A renowned scholar investigates the "human crisis" that Albert
Camus confronted in his world and in ours, producing a brilliant
study of Camus's life and influence for those readers who, in
Camus's words, "cannot live without dialogue and friendship." As
France-and all of the world-was emerging from the depths of World
War II, Camus summed up what he saw as "the human crisis": We gasp
for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether
it be in their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live
without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this
silence is the end of the world. In the years after he wrote these
words, until his death fourteen years later, Camus labored to
address this crisis, arguing for dialogue, understanding, clarity,
and truth. When he sailed to New York, in March 1946-for his first
and only visit to the United States-he found an ebullient nation
celebrating victory. Camus warned against the common postwar
complacency that took false comfort in the fact that Hitler was
dead and the Third Reich had fallen. Yes, the serpentine beast was
dead, but "we know perfectly well," he argued, "that the venom is
not gone, that each of us carries it in our own hearts." All around
him in the postwar world, Camus saw disheartening evidence of a
global community revealing a heightened indifference to a number of
societal ills. It is the same indifference to human suffering that
we see all around, and within ourselves, today. Camus's voice
speaks like few others to the heart of an affliction that infects
our country and our world, a world divided against itself. His
generation called him "the conscience of Europe." That same voice
speaks to us and our world today with a moral integrity and
eloquence so sorely lacking in the public arena. Few authors, sixty
years after their deaths, have more avid readers, across more
continents, than Albert Camus. Camus has never been a trend, a fad,
or just a good read. He was always and still is a companion, a
guide, a challenge, and a light in darkened times. This keenly
insightful story of an intellectual is an ideal volume for those
readers who are first discovering Camus, as well as a penetrating
exploration of the author for all those who imagine they have
already plumbed Camus' depths-a supremely timely book on an author
whose time has come once again.
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