Incomplete autobiographical novel lacking a mythic dimension

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	• First Man Albert Camus Topeka Bindery, 1996 average customer review:based on 26 reviews
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highly recommended

incomplete, but great work

It is reallly not fair to rate a work that is not complete. As an artist, I know how horrifying it is to show unfinished works to anybody. It really is a violation. However, whether this is Camus's first draft or 2nd draft, the evidence is everywhere what kind of great book it would have been had he had a chance to edit it, re-structure and re-write it. It was a great learning experience for me to study what a potential masterpiece looks like in the early stage of its creation.

In this draft, it seems that he was just writing down everything that had come to his mind, the things that he remembered and thought could be part of the story. It's not edited or organized well, so there are some inconsistency, unfinished sentences, and confusions. The plot is not clear, you don't know where the story is going, and the structure is not solid. There are some parts that can be eliminated as well.
But the writing itself is still very strong and beautiful, and there is a lot of wisdom in it. I especially enjoyed the chapter "the school." In this chapter he talks about the school life of the protagonist and how the teacher M. Bernard taught the children with love and discipline, and how the children loved and adored him, despite the corporal punishment they received from him for misbehaving. It's the kind of teacher-student relationship you rarely see in today's society. Each episode is vivid, detailed, heart-warming, full of wisdom and love, and beautifully written.

At the end of the book, after the story ceases, there is a section called "Interleaves." It's a collection of notes and memos of Camus, bits and pieces of scenes or dialogues, thoughts and ideas, which didn't have a chance to take parts of the book. Obviously Camus was planning to use them. They suggest that had he lived to finish the work, it would have been a totally different story, or that the story would have developed and ended much differently.

While it is disrespectful to read an incompleted work, it would have been a great loss if I didn't read it.
Thus I shall give him bright shining 5 stars, and thank him for having written this story.

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Incomplete autobiographical novel lacking a mythic dimension

The manuscript of this book was in the car with Camus when he had his fatal crash. His family held back publication for over thirty years. One reason was the incompleteness of the manuscript. A second was the hostile political atmosphere which had emerged in relation to Camus. Unlike Sartre Camus had refused to justify Soviet crimes. His position on Algeria which was a nuanced one , angered both sides.
The novel itself is closer to a memoir than anything else Camus has written. It lacks the kind of mythic and philosophical dimension of Camus most well- known works, "The Stranger" " The Plague " " The Fall" "The Myth of Sisyphus". it tells the story of a child whose father has been killed in the First World War, and who is raised by his mother and grandmother. It tells of a world of Algerian poverty .And it to tells of how the child finds a way out of this world through having been guided and helped by a beloved teacher. The teacher who Camus honored and remembered throughout his life saw the great ability in young Camus and developed this.
There are some outstanding passages in the book in which Camus shows the reflectiveness so central to his major works
" To begin with poor people's memory is less nourished than that of the rich : it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughout lives that are grey and featureles. Of course there is the memory of the heart that they say is the surest kind, but the heart wears out with sorrow and labour, it forgets sooner under the weight of fatigue. Remembrance of things past is just for the rich.For the poor it only marks faint trances on the path to death"

This work it seems does not rank with Camus' best work but does have importance in throwing additional light on the details of the life of one of the great writers and moralists of the twentieth century.

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sad to see it end.

I just finished this book, and can only voice my disappointment. Not that it was a bad book,It was great, but that It wasn't finished. I have read The Stranger, The plague, The myth of sysyphus, and the fall. This book really helped to understand Camus more. You can see how his life overflowed into his other works, and i only wish he could have finished. I have been a fan of his work ever since a high school literature teacher recommended the plague, after a heated discussion about the belief that we need God to be moral people. I couldn't believe the criticism I was getting for turning away from religion, especially from some very immoral characters. Camus has had a major influence on me ever since, and I am sad this book will never be finished.

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An Unfinished Novel Not As Good As His Other Works

As a point of reference, I have read most of Camus's major works. The present novel is a straightforward story and it is supposed to be partially biographical. It was published decades after Camus's death by his daughter. The work was unfinished and it was never edited by Camus. As such, it has a bit of a raw feel to the story and I thought it was not as good as his other works, all of which are all excellent.

It could have been a much better novel if he had finished the work. The work does not contain Camus's famous irony and references to the absurd that are found in other works, i.e.: unlike his other works, he does not delve into his ideas on the absurd, and the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice.

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus rejected any ideological classification. Camus was a young recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award in 1957. He died in a car crash only three years after receiving the award. He was a social activist and Communist, and fought with the French resistance in WWII. Later he rejected Communism. The present book is his last work and was never finished.

On January 4, 1960, at the age of forty-six, Camus was killed in a car accident outside Paris and the manuscript of The First Man was found at the crash scene. The protagonist is a man similar to Camus himself, Jacques Cormery, who grew up in Algiers. It is a novel about a young boy growing up and his interaction with his mother and grandmother. It is a story being told by an older Cormery, now 40 years old, who is visiting his older mother, now 72. Camus's technique is to use flashbacks of Cormery's childhood injected into the story during the visit by the 40 year old Cormery. In addition to the story of his youth from the era of WWI and post WWI, there are a number of comments on the struggle for power in Algeria and the attacks on the French in the 1950s.

This novel has just a neutral recommendation and it is not a good example of his work. It is different and perhaps Camus was taking a new path with his work, but as a novel as it stands it is flawed. The reader is left to wonder what Camus could have accomplished if he had lived. Having said that, the novel was unfinished, so The Stranger and perhaps The Fall remain as his best novels, followed by The Plague. Those works include his irony and philosophical views. Also, Camus has written some good drama and non-fiction. This leaves the present unfinished novel down near the bottom of his body of work.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

In The First Man Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellspring of Camus' aesthetic powers and moral vision.

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