Le Monde 100: The Stranger - Chapters 2-4

Meursault's focus on his senses extends to the rest of the weekend after the funeral.

He enjoys a delicious meal, cavorts with a lady, swims in the ocean, and takes in his surroundings pleasurably. This may seem like cold behavior immediately after one's mother has died. But, what's the alternative? Would you rather someone went through a tragic loss while wrenching in agony over the irretrievable or would you have them get over their pain as quick as possible?

The expression of grief serves the griever first.

So, for Meursault, who is alone after his Mother's death, to grieve a second more than he biological needs would serve nothing. It would be different if he were with others who may have needed some solidarity in his Mother's death, then it would be a social kindness.

Should Meursault be showing more grief? How can any man look into the grief of another with any amount of understanding?

Until we find out differently, we are ultimately alone with the experience of our own senses.

Le Monde 100: The Stranger - Chapter 1

The first chapter of The Stranger has caught me in an odd place. The title character, Meursault, acts in a way that for most of my life I would have found irrational. He has a strange detachment at his mother's funeral, but not because he had any kind of problem with her. He finds himself at a small impasse in front of her coffin at the vigil. He finds himself asking if he should be smoking and drinking coffee in front of his dead mother. After hesitating, he realizes that he doesn't care and that it doesn't matter.

All his thoughts at the vigil are not of his life and relationship with his mother but they are actually about his surroundings at the funeral home: the night air, the smell of the flowers, the warmth of the coffee. Meursault is unfeeling and unsentimental about anything beyond his present experience even the death of his own mother. He barely reflects even on the concept of death.
This is the opposite of the horde of old folks who fill the funeral home with him. They do not make an effort to connect with him at all and fall asleep or become lost in their own thoughts. For these old people, the vigil is a protest, not of the loss of one of their own, but of the universal concept of death itself.

Part of me relates to the seemingly cold attitude of Meursault, people I have known my entire life have died and I am surprised by my lack of sadness for people that I truly loved. I have never thought of myself as unsentimental but where are the lamentations?

I am actually sadder about potential deaths than actual deaths.

However, three weeks ago, I found myself in a similar position as Meursault in The Stranger. At a funeral for my grandmother's sister, I approached the cousins and Aunties that sat before the coffin and gave my respects. While I loitered in front of the coffin, an inlaw engaged me in a conversation about business matters that started to gain some mutual momentum. You know that feeling when a conversation shifts into a higher pace and into a deeper strata and your senses heighten and you look around to see what you are sacrificing to go to the next level with this person.

I, unlike Meursault, could not ignore the coffin and, for a split second, asked myself why not. There was no answer,though, just a compulsion to respect the dead.

But, that compulsion had nothing to do with the feelings of the deceased but more with a feeling inside my head. The unsentimental man inside of me is acknowledging the sentimental man as if I know that man needs to be there in order to be whole.

Well, nothing like a funeral to bring out the narcissist in you.

Albert Camus, The Stranger, Absurd, Absurdism, Books, Writing, Le Monde 100,

In my Head, the Homunculus Rubs His Cheek Upon A List.

One of the first things you learn when digging into the odd currency of Search Engine Optimization is that people are powerless when presented a list. The Five Best. . .the Ten Top. . . 12 Ways to. . . And so on.

What is it about a list that demands our attention?

Is it a sense of authority giving us closure on a subject? Perhaps it is the brevity with which one is confronted before reading it. We like lists for the same reason we like appetizers at Cheesecake Factory. Information without commitment. Short form reading for the masses.

I believe,though, that, as Children of the Information Age, this is not bad thing. A short attention span may actually be more useful to us as we approach the Singularity (as Ray Kurzweil would have you believe).

However, nothing can fully flesh out an idea or communicate so personally as a book. The long road helps you understand in a deeper and more humanly way.

So, Man is Men would like to use both long and short form vehicles of writing to their best ability by live-blogging the Le Monde 100 Books of the Century! The Twentieth Century, that is.

