Sep 07, 2009 02:07 PM
4055 Views
(Updated Sep 07, 2009 02:46 PM)
I was watching Matrix last night and then I had this mail from Jasmine this morning. Both were computer generated derivatives and blockbusters. How much technology has engulfed human mind, and to an extent that it has captured our imagination to its core. I hate it. Because it hampers the taste of my dreams. I used to dream of woodstocks, icebergs, low-light-lamped reading rooms, women for the matter, paintbrush. Now it’s only ipods and keyboards.
Before we realize the power of dreams the next innovation is creeping under our sleeves. Make salve of our mind and we obey like zombies. Sabotaged traffic signals and blood pressure are very much connected. Earlier it wasn’t like this somewhere around 1957 when Albert Camus was writing Exile and the Kingdom. The blood pressure was independent and a women and man could marry the indifferences of their taste.
A collection of short stories that make your reading experience big. Bigger if you don’t go by cover (I guess it has got a nice cover as well, penguin edition), or reviews (remember, review writers are very much influenced by technology and TRPs). Fine here we go with “THE ADULTEROUS WOMEN”.For the sexists, this title has nothing to do with skin show or slipping stockings. Yes, if you have a strong sense of imagination, nothing can stop you man! Even literature for the matter.
This first story is about the women who goes to the desert land with her husband and suddenly feel that it’s getting cold there in the night that she can’t spend just drooling beside her tired husband who had a tough business day. So she decides to leave in the middle of the night and goes up to the terrace, remembers a gentleman’s face whom she saw last day while travelling and she sobs. Goes back to her husband and sleeps.
Few of the critics (I am mentioning this coz they too belong to the non-technical era) regard Camus as one of the writers who bring the human psyche on to your face and you start feeling uncomfortable about your own being. Meaning, his writing are not just disturbing and implied by loneliness, but also a reflection of human existence as an independent entity. You can say, not very much in the “social” context.
Fine, next story is THE RENEGADE. It’s an account of a prisoner who has been tortured to death but he lived few moments in Camus’s narration before finally falling to the clutches of death. If you can tolerate falling pieces of rotting flesh that is smeared in salt, then you might be reading this book, I am not sure how much you will enjoy it.
You would find unexplored details in Camus’s narration. Watch out if you feel like puking, don’t eat heavy before reading.
THE SILENT MAN is the next story. The man speaks yes, but only when he was least expected. The story brings to you a group of laborers who eventually form a union only to discover that “feudal power” is tough to defeat. They lose, their job, livelihood and succumb to the power. Most of the times they do not speak because speaking for rights is seldom counted as “speaking”.
Look out for unsaid expressions in this particular story. Infact, this has been the strength of Camus. Sometimes you would feel, if you are not reading but looking at a painting that moves in a time space.
Welcome THE GUEST, the next story. This is less similar to THE RENEGADE coz there is a prisoner but not going to die. Instead the protector is. Though the story didn’t mention that the schoolmaster (protector) dies, but the warning written on the blackboard was sigh enough for readers to conclude in this manner.
The line was “you handed over our brother, you will pay for this”. Point is he used to stay in a jungle travelling miles to teach a bunch of students.
Let us move on to the next, a happier story, because it has connections with art, THE ARTIST AT WORK. This a fantastic story, not because the narration or content but the point of view. This is about a painter whose life is dedicated to art, but earns little. So gradually when his family expands, his space for painting shrinks. To an extent that he made a private roof within his house for his creations and goes for a sabbatical for 3 weeks creating something. When his friend visits him after weeks, he has written one word on the canvas “Solitary” which could be read as “Solidary” Story ends.
The last of the stories inTHE GROWING STONE. What that stone could be? Which grows with time. Makes one uncomfortable in a given space or time.
I guess I left that with a mystery. If that really works than catch hold of a personal copy of this book.
Jean-Paul Sartre writes about Kingdom and Exile: I would call his pessimism “solar”, if you remember how much black there is in the sun.
While I was reading“THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS” , one quote has stayed on my mind. “There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
