of surprises. It makes you realize that the book’s power comes from that messiness. Olivia: Exactly. The novel's central question isn't just about Meursault's guilt or innocence. Kaplan shows us that the real question is about our own relationship with meaning, with society, and with the stories we tell ourselves. Meursault refuses to play the game, to tell the story society wants to hear. Jackson: And in doing so, he forces us to question the game itself. It really makes you think. When we read a classic, are we reading the author's story, or are we just adding another layer to its biography? What does The Stranger mean to you? Olivia: That’s the perfect question to end on. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Share your take with us on our social channels. We're always curious to see how these ideas land with the Aibrary community. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.