Why? For fun, of course! No, but, why the Le Monde 100? That sounds fairly pretentious, doesn't it? Possibly, but the books on the list seem so interesting to me. I haven't read most of them and the books don't include the usual suspects like Pride and Prejudice and Moby Dick. I do not have a problem with those two books.

Let's do this together. I'll post haphazardly according to how many chapters I've read and then we can be mean to each other in the comments section.

Here is the list:

1 The Stranger (The Outsider) Albert Camus 1942

2 Remembrance of Things Past Marcel Proust 1913–1927

3 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925

4 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943

5 Man's Fate André Malraux 1933

6 Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932

7 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939

8 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940

9 Le Grand Meaulnes Alain-Fournier 1913

10 Froth on the Daydream Boris Vian 1947

11 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949

12 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1952

13 Being and Nothingness Jean-Paul Sartre 1943

14 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980

15 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973

16 Paroles Jacques Prévert 1946

17 Alcools Guillaume Apollinaire 1913

18 The Blue Lotus Hergé 1936

19 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947

20 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955

21 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932

22 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell 1949

23 Asterix the Gaul René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo 1959

24 The Bald Soprano Eugène Ionesco 1952 French

25 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Sigmund Freud 1905

26 The Abyss Marguerite Yourcenar 1968

27 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 English

28 Ulysses James Joyce 1922

29 The Tartar Steppe Dino Buzzati 1940

30 The Counterfeiters André Gide 1925

31 The Horseman on the Roof Jean Giono 1951

32 Belle du Seigneur Albert Cohen 1968

33 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967

34 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929

35 Thérèse Desqueyroux François Mauriac 1927

36 Zazie in the Metro Raymond Queneau 1959

37 Confusion of Feelings Stefan Zweig 1927

38 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936

39 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928

40 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924

41 Bonjour Tristesse Françoise Sagan 1954

42 Le Silence de la mer Vercors 1942

43 Life: A User's Manual Georges Perec 1978

44 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1901–1902

45 Under the Sun of Satan Georges Bernanos 1926

46 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925

47 The Joke Milan Kundera 1967

48 A Ghost at Noon (Contempt) Alberto Moravia 1954

49 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie 1926

50 Nadja André Breton 1928

51 Aurélien Louis Aragon 1944

52 The Satin Slipper Paul Claudel 1929

53 Six Characters in Search of an Author Luigi Pirandello 1921

54 The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Bertolt Brecht 1959

55 Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique Michel Tournier 1967

