The New Yorker: Talk of the Town
Liz
←
This article is about George W. Bush’s summer reading list. It takes a political
perspective on Camus’ book
The Stranger
, saying that one could look at Bush’s choice
to read
The Stranger
as an attempt to understand human violence or as a way to look at
terrorism though an existential lense. The author pokes fun at Bush for not reading
other documents that may have been more helpful to America for him to read, and for
not reading
The Stranger
for what it could be worth to him. This article also goes into
good and evil, and how everyone has the capacity to do both, so, a walk on the beach
can turn into murder because of these two inclinations.
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←
The obvious connection in this article is
The Stranger
, but I want to disagree with
the assumption that the connection the author is making is a valid one. There is no
reason for killing the Arab in
The Stranger
, but the author of this articles seems to think
that Meursault killed the Arab because he wanted glory and a sense of freedom. The
act in
The Stranger
is not meant to have a purpose behind it, besides showing that the
act of murder had no purpose. This frustrated me immensely, because, in class we
have been talking about how the act of murder had no motive, besides that it was hot,
and the sun made him do it, and this article attempted to debunk that argument.
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In
Crime and Punishment
, there was a motive for murder: money and self-
importance. That book would have made a better connection, or at least would make
more sense on Bush’s summer reading list, after all, what are all wars for, if not: money,
power, and/or resources.
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Existentialism is a Humanism
Liz
←
This article is a defense of existentialism as an optimistic, or, at the very least,
not pessimistic, philosophical movement. It re-articulates, “Existence precedes
essence” many times, and this seems to be the defining point of the article. There is

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- Spring '08
- Frandina
- English, Existentialism, The Stranger, Cool Hand Luke, GD
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