But does nothing have any meaning? I have never believed we could remain at this point.”** If we assume that nothing has any meaning, then we must conclude that the world is absurd. I was trying to make a “tabula rasa,” on the basis of which it would then be possible to construct something. When I analyzed the feeling of the Absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus, I was looking for a method and not a doctrine. “This word “Absurd” has had an unhappy history and I confess that now it rather annoys me. As he progressed from Sisyphus to the Rebel, he matured as a writer and later on himself felt annoyed at his proposed idea of absurd. We can notice the change in the focus of the writer, which turned from inner to outer, from individual to social. “The Rebel and The Plague” came later on where Rebel dealt with the problem of “murder” as against the problem of “suicide” which he dealt in The Myth of Sisyphus. At this time he was in Algiers, his native land, far from the hubbub of Paris. The penning of “The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus”, which he did almost simultaneously, came at a point when he himself faced despair about the kind of life he was living, which included his anxiety about his future as a writer and finding his place in the World. When compared with different periods of his life, his writings offer an insight into the state of mind Camus was often fraught with. Sartre is an existentialist, and the only book of ideas that I have published, The Myth of Sisyphus, was directed against the so-called existentialist philosophers.”* When we did get to know each other, it was to realise how much we differed. Sartre and I published our books without exception before we had ever met.
We have even thought of publishing a short statement in which the undersigned declare that they have nothing in common with each other and refuse to be held responsible for the debts they might respectively incur. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked. Although Camus is often categorized as an existential philosopher but he himself never approved of that. While for some, Camus’ ideas are irrelevant when compared with those proposed by existential philosophers. Some readers appreciate his writings though they do not agree with him. It is understandable when some readers avoid reading him, because he seems a difficult writer whose works are taken to be disturbing. In one of his intervĬamus, as a writer, receives mixed response from the readers.
Camus, as a writer, receives mixed response from the readers.