56 The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 1898

57 If This Is a Man Survival in Auschwitz Primo Levi 1947

58 The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1954–1955

59 Les Vrilles de la vigne Colette 1908

60 Capitale de la douleur Paul Éluard 1926

61 Martin Eden Jack London 1909

62 Ballad of the Salt Sea Hugo Pratt 1967

63 Writing Degree Zero Roland Barthes 1953

64 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Heinrich Böll 1974

65 The Opposing Shore Julien Gracq 1951

66 The Order of Things Michel Foucault 1966

67 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957

68 The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Selma Lagerlöf 1906–1907

69 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929

70 The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury 1950

71 The Ravishing of Lol Stein Marguerite Duras 1964

72 The Interrogation J. M. G. Le Clézio 1963

73 Tropisms Nathalie Sarraute 1939

74 Journal, 1887–1910 Jules Renard 1925

75 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900

76 Écrits Jacques Lacan 1966

77 The Theatre and its Double Antonin Artaud 1938

78 Manhattan Transfer John Dos Passos 1925

79 Ficciones Jorge Luis Borges 1944

80 Moravagine Blaise Cendrars 1926

81 The General of the Dead Army Ismail Kadare 1963

82 Sophie's Choice William Styron 1979

83 Gypsy Ballads Federico García Lorca 1928

84 The Strange Case of Peter the Lett Georges Simenon 1931

85 Our Lady of the Flowers Jean Genet 1944

86 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930–1932

87 Fureur et mystère René Char 1948

88 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951

89 No Orchids For Miss Blandish James Hadley Chase 1939

90 Blake and Mortimer Edgar P. Jacobs 1950

91 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910

92 Second Thoughts Michel Butor 1957

93 The Burden of Our Time The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951

94 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967

95 The Rosy Crucifixion Henry Miller 1949–1960

96 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939

97 Amers Saint-John Perse 1957

98 Gaston (Gomer Goof) André Franquin 1957

99 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947

100 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

Whew! A tall order perhaps? Let's go until we drop. From the top, let's dive right into number one with The Stranger!

The Final Day of Ganesha Chaturthi - Part Four

I pulled into first gear and we assumed a slow pace on our pilgrimage to the river. The girls danced and the boys sang and broke coconuts. The older representatives of our clan smiled as they observed the younger generation heralding the New Year’s bounteous future while we walked slowly and deliberately forward. The end of the festival was not necessarily the end of our journey, but rather the journey itself. From our side street, we became a small rivulet of merriment that would join the main artery of the town’s celebrants.  It was a  constant stream of the faithful, the fanatics, and the indifferent; all setting aside personal motivations to engage in a slow and deliberate procession to the water. Our family’s retinue blended into the larger parade and added to its genetic make-up one of the larger clay idols to be dunked into the river that day. The sun was setting and the moon, which I always was taught was wretched, was soon to appear.

            It took us about forty-five minutes to reach the ocean side. I pulled onto the crest of the beach and we undid the statue of the god, which was to be, then, carried into the water. The family swarmed around the truck - many hands reaching and acting as one to lift the holy idol off the truck and into the air.  The surrounding crowd of fellow believers broke into a fresh refrain of the holy mantra to intensify the experience of having the Lord Ganesh thrust into the waters. 

I let them carry out this important task without me – another thing that I had never before done in my entire life. I leaned against the hood of the truck, watching my family work as a  team to lift the heavy flawed clay statue - chanting and singing as they prepared to commit the final act of Ganesha Chaturdashi by immersing their god into the water. Some of my cousins motioned for me to take a space on the palate and heft him into the air for the final leg of his journey home, but I couldn’t do it. I saw the moon start to peek over the trees on the far side of the river.

            “Don’t forget that we must never look at the moon, Razak. For it is the enemy of the Lord Ganesh and we must treat it as an apostate.” Prakash Priyani, our Brahmin, had quietly crept up to me.  “We must view the moon as one who has left believing in the Lord.” He wore his red silk robe and a yellow shawl. His fingers and palms were stained red from the sandalwood holy paint.  This had been an busy time for him as he had many statues of Ganesh to bless.

            “Hello, Brahmin.” I gave my mentor a small respectful bow. We watched as the Lord Ganesh wobbled above the heads of his adherents as they took the first steps from the truck towards the water. I bit my lip and a small surge of adrenalin coursed through my stomach, making me exceptionally aware of my breathing. The reality of the situation was becoming clear and my indignant projections were dissolving.

“We haven’t seen you from Shukla Chaturti until now. Is all well with you?” Prakash smiled in away that didn’t reach his entire mouth that resulted in putting others at ease. Around us, the crowd gave a happy murmur as the bearers of Ganesh gained a confident hold on their statue. A renewed chant was struck and every one in earshot sang with broad smiles of flashing teeth.

            “Well, I have had a very busy month at the dig. We found some . . . things.”

            “Really? What things?”

            “I don’t …think that I can go into it right now.” This was the complete opposite of what I had planned. This was supposed to be the moment that I displayed the contents of the bags and demanded answers, but the economy of the situation was overwhelmingly acute.

