Sometimes you come across an artist who excites your interest at first blush. Later on, you read a biography of the man or woman and you realize what a total jerk that person is/was. That was the way I felt about the actor Peter Sellers. I really liked his film roles, thought he was one of the great artists in movies, period. And then my excited interest led me to read about the "man in full".
Big mistake, really. Even his friends, even his son couldn't muster much good to say about him. Now I can't watch Sellers in any of the fine movies he made with Stanley Kubrick or the funny movies he made with Blake Edwards or the quintesential Sellers movies like "I'm All Right, Jack" (1959) or his Chance the Gardener in "Being There" (1979) without thinking that he often was more than a bit of a tyrant at home and probably an unpleasant wack job to work with.
Everybody has bad days, but it seems Sellers crammed a lot of them into his time as a film star. I wish I could go back to when I knew less about the man and just could see him in his films and wonder what kind of a terrific guy it was who could contain all that talent and ability to make me smile even when he had weak material to work with.
Most men and women you can admire in the arts fall into the middle ground most ordinary people fall into. Just people really. More gifted than the folks next door, perhaps, but a little shaky at certain times.
Albert Camus is one person I can say has not disasppointed me as I have read more about him. For a writer who classified himself as an absurbist, he had more than a measure of concern for morality. He stood up to the sycopants of the European Left in the 1950's, especially his friend Jean-Paul Sartre, over the latter's wilingness to be an apologist for Stalinism. At the time, many intellectuals in France apparently thought that Sartre got the better of Camus in their exchanges of essays on political matters. It would appear that the lesser-known, Algerian-born writer has proven to be a clearer and more honest view of the horrors of totalitarianism. The basic humanity of the shines through in the characters he creates in "The Plague". But there is more than the political at work here. Camus was careful to avoid being swallowed up by wht he called "the great Gorgon" of politics.
The book is a description of how a plague strikes the dull but prosperous coastal city of Oran sometime in the 1940's. First the rats come out of their holes, show signs of illness and death. Then the rats stop coming out altogether. Feral cats who lived on the rodents die or go into hiding. Dogs go next. Then the disease strikes the townfolk. The authorities and the press try to play down the crisis, but the rising death toll makes it impossible. The city shuts down. Soldiers and policemen close the gates at the orders of the Prefect. People who have family members with the terrible contagion have to be quarentined in a soccer stadium. The Summer comes to Oran and the death toll mounts.
The narrator remains anonymous. He seems to be working from notes left behind by others. The political inference is clear: "The Plague" draws its source from the Nazi occupation of France and the Vichy control of Algeria, which lasted until the Allies invaded North Africa in 1943 and retook the area, although not without some resistance by the reconstituted Vichy army and police.
There is a deeper theme to this story. Dr. Rieux, the main character, is tryingto stop the plague with very little help from the outside world. He has been seperated from his wife who had gone to a sanitarium. When the plague takes control, people satart dying right in the streets, the gates of Oran shut and no one can go in or out.
"Suddenly, rich or poor, we were all in the same boat" the narrator remarks.
Men and women become more desperate to leave. Vilence on the perimeter ensues. Those i nthe outside world offer sympathy over the radio and some ineffectual serum, but little else. A visiting journalist tries to escape from the city with the help of some smugglers in the Spanish district. (He has a girl friend in Paris. The thought of getting back to her sustains him...for a time. ) A prominent cleric in a sermon first blames the people for the spreading virus; he calls it a sign from God.
The best and the worst come out in people. There is selfishness and a bit of madness in many people right up to the end of the story, but there is also many who try to help out the sick and the dying; even those without medical training or faith in God or anything decide to band together around the clock to help Dr. Rieux fight the disease. In the end, one sees that human nature is neither what the cynics or the saints might led us to believe. That is the suspense of the story; how will these people change (or not change) when faced with the possibility of a slow and agonizing death.
I enjoyed this novel. It's been a long time since I read Camus' more famous (and more often assigned in high school) novel, "The Stranger". It may not be a great book (whatever that is) but it has an unsparing and, somehow, inspiring story to tell.
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