The Mersault Investigation – Kamel Daoud

Posted on by Josh Nudell

The central event in Albert Camus’ The Stranger is Mersault’s cold-blooded murder of an unnamed Arab in the 2 o’clock hour on the beach. The murder leads to his trial and execution—albeit more for his failure to weep for the death of his mother than for the actual act. The Arab, we are told, is the brother to a Frenchman’s mistress, but otherwise remains utterly unknown. Kamel Daoud’s The Mersault Investigation breathes life into this space.

The story unfolds as told some seventy later by Harun, the nameless Arab’s younger brother in a series of conversations with a student who has come to Algeria to learn the truth behind The Stranger.

Harun reflects on the irony of how his brother is erased in Camus’ text, making him simultaneously famous and unknown. In telling the story about his life after the death of his brother, Harun realizes that he is the Algerian mirror-image of Mersault. He kills a Frenchman for more reasons than Mersault has in killing his brother, but where Mersault is sentenced to death, Harun is dismissed without trial, perhaps because his mother yet lives. He has a failed relationship with an urban woman and where Mersault dies shunned by crowds, Harun lives with an audience of one, if he is to be believed.

The result is a brilliant post-colonial response to the The Stranger. Daoud takes what is effectively a philosophical story about the absurd that focuses on colonizer and turns it on its head. He condemns the original book for its solipsistic gaze on the colonial establishment that eliminates the colonized—up to and including the way in which is labels Algerians “Arabs”, but develops many of the same themes of absurdity and isolation equally to the colonial experience. For instance, Harun tells how his interpretation of religion has left him unusual among his countrymen after the revolution. The Mersault Investigation largely avoids the political and historical consequences of colonialism, but instead uses its intertextuality as a lens through which to explore issues of identity and colonial narratives, including the absurdity irony that this story is prompted by an unnamed, probably French, student setting out to learn the truth of this famous book.

I really loved The Mersault Investigation and think that it lives up to the accolades it received, but feel compelled to add that this is best read in conjunction with The Stranger since its strength derives from the resonances and dissonances with the earlier book.

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I just finished reading Han Kang’s rather horrifying novel The Vegetarian, which is fundamentally about the abuse of a woman’s body by all of the people in her life.

Albert Cossery, Proud Beggars

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Everyone has their foibles, their obsessions and their needs. Peace and happiness only emerge from abstaining from the reality of civilization, but what happens when the needs come calling?

Proud Beggars is the second Cossery novel I’ve read and I went into it with high expectations based on how much I loved The Jokers. The Jokers was a story about subversives who use practical jokes to overthrow the government and arouse the ire of both the revolutionaries and the police and officials. Proud Beggars has a more complex cast of characters than The Jokers, particularly in that while the Jokers were to a man detached, the Beggars profess to the same ideology, but can never actually follow through. The result is a darker story and one that is more profoundly troubling.

The chief Beggar is Gohar, a former professor, current brothel accountant, who has renounced the world of the intelligentsia in favor of “really living,” but is also a hashish addict. The others, the clerk-cum-revolutionary and man with a hero-complex El Kordi, and poet-cum-drug-dealer and mooch from his mother Yeghen, look up to Gohar and wish to help him with his material needs and desires because the former professor has reached a point of transcendence that he is all-but incapable of taking care of himself. But Gohar doesn’t have a problem with anyone and no one has a problem with Gohar. These are the intelligentsia of the slums.

The idyllic state of poverty established for the reader is shattered when there is a brutal and, to outsiders, inexplicable murder of a young prostitute. The policemen Nour El Dine steps in to solve the murder, but in his investigation, he finds himself finding something admirable about the happiness the beggars have in their detachment–as he says at one point, the government and all its power is not something to be feared, not because they turn defiantly from its authority, but because they simply don’t recognize it. Gohar’s repeated phrase (which may invoke Camus, who Cossery knew) is that the universe isn’t absurd, it is just ruled by bastards. Nour El Dine envies the Beggars and is increasingly frustrated with his station because he is forced to hide his own “dark” secret.