            “Razak, you have always been interested in science and the correctness of the world. But, remember that there is only one science that is important – the science of the Spirit. How can one look at an object in this world and hope to understand another world? Our senses and the objects of our senses are constantly changing form and in their relation to each other. We must put our faith only in the Lord Ganesh.” He gave me that confident smile, which before had always been a touchstone for me in the crafting of my worldview. Today, that smile didn’t give me the same comfort that I was used to, but it was also one that I that didn’t want to disappear. Prakash folded his hands in front of him. “Did you ask for his blessing today?”

“Brahmin, I no longer want the Lord to worry about my obstacles. I think I need to handle this world on my own.”

            The men in my family had entered the water with a final push that evoked a satisfied low moan from everyone. Prakash looked at me with a silence that penetrated the noise of the crowd.  “I don’t know if you realize how real the Lord Ganesh is. He will operate in your life in a way that you cannot understand. Let him work hand in hand with you and guide you.”, he said, closing his eyes in finality.

                        “Prakash, you have always given me good advice and taught me the importance of having him in my life. But I need you to know that I believe in Ganesh more than anybody. And, pardon me for saying, but even you, Brahmin.”

            The Lord Ganesh had been awkwardly tipped in the water, instead of the slow deliberate immersion required by the science. My brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews were all waist deep in the foamy water, clapping their hands and chanting together. Prakash watched the spectacle with his half-smile and a small shake of the head. If I was going to confront him, it would have to be now.

Ijaya, my niece, came running out of the water, hair soaked and laughing. She saw me by the truck talking to Prakash and dry as old bones.  “Uncle, what happened? You missed the ceremony.”

I hurt myself giving her a dismissive nod and she gave me quick frown and went back to her friends.

Prikash gave me a fatherly tap on the arm.

             “Razak, your faith has always guided you. Remember that Ganesh is the Lord of Intelligence and he is married to Reason and Spirit. You will make the right decisions.”

            He gave me a another tap on the arm and moved into the crowd.

             It was another hour at the beach before my family decided to return home. They all walked back on their own without any particular procession, but together all the same.  The other crowds finally dispersed from the waterside after all the idols had been immersed with a few meditative stragglers. I stayed and watched the moon rise high into the clear night. I smiled as a boy ran by holding a grey balloon twisted into the shape of an elephant head. I sat on the water’s edge, listening to the jubilation spread throughout the town. The loudest music I was certain was from the gargantuan stack that I passed earlier. There was something about that discombobulated structure inspired its adherents to dance longer than any other.

 I stayed out there all night, watching the moon ascend and descend on to the water’s distant horizon, waiting for the last moment of moonset. When the moon started to vanish from the sky and became halfway hidden by the horizon, I opened the bed of the truck and removed the two coconut sacks. Inside the bag, in a dusty jumble, were the bones that had made me late for Ganesha Chaturdashi. Pulling each bone from the bag and unwrapping them from the protective newspaper, I lay them on the open flap of the truck bed. All of the bones I had brought to the river side were from a single skeleton, although, that may not be clear to the average archaeologist that might have seen me remove and unwrap no less than three sets of arms. My tests at the site revealed them to all have the same genetic makeup. The DNA that sat slowly decaying in these bones that would have marked it as, at the very least a genetic anomaly, was also found in the skull, which I had put in the other bag. It was the skull of an elephant. It’s right tusk predictably broken and found in it’s right hand.  These were the ancient bones of the Remover of Obstacles, the Lord of Beginnings- long dead and useless.

