2010/3

Albert Camus: The First Man (284p. in the first American print)

Salvaged from the 1960 car wreck in which he died, ‘The First Man’ is Albert Camus’ unfinished autobiography, which his children, Catherine and Jean, deemed worthy of publication. It is. Camus was born in a family of French Algerian pied-noirs and spent his youth in abject poverty (the book reads as a sociology of poverty at times), from which he escaped with the help of his beloved teacher, who convinced Camus’ mother and grandmother to let him continue with school. ‘The First Man’ also contains letters between Camus and the teacher, after his reception of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

“19 November 1957

Dear Monsieur Germain,

I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching, and your example, none of all this would have happened. I don’t make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me an opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

Albert Camus”