Several ideological elements stand out in this novel. First, the Beggars reject the hustle-bustle society entirely, each in his own way. El Kordi works from within, Yeghen sells drugs and begs, and Gohar abandoned his lucrative post and now rhapsodizes about how the government is corrupt and he was a failure as a teacher because he taught things such as national borders that defy nature. Second, consternation is the by-product of caring too much. These are common themes in both Cossery novels I’ve read. The third, though, is the profound unimportance of life–and thus the importance of living. This is where the story took a turn toward darkness.

In my reading of The Stranger, Albert Camus made it clear that the murder of the Arab was not per-se a pardonable offense, and half the story is about Meursault’s trial and punishment. Here, where there is an even more sudden murder, much of the story is dedicated to Nour El Dine’s investigation and (spoiler) there is no resolution, because any sort of punishment would be to acknowledge the power of the state. My problem with this is that there is a sense that the death of this young woman and the pain it causes the people in her life is only problematic inasmuch as people cared for her (and for the authorities who are paid to do so). I don’t necessarily disagree with the position from a philosophical standpoint, but this is more extreme than I am willing to stand for. There is a brutality and extreme lack of empathy that is entirely paradoxical with how these Beggars try to present themselves and present those worker-bees too busy to connect with people.

One final note before I conclude, one of the things that readers of Cossery’s novels could find off putting is that while the Beggars strive for minimalism and rant about the government and what it does, they have a blind spot that they nevertheless need money for things. They want money to be a thing between people, themselves and the shopkeepers, say, but they cut out the role government play in regulating money. Or in regulating trade–they live in cities and it is unlikely that their food is brought in by farmers on a daily basis. Since Cossery wrote Proud Beggars, urban life, particularly, has only grown more complex and for all the problems of government, it plays a role facilitating that life. The underlying point that the world is run by bastards–whether capitalist, totalitarian, or other–is well taken, but what is the alternative? It is solipsistic for the characters have their detachment valorized without recognizing that their ideal is an impossibility because in every societal set-up someone will be taking it too seriously for their taste. Yes, people need to connect with one another more, but false nostalgia is insidious.

I liked Proud Beggars for all that. It is a darker and more troublesome novel than was The Jokers, but it still had its moments and Cossery is an elegant writer capable of reflection rich enough that it sometimes slips over into decadence.

I am looking forward to reading more Cossery when I get the chance, but last night I started reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s War at the End of the World, not that I really have time to read right now anyway.

Top novel summaries, 30-21

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Here are summaries for 30-21 of my top novels. See the introduction and list in its entirety here.

30. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
The story of Holden Caulfield, a teenager who runs away from prep school and has to confront all the awkwardness that comes along with being a sort of melancholy, angry, loner. This is one of the few holdovers from high school that I have not reread. Unlike the other books on the list that I read in high school, I am unsure if I will return to this story because I think that it is most appropriately a story for that particular time of life.

29. The City and the Mountains, Jose M. Eca de Queiroz
Reviewed here, this is the story of Jacinto, the scion of a wealthy family from Portugal and epitome of a modern man (c. 1900) living with all the amenities of civilization in Paris. Society is strangling him, though, and he returns for the idyllic country life of his estates and begins to encourage the uplifting of the peasantry when he gets there.

28. The Stranger, Albert Camus
Life is pretty good for Mersault. His mother just died and he doesn’t seem to grieve, but he has a job, works hard, is seeing a woman who he may marry, and he gets to swim often. But he also testifies on behalf of his neighbor who has beaten his arab girlfriend. When Mersault kills the brother of that girlfriend in a chance encounter on the beach, he is arrested and put on trial. Camus was a moralist, and the book denies the importance on most expressions of emotion and god. What makes life good for Mersault is the pleasure of working hard, making a good living, and getting to do what he wants in his spare time. The universe he claims, is indifferent to humans.

27. The Clergyman’s Daughter, George Orwell
Dorothy Hare is the eponymous clergyman’s daughter. She is diligent and depressed, until one day she suffers a bout of amnesia and wakes up in London. From there, she takes a tour of the underworld of southern England, including scraping a living in London, teaching, and hop picking in the fields, before getting a chance to return home.

26. Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis
A young Greek intellectual is encouraged to learn about life and people with the aid of a Zorba, a loud, eccentric Greek born in Romania who he employs as a foreman.

25. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
There is a war going on in Africa and the newspaper the Daily Beast is going to cover it because John Courtney Boot, an author of some note, has called in a favor with important people in an effort to escape a woman. Except, the newspaper only knows that they are supposed to get “Boot,” and accidentally conscript William Boot, a nature contributor to the newspaper, to go cover the war. Boot is no more prepared to cover the war than the newspaper was prepared to send him initially and his ineptitude drives both the comedy and his success in this satirical take on journalism.

24. Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon
When the unnamed human narrator gets in an argument with his significant other he goes on a walk and gets transported into higher levels of awareness. He becomes increasingly aware of more varieties of civilized life forms and higher levels of consciousness in the universe. See a full review here.

23. Burmese Days, George Orwell
In Orwell’s words, this is a novel about the dark side of the British Raj. In this rural outpost, there is a clear segregation between the native population and the white colonial officials, though the pressure to incorporate a native official into the European club is increasing, the main question is who will be inducted.

22. Good Omens, Neil Gaimon, Terry Pratchett
The anti-Christ has been born and the end of times are upon us. But Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon have come to like living on Earth and are determined to stop the end. My single favorite passage in the story involves a meeting between Crowley and two superior demons where they recount the corruption they caused that day. Each of the superior demons has caused a supreme act of corruption (such corrupting a priest), while Crowley caused a small inconvenience for thousands of people in London; the other two just don’t get how his (Crowley’s) action created more evil in the world than theirs did.

21. Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
Another book I liked in high school (I got to pick it from a long list), this is another Hesse story about enlightenment. Siddhartha is an Indian Brahmin during the time of the Buddha who leaves home and passes through a series of stages of life en route to enlightenment.

December 2013 Reading Recap

Posted on by Josh Nudell

My progress through Herman Hesse’s novel Narcissus and Goldmund has slowed, so I thought to write this post up a bit early. Sometime in January I also plan to revisit my top novels post I did once before.

  • Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis – Reviewed here, Lucky Jim is a comedy of errors. On some level, James Dixon is alienated from teaching at the university because he is surrounded by insane people, but on another he is a college instructor who is wholly unsuited for the position. I had a particularly strong negative reaction to this novel, which is reflected in the review, but the more I reflect on it the funnier the story is and it is likely to appear on my updated list of top novels–even if I still have misgivings about the moral presented about people in academia and what contingent faculty should do with themselves.
  • The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, Junichiro Tanizaki – reviewed here, Tanizaki “explains” on the basis of several fictional sources the rumored, but unknown, sexual desires that drove the eponymous Lord of Musashi to become a successful warlord. I enjoyed the book, although I did note that it seemed to be a solid addition to a secret history genre, rather than a great novel in its own right.
  • Scoop, Evelyn Waugh, a novel satirizing news media, public consumption of news, journalism, and foreign correspondents. John Boot, an author, pulls some strings to get a job as a correspondent in Ishmaelia, an African country on the brink of civil war, so that he can escape a persistent women. But the newspaper hires the wrong Boot, William, a homebody whose writing consists of stories about country fauna. William does take the job and goes to Ishmaelia, where he is a fish out of water. Waugh has some wicked insights about what news is and the absurdities of journalism.
  • The Stranger, Albert Camus – Mersault works hard, he is seeing a woman from work who he might marry, and he gets to go swimming. His mother has just died, but other than that his life could be described as good. Mersault might not say so, though. Life is. His pattern of life changes drastically when he shoots an unknown Arab man on the beach.
  • The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway – One of Hemingway’s incomplete posthumous novels that was heavily pruned from the manuscript form (something like 2/3 of manuscript was cut to create the story in its published form). David Bourne and his wife Catherine are on their honeymoon along the Mediterranean coast of France. The couple is in love and, in typical Hemingway fashion, most of their time is spent eat, drinking, and swimming, sleeping, and having sex. The erotic games really begin when Catherine begins to alter her appearance to more resemble her husband and take control of their relationship and then when she brings a new woman into her marriage. There is an emptiness to this story that is more pronounced than usual, probably because the story was incomplete and because it was so thoroughly trimmed. There are still some things to recommend The Garden of Eden–Catherine is a fuller, more powerful female character than most Hemingway created, he creates a powerful sense of place for a beautiful setting, and the story that remains has some rich irony given the background of manuscript.

As noted above, I will finish Narcissus and Goldmund in the next few days, and after that I don’t know what I will read. As of this writing, tomorrow is a new year and the possibilities are endless.