An ill read (The Plague - Albert Camus)

Member Name: mo79

Product:	The Plague - Albert Camus
Date:	05/11/02 (825 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A dark picture of physical and mental suffering, and man's response to dealing with tragedies and overcoming them

Disadvantages: Probably poorly translated, not very punchy and gripping, and takes considerate effort to glean enjoyment and understanding

Reading 'The Plague' is probably akin to suffering in literature. Though a classic (but don't expect a highly reverential opinion from me on this), 'The Plague' is a rather difficult read. Not in terms of the story, but in terms of the way it's written, or to be more accurate this translation by Stuart Gilbert. It seems to have been lacklustrely translated from the original French, as the sentences read obscurely, almost as if the grammatical conversion was abandoned. No doubt, upon checking, that a relatively modern translation has seen the light recently, confirms that there are issues with this still currently circulated edition.

Apart from the reading being a bit of a chore (unlike Joseph Laredo's magnificent moulding of 'The Outsider'; which proves that a translator can make or break a good book for the international audience, even a bad one), I was also dissapointed in how disconnected the characters in the story were. This probably stems from the story being wholely geographically orientated than the personal tragedy of '...Outsider'.

Written in 1947, after the Nazi occupation of France, 'The Plague' is a guided 3rd person narrated chronicle depicting the struggles of a town called Oran facing the violent ravages of plague bacillus. Doctor Bernard Rieux is the focal character of the story, and it is through him that we see not only graphically physical tragedies aroused by the plague, but also of mental anguish arisen from the cordoning off of the town, for virtually a year, from the rest of the world.
As you'd expect within the story, Rieux encounters fellow characters who contribute their shade of tragedy to the spanning darkness of the chronicle. And as you'd expect, some of these characters succomb to plague, and death.
The predicaments that intertwine with the disconnected affliction of Rieux from his wife, include that of Tarrou on a quest for saintliness, the misplace
d journalist Rambert who only wishes to return to his wife, Grand who struggles with an opening paragraph of a novel he's writing, and Cottard who seems to be alone in his comfort of the plague's presence. Then there is also Father Paneloux, who finds himself almost at odds with belief in God.

The around-300 pages of this book took me a month to read due to sheer lethargy at wanting to read text that flowed (I kept with it, as this book was a present) awkwardly, and sometimes at a story that stalled in proceeding and just inflating the current events.
The characters, though having a closeness, suffer from the fact that they seem detached in comparison to the described scale ravages of the town. Although this compromise does help portray the emptiness and the sickness of the town in haunting detail; right from emotional switch flips and the daily incineration of corpses. And it's this engagingness which does zip the book right upto an averagely readable mark, but this edition's translation (which has been in print since 1948!) is awkward and may have turned off many readers, added to the fact that the story in general doesn't match the punchy and timeless precision of 'The Outsider', which will, I think, dissapoint people who have read that first, like myself.

Not a bad read, but I'd recommend future purchasers to probably purchase the new translation, or better to read 'The Outsider' if they haven't already, as that's the only Camus book I've really enjoyed thoroughly (though only from two).
If anything, 'The Plague' has made me cautious about reading further Camus as I feel rather exhausted from this, from the work I had to put in to read it, to glean as much enjoyment (though faded) from it as possible.

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