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Pastimes : The Literary Sauna (or Tomes in Towels) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (206)	7/17/2001 11:35:22 AM
From: Poet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 466

LOL! You guys kill me. Here I was worrying that I'd be feeling terrible about not being able to live up to your level of trenchant literary analysis. My addition: Not only was Meursault's affect "flat", he is a textbook case of narcissism and sociopathy: affectless, without the capability to empathize, incapable of understanding his "own" feelings. I found him frightening and think Camus did an incredible job portaying his flat personality. Question: who was the translator of the versions you all read? Mine was a new translation, by an American, which supposedly was not as "British-ized" as the classic English translation, and hence portrayed the affectless well. The translator's name is Matthew Ward. And TOTD, I'd love to have you read the next one with us. I don't care what we read, it's just nice to have the company.

To: Rambi who wrote (206)	7/17/2001 11:52:36 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 466

Did you see Meersault as the "image of excess and repulsion", an "outrageous figure on the margin"? No. Not at all. I found myself relating to him quite a bit, particularly in the beginning. That scene about his mother's funeral could have starred me. Shall we say, my "affect" tends to be a bit "flatter" than those around me. And, in my current puttering mode, I related to his casual reflection on the little things going on around him. It wasn't until he showed himself to be utterly amoral regarding the beating of the woman and the dog that I found myself distancing from him. I also related to the way he was able to both participate in life and be a detached observer at the same time. When he said he didn't have jitters but was rather interested in seeing a trial, that could have been me, to some extent. When he proceeded into the legal process on auto-pilot, though, I started thinking that he was depressed. Then I considered just plain stupid and distanced myself further. Still, I identified more with him than, for example, the magistrate or chaplain who, shall we say, were quite the opposite of flat affect. I suppose that the reader is supposed to identify with the establishment and experience the protagonist the "other" but it didn't work that way for me. I didn't like him for his morals, but I didn't find his philosophy particularly strange. I read the Ward translation, too. Karen