Scan barcode
A review by jjupille
The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud
4.0
I have to consider this a provisional assessment - they all should be, really - because I can't say with any confidence which parts are my own context and which parts are to do with the book itself. I have read very good reviews of it, read about the prizes, and see that it's right up my alley, bringing together an engagement with, inter alia, colonialism, Algerian national identity (my grandmother was a Pied Noir), Islam (Daoud earned himself some dangerously zealous criticism) -- really, religion more generally -- and, of course, [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1416756630p2/957894.jpg]' [b:The Stranger|49552|The Stranger|Albert Camus|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349927872s/49552.jpg|3324344], which I have had three goes with, French-English-French. I love The Stranger (found it doing some "bouqinering", as my mind's voice would have it, in Grenoble in 1990), which a recent read of [b:Huis Clos suivi de Les Mouches|22063592|Huis Clos suivi de Les Mouches|Jean-Paul Sartre|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399735472s/22063592.jpg|41394145] only deepened.
So I felt ready for Daoud.
It started slowly for me, but books often do. I expected to see a common pattern, where at some point it clicks and it knocks my socks off. Chapter six starts with a dinged page 59, annotated "starts picking up". Typical for me, I gravitate to the oscuro, and this is about him stealing sugar, his mother "scratching her face with her fingernails and wailing about her plight", and son: "To prove my existence, I had to disappoint her. It was like fate. That tie bound us together, deeper than death."
The old man in the bar narrating is a trope that makes Westerners think of Coledridge and "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", but it's as old as ports themselves and Daoud does honor to the tradition, painting a sufficiently drunk and cataractic portrait of the tale-teller, whose dead brother Musa is the protagonist, a refracted version of Camus' own Arab, shot dead in The Stranger. He's given a name, and we get a great many new and wonderful fragments of his shattered life and those of those around him, and his world, and ours. Daoud is supremely talented and he constructs a scene that's darker and cooler than Camus' heatstroke-on-the-beach -- nighttime, a bar, cigarettes and wine.
As alluded to above, there's great commentary on a million interesting things. I was just flashing on how the westerner with the tape recorder, maybe a journalist but also maybe a literary type, represents one of the new, legitimate forms of western engagement in Daoud's time, with the demise of the older, more violent one that framed Camus' world. I still have John Meyer on the brain, and I suspect he could appreciate the 'type' as one that has been richly scripted. Anywhere, yes, there are some interesting passages on religion (one starts on p. 59, for example), love, being a son (and why don't we have a noun, "sonhood", to express "the state of being a son"?) to a mother, language, colonialism, sex, France, etc. etc. The Human Condition.
I don't see it now, but here's a random line that made me sit up and grab my pen:
"She and I saw each other about ten times that summer. Then we had a correspondence that lasted several months, and then she stopped writing to me and everything dissolved. Maybe because of a death or a marriage or a change of address. Who knows? There's an old mailman in my neighborhood who wound up in prison because he'd fallen into the habit of throwing away his undelivered letters at the end of each day" (Daoud 2015, 68).
I like that, and it captures Daoud's voice to a 'T', warmer than Camus' but with a rock-steady rhythm that hypnotizes you all the same.
The book is full of gems.
"Friday? It's not a day when God rested, it's a day when he decided to run away and never come back" (Daoud 2015, 69).
#love: "How do people who love each other do it? How can they stand it? What is it that makes them forget they were born alone and will die separate?" (Daoud 2015, 115).
#death: "Death - when I received it, when I gave it - is for me the only mystery. All the rest is nothing but rituals, habits and dubious bonding" (Daoud 2015, 115).
My estimation of the book has increased as I have sat to type this review. I started at 3 stars - "It fell short of my expectations", in this case. I am at 4 as I type this. As I say above, I have ample data suggesting that my evaluations can vary a lot depending on all kinds of noisy factors, so I always reserve the right to revise. If you have interests in the themes identified above, I'd certainly suggest it, and see what you think.
So I felt ready for Daoud.
It started slowly for me, but books often do. I expected to see a common pattern, where at some point it clicks and it knocks my socks off. Chapter six starts with a dinged page 59, annotated "starts picking up". Typical for me, I gravitate to the oscuro, and this is about him stealing sugar, his mother "scratching her face with her fingernails and wailing about her plight", and son: "To prove my existence, I had to disappoint her. It was like fate. That tie bound us together, deeper than death."
The old man in the bar narrating is a trope that makes Westerners think of Coledridge and "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", but it's as old as ports themselves and Daoud does honor to the tradition, painting a sufficiently drunk and cataractic portrait of the tale-teller, whose dead brother Musa is the protagonist, a refracted version of Camus' own Arab, shot dead in The Stranger. He's given a name, and we get a great many new and wonderful fragments of his shattered life and those of those around him, and his world, and ours. Daoud is supremely talented and he constructs a scene that's darker and cooler than Camus' heatstroke-on-the-beach -- nighttime, a bar, cigarettes and wine.
As alluded to above, there's great commentary on a million interesting things. I was just flashing on how the westerner with the tape recorder, maybe a journalist but also maybe a literary type, represents one of the new, legitimate forms of western engagement in Daoud's time, with the demise of the older, more violent one that framed Camus' world. I still have John Meyer on the brain, and I suspect he could appreciate the 'type' as one that has been richly scripted. Anywhere, yes, there are some interesting passages on religion (one starts on p. 59, for example), love, being a son (and why don't we have a noun, "sonhood", to express "the state of being a son"?) to a mother, language, colonialism, sex, France, etc. etc. The Human Condition.
I don't see it now, but here's a random line that made me sit up and grab my pen:
"She and I saw each other about ten times that summer. Then we had a correspondence that lasted several months, and then she stopped writing to me and everything dissolved. Maybe because of a death or a marriage or a change of address. Who knows? There's an old mailman in my neighborhood who wound up in prison because he'd fallen into the habit of throwing away his undelivered letters at the end of each day" (Daoud 2015, 68).
I like that, and it captures Daoud's voice to a 'T', warmer than Camus' but with a rock-steady rhythm that hypnotizes you all the same.
The book is full of gems.
"Friday? It's not a day when God rested, it's a day when he decided to run away and never come back" (Daoud 2015, 69).
#love: "How do people who love each other do it? How can they stand it? What is it that makes them forget they were born alone and will die separate?" (Daoud 2015, 115).
#death: "Death - when I received it, when I gave it - is for me the only mystery. All the rest is nothing but rituals, habits and dubious bonding" (Daoud 2015, 115).
My estimation of the book has increased as I have sat to type this review. I started at 3 stars - "It fell short of my expectations", in this case. I am at 4 as I type this. As I say above, I have ample data suggesting that my evaluations can vary a lot depending on all kinds of noisy factors, so I always reserve the right to revise. If you have interests in the themes identified above, I'd certainly suggest it, and see what you think.