            I collected each bone and threw it into the ocean as the moon disappeared completely. The Brahmin could go on living according to his science, but I had discovered the end of both science and truth, What is science but a form of religion? And what is religion, but a form of science? Ultimate answers are sought in both and I no longer had a need or want for those answers. A loud powerful laugh from the revelers pierced the night. As the waves pulled the fragile bones deeper into the ocean waters, I felt a burden had been lifted from my shoulders that I hadn’t expected. The muscles in my neck released a tension that I never realized was there. The morning was approaching and the celebration still raged in the town. The black obelisk of music continued to pulsate with deep bass frequencies that I became increasingly attuned to as the moment was crystallizing in a way I hadn’t foreseen. Hungry, I grabbed the coconut from the seat of the truck and cracked it with a rock hammer. The hairy orb broke into a myriad shards. With my left hand, I picked up a fleshy curved piece, smelling the its happy sweetness. I bit into its flesh and a pain coursed through my mouth. With my right hand, I removed the shell of the coconut meat and with it came a broken tooth. I closed my hand over the tooth and held it firm. The pain and the my happiness complemented each other  as the music from afar became deeper and urgent and I thought about the good things of the day. With the coconut in my left and my tooth in my right, I was overcome with the desire to dance to the music from the distance.. I brought my right hand to my chest and my left hand to the morning sky. I drew my right leg up to balance on my left for a short moment and then  I moved to the music that would propel me from now on.

The Final Day of Ganesha Chaturthi - Part Three

It seems that this year Ashok had made a half-hearted effort to get the scientific elements of the statue right. The left hand raised to the sky in blessing. In his right, he held a broken tusk. A flag waved above him with his mouse companion emblazoned on it. Last year, I would have been over the moon about this. I took in the clay statue of Ganesh on his throne. He had the head of an elephant, but his eyes were as penetrating as only a man’s could be. On every statue and idol that I had ever seen of him, the eyes that stared out were always deeply personal. I walked up to the idol and I stared into his eyes. Red sandalwood dripped off his forehead like blood as evidence that Prakash had blessed him. Of course, it would be too large and immodest to be effective for him, who no doubt tried to deliver Ashok a lecture on the impropriety of its largeness. How could you pray for blessings and communicate with the Lord Ganesh if you are grunting and pushing and pulling, due to the spectacle of the image? Simplicity allows the mind to focus and opens the channel to heaven.

 One of my nephews opened the gate on the back of the truck and tried to remove the white sacks in the back of the truck.

“No, no! Leave them!” I closed the gate and put the stabilizing pins on the rim of the pick-up’s bed, ready to slide into the receiving holes on the idol’s palate.

“But you have coconuts. We counted 400 coconuts smashed today already!” Only one coconut was needed to release one’s karma, but the young men were always vigorous in their desire to break coconuts for bragging rights of the day.

 “Those bags are mine. It’s time to put the Lord Ganesh on the back.”

            As we worked to secure the idol on the back of the truck, the rest of the family started the chant we all sang on Ananti.

“Ganapathi Bappa Morya, Purchya Varshi Laukariya.”

   Oh father, Ganesh, come again early next year.

I had sung that so many times in my life, but it never  sounded as transparent in my ears as it did at that moment. The chant detached itself and floated away from the deepest part of my self – the secure place that once determined all my actions and gave me my sense of time and space. What was once a harbinger of good fortune now became an empty echo in an abandoned chamber. My recent discoveries broke the mold of reaction I had at hearing the chant of Ananti on this day in the light where once they had produced personal feelings of safety and goodwill.

Ganesh was hoisted up and installed to the top of the bed of the truck with the pallet screwed into the stabilizing pins.

Our signal to our family for readiness to the journey to the ocean triggered a wave of coconut destruction that littered the street with jagged shells and white meat. Everyone descended from the house to accompany me as I prepared to drive this massive profanity to the waterside. My nieces and their friends, who were all of an impressionable age, had matching orange and red saris that they wore for a coordinated dance - something they had pulled from one of the local cinemas, which they planned to do on the way to the beach.

“Uncle Razak! We were worried that you wouldn’t be here.” This was Ijaya, my fourteen-year old niece. Her face was made of pure innocence and unbreakable. I blushed with my own embarrassment at being absent. What possible answers did I have for her?

They had planned well; in fact they could think of nothing else for the past six months except how closely to the original version of their dance they could come to on Ananti Chaturthi. It was the first time they had ever tried to coordinate something together to represent our family. I thought about how upset they might have been if I didn’t return that day. They would probably remember these times well into their future.