Jan. 4, 1960

[Kyle]

On this day in 1960, Albert Camus was killed in a car crash outside Paris, at the age of 47. On the basis of his novel "The Outsider" (1942), his "philosophical prose-poem" "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942), his Nobel Prize (1957), his political activism and his Humphrey Bogart good looks, Camus had near-cult status in the middle decades of the century. Camus eventually came to resent this popularity, even to feel that it had ruined him. His Nobel speech expresses a plea to be seen as "a man almost young, rich only in his doubts and with his work still in progress." He regarded the prize as one would "the decree that transports him all of a sudden, alone and reduced to himself, to the centre of a glaring light." In his last few years he turned away from politics, alienating those on both left and right who wanted him to champion their causes. Although he did not abandon his "solitaire et solidaire" principles -- "I'm [still] for the left," he said in an interview, "despite myself, and despite it" -- he felt himself to have been made "an outlaw, drawn and quartered" by the activists, and by former friends like Sartre. He returned to writing, and at the time of his death was at work on "The First Man," the autobiographical novel that he hoped would not only be his masterpiece, but help him "reconstruct a truth after having lived a sort of lie all my life." The manuscript was found in the mud at the accident site, and published in its incomplete form by his daughter in 1995.

[Sloth]

Does anyone find it "strange" that the beats had absolutely no respect for the existentialists even though they lived at the same time and at the height of their popularity. They even lived in the same section of Paris for years.

You will never hear a beat mention a existentialist except in derision. You will never hear an existentialist mention the beats at all.

I have always mourned my existential self and tried to dwell more in the realm of the living. I think existenialism is a decadent philosophy even though it is very close to what I feel. One should not live only in one's mind. I am beginning to think that I am full of shit. Honestly I would rather die a drunk reciting poetry than be killed in a car accident thinking about greek gods and writing a book comparing myself nietzsche's last man. Maybe Camus got the point at last but then it killed him.

Existentialists = Write Read & Think
Beats = Write Fuck & Drink

Somewhere in betwixt these two philosophies I can be a happy sloth.

[martino]

Well, at least he died driving a Facel Vega, in my book one of the finest imaginable ways to get out of here.

[Sloth]

yeah thats one sweet car.