I’ve always had a fondness for Albert Camus. At first I praised him for condensing The Stranger to such a short book because I hated the prescribed reading in high school. To be clear, I hated all reading in high school. Camus’ brevity came through once again in college when I was asked to read The Stranger (now L’Etranger) for a French literature seminar. It was short enough, the language was uncomplicated and the storytelling was to the point. I was happy. I also failed that class. There were too many books to read and I couldn’t be bothered. Fast forward some fifteen years later and I find myself trying to escape all possible forms of responsibility so that I could have more time to read. This is how I learned that change indeed is the only constant. I had largely forgotten about Camus until I picked up The Myth of Sisyphus sometime early this year. I was doing research on the topic of suicide for a film and I’d vaguely remembered that he mentioned it in that book. I did a silly thing and decided to read the essay in French, for even though I failed that class I thought myself a somewhat adept reader of French. An overstatement if there ever was one. Principled as I am, I ploughed through the text coming out the other end with my reading comprehension percentage hovering around the low twenties. Illustration of point: the same week when I read Le Mythe de Sisyphe, I took part in a pub quiz wherein we were asked to complete the following sentence – In Albert Camus’ famous essay, the author beckons us to imagine Sisyphus …” Dot, dot, dot. If you’d put a gun to my head, I couldn’t have told you the ending to that sentence. The quizmasters even included a pictorial clue, but to no avail. Undeterred by my lack of comprehension, I continued my amateur Camus studies. Like a true passive revolutionary I purchased a copy of L’homme revolté (editions nrf, the real deal) and set about my reading. I think I ploughed through that one closer to forty percent reading comprehension, being that I was already a touch more experienced and that it is less of a philosophical text and more a historiographical essay on the topic of revolutions. On the other hand, my retention rate still has more in common with a failing hard drive than anything remotely connected to functioning memory so I haven’t much to report on that one either. I do, however, remember the feeling of reading it. It was a tremendously interesting read. I think Camus set out to track the evolution of human revolutions through history. I don’t remember, but I think he started some time in the Middle Ages and ended with contemporary (to him) workers’ and suffragette struggles. There isn’t a single thought I feel I could do any sort of intellectual justice in outlining. I’m trying hard, but nothing comes to mind. Be that as it may, I do vividly remember genuinely intrigued by the writing and thoroughly enjoying the arguments Camus proposed.
I do wonder why even read when I don’t understand most of it and remember even less. It really is quite an unproductive waste of time. I put a lot of effort into it, and have mostly nothing to show for it. And it doesn’t only happen when I read in French. When I read in my adopted English or my native Croatian, I’m happy to get around seventy percent comprehension at most, and I’d say around fifty percent retention at best. I sought remedies; I tried highlighting passages and jotting down quotes but got little out of it other than the sensorial joy of highlighting and jotting down. I tried slowing down my reading pace, tracking each word on the page with my index finger, even saying the words aloud. That just made me realise that I’m already a slow reader and that I should probably clip my fingernails. But I love reading. It’s my favourite thing to do. Bar none. I like how it makes me feel. I like to get lost in stuff I don’t understand. Get involved in it in ways that the author couldn’t have possibly predicted because there is absolutely no way she could have imagined just how poorly I could understand what she meant. I can’t engage with other readers in discussions other than written, scholarly ones, which amounts to using cheat sheets. Then again, I wouldn’t want to bother you with my vapid interpretations and definitely don’t care about what you think you should have gotten out of that book. I’m interested to hear about the one thing you remembered. Or better, felt. Even if it means starting over from scratch every time.
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