the rix mix

Somewhere in the dozens of boxes of books stacked & strewn about the other large room in this apartment, maybe there's an old paperback copy of The Stranger - a slim novel by Albert Camus. Maybe I gave it away or traded it in at a used bookstore years ago, I don't know. I bought it used, or spent 95 cents for a new copy, or someone gave it to me - cool books were cheap enough then that you didn't care about lending & borrowing them. I know I didn't have to read The Stranger for a class, but in the late 60s we all read the Existentialists - at least those of us not besmitten by hippies, those of us (& there were many) disappointed because we were born a decade too late for the Beat Generation. We read Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Genet, Robbe-Grillet - translated from the original French, of course. Many of their books had the virtues of being fairly short & fitting in one's back pocket. If we were more intensely spiritual-seeking we struggled with Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel & the first existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard. & we hung out, drank beer, smoked doob, listened to jazz, & talked about "faith" & "meaninglessness" & "absurdity." Had I known that George W. Bush - who definitely was not into this stuff 40 years ago, was ready to take on a book about an aimless, borderline psychopath in Algeria who commits a pointless murder, I would've gladly searched through my boxes & sent The Stranger to him had I found it. All I would have asked was that George return it to me & not erase his marginalia.