The Journal is being sent to the printers at the end of this month. If you are thinking of submitting an abstract you are rapidly approaching the last chance to get your paper included in this edition.
To get in this edition to need to:
(1) Write your abstract
(2) Submit your abstract
(3) Have your abstract accepted
(4) Write your paper
(5) Submit your paper
All before the 30th September!
The Strangerer
Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow Street, West Village, New York
Loosely based on Camus classic The Stranger, Maher’s The Strangerer has opened in New York. I haven’t seen it but you can if you’re in New York and have $25 for a ticket. For everyone else, here’s a YouTube clip…
If you have seen the play and would like to comment on it for the Albert Camus Society, send us your review via email and we’ll probably post it on the website. Contact details here
The 1st Albert Camus Society Meeting will in held from 10am-5pm on the 6th July 2008 in South Kensington, London.
This meeting is FREE to all members of the Society but places are limited. To book your place simply enter the members area of the website for more details. Priority will be given to people intending to deliver papers or lead discussions.
The plan for the day is informal discussion on Camus and his ideas. The venue is a meeting room in a South Kensington hotel. During the day, there will be papers on various Camus-related subjects followed by questions and answers, as well more general discussions on Camus, his life and thought. In the latter case, a topic (for example: Camus’s concept of the absurd) will be briefly introduced by a member and then discussed by everyone.
If you would like to deliver a paper
Send an abstract or outline and title to secretary [at] camus-society [dot] com
If you would like to lead a discussion
Send the topic area you would like to discuss with a brief description to the above email address.
More details will be posted leading up to the day…
What is the purpose of the Albert Camus Society? The answer is to simply gather together people interested in keeping the ideas of Albert Camus alive. The website exists to take care of the ‘gathering’ but can not keep the ideas fresh on its own. What is needed is an active journal and regular meetings to get discussions going.
The journal
The problem with the journal is simply a lack of material. Some people have provided excellent papers, others have proposed papers that unfortunately have not materialized. For this reason, no journal has as yet been sent to the printers. All papers submitted to the Society will be posted as PDFs for download (and discussion) in the members area. In addition, anyone who wishes to write something for the website is welcome to submit material.
It could be the case that many people not from academic backgrounds feel unqualified to submit their ideas, this would be a shame. The Society welcomes all discussion related to Albert Camus. To submit a paper simply email a Word attachment of the work to secretary [at] camus-society [dot] com.
Meetings
Our members are spread across the globe with people living as far apart as the US, the Middle East, Australia, and the UK. Obviously, arranging regular meetings would be tricky. Which is why within the members area there is a place for people to post links to their blogs and websites with the hope that members will arrange meetings within their own areas.
March 2008 is our goal to set up a meeting in London. Hopefully, even it consists of just a handful people, we can have an enjoyable and productive day.
Wishing you all a happy New Year!
It was Camus’s birthday on the 7th. In celebration, Knocklofty press has published a new translation of The Misunderstanding and Caligula.
Visit their website to read more: http://knocklofty.com
Music inspired by Camus’s The Growing Stone, included in Exile and the Kingdom is available on iTunes for those who are interested.
For more information see http://www.brimstoneandblue.com
This book takes a fresh look at the novels and short stories of Albert Camus, from his early attempt at a first novel, La Mort heureuse to the largely autobiographical Le Premier homme, unfinished at the time of his death. It seeks to see the oeuvre as a totality, coherent throughout, and examines the linkages and transformations from one work to the next, in the context of Camus’s thought, attitudes and topoi or themes. The development of narrative techniques is examined, ranging from laconism to lyricism, from allegorism to realism, from humour to biting satire. The author traces the influence on Camus’s thought of philosophers and thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche and the pre-Socratics on the one hand, and St Augustine, Pascal, and Simone Weil on the other, and considers the circularity of his work, from the early preoccupation with the finality of death and the search for meaning to the return to the origin and source in Le Premier homme. The enduring appeal of Camus’s work is attributed to its humane openness and its challenges for our time.
Contents: Sisyphus’ Stone – The Gods of Happiness. La Mort heureuse – A Happy Life and a Happy Death.
L’Étranger – Voices in a Time of Plague. La Peste – A Sojourn in the Circles of Hell. La Chute – The Landscapes of Solitude. L’Exil et le Royaume – Sailing to Ithaca. Le Premier homme – Adam’s Tale Retold
The Author: Moya Longstaffe studied in Queen’s University, Belfast, and the universities of Montpellier and Heidelberg. She has taught in a number of universities in England, Scotland, Ireland and France, and is at present an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Ulster. Previous publications include a number of articles on Camus and a volume on Corneille, Stendhal and Claudel.
For more information visit: peterlang.com
Water Mosley, author of Devil in Blue Dress, has included Albert Camus’s The Stranger in his Newsweek, A Life in Books top 5. He says of the book, “It had a deep impact on my writing. Existentialism and hard-boiled noir fit together.” Camus’s classic was third on Mosley’s list, between One Hundred Years of Solitude and Freud’s The Interpretation of dreams.
Do you have something to say about Albert Camus? The Albert Camus Society is interested in receiving written work about Albert Camus and related subjects. Maybe you disagree with something he said, or something that someone else has said about him or his ideas. Or perhaps you have something to say about a wider issue, something that Camus was a part of or has a connection with. If you have something to say that would be of interest to people interested in Albert Camus and his work, we’d like to hear from you.
Depending on what you’d like to write and the audience you’d like to reach, we can either post your work on our website or in our Journal.
Contact us with an outline of what you’d like to say and someone will get back to you.
“The composer Detlev Glanert said he was drawn to Albert Camus’s play “Caligula” because, rather than having characters who interact with one another, it centers on a single character who dominates the others. That’s putting it mildly, but another, more down-to- earth answer might be that the play is crammed with violence, an ingredient long cherished by opera composers.” International Herald Tribune.
Read more: caligula opera