Review: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wow! The book is quite a tour de force, going from how life is inherently meaningless, the the human condition is absurd, to how that is exactly the reason to live, to how suicide (and murder, and death in general) is not acceptable! It's strange that a question about suicide leads to an inquiry into the meaning of life.

I was initially struck by how well Camus writes - the beginning is lyrical, flowing with relative ease; but he immediately morphs into the usual existentialist writer. The first chapter is dense, hard to follow; it's full of name-dropping and quotes from other philosophers, and Camus seems to think that is makes for good arguments; he is also full of quotable sentences, phrases that sound great and profound, but when you try to make sense of he is saying outside of a single sentence, any meaning is lost; it's like each sentence is on its own, a text full of disjointed sentences without connection to what came before and what comes after. It looks to me that the author makes his arguments basically through two techniques: repetition and metaphor. First, he repeatedly mentions "absurd", and "reasoning", and "meaning", and related things, that by the end it feels like he must have made an argument about it, even if we didn't get it. Second, he makes lots of similes and metaphors for what the absurd means, that again by the end of it we think we should understand it.

But despite the confusing and meandering way he goes about it, the point of the book is fascinating. Towards the end of the first essay, almost by surprise, he arrives at the main statement of the book: “This is where it is seen to what a degree absurd experience is remote from suicide. It may be thought that suicide follows revolt—but wrongly.” […] “That revolt gives life its value”. The meaning of life is to revolt against the absurd! (the absurd that is human life).
This is a quite an intriguing and really brilliant concept! If the reader digs through the book, it is possible to glean several places where he expands on this idea, and it shines! I liked one metaphor Camus used: Sisyphus is all of us - all our work comes to nothing. "Sisyphus is the proletariat of the Gods". In the end, though, I am left unsatisfied: WHY is it that the revolt against the absurd is what gives life its value? The answers, as I mentioned, come from metaphors, never from a good explanation.

After the philosophical essays, there is a sort of weird travel guide, in which he basically reviews a number of travel destinations. I am being only a little facetious - he describes his city and a few neighbors, but it feels like a high-minded, pedantic travel guide. He is not entirely pedantic - his writing here makes him look like a humanist, and this is specially and weirdly true in his weird essay on a boxing match. It's an interesting read, even if he is trying too hard to be poetic. After that, there are some more semi-philosophical musings on history and life.

Rating this book is pretty difficult; on one hand, the writing is difficult, confusing, wanders all over the place, sometimes in very incoherent ways; on the other hand, once in a while coherent statements and even arguments break through, and when they do, they are brilliant.

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