So you were a Rebel then,there was no getting around that,you were reminded
everytime some Hoon yelled out,"get a haircut!'There was a sort of,'cutural
revolution',going on and living close by Universities you couldn't help
noticing.Certainly psychedelics had demonstrated brave new worlds of
freedom existed right under our noses.The question was no longer,"why
rebel?',it was,'why conform?'
Conforming could mean burning children alive in Vietnam,we had to
rebel.Here was a writer Camus,well known from,'the stranger',who seemed to
have written the textbook on being a rebel.Yet there were immediate
difficulties with the text.It was dense,it was full of abstract concepts
and few of the characters mentioned rang any bells.Still it was fascinating
to try and learn the meaning of the concepts through context.A great game!
And then there were the characters,these were real people he was talking
about and it was enough to know that they existed at the time.I could find
out more about them later and would I!
Albert was laying it all out for the last few hundred years and all you had
to do as a reader was rise to the occasion.Boot up,if you like,it all
seemed to be right there.The who,what,where,when and most important,why of
the meaning of,if not life,a critical issue of my life at that time and
place.Revolt.
Now the concentration camps are creeping back,the humane executioners and
the terror we can still find uses for Camus.Or can we?Due to bad
translations,the Gaullic language or some inate sexism of Alberts,he seems
to have written out half the human race.Women do get a look in as
characters,even fictional characters and 'love interest,'but a feminist
would have to work at this book.It would have to detract from the enjoyment.
