The unfinishedness is palpable, it feels like the different passages (which are great) are tacked together making it a patchwork of different thoughts. It's not hard to see why Camus set it aside to publish the stranger instead, but I have to commend him for that awareness. It still holds interesting ideas but it is not up to the (very high) Camus standart that I am used to.

"In this flowering of air, this fertility of the heavens, it seemed as if a man’s one duty was to live and be happy."

The most dominant flavour that enriches this monument to man's search for happiness is the lucidity that accompanies Mersault, the protagonist and us, the readers. This lucidity is manifested as consciousness to the foreground of life. It is emphasised against the silence of its sheer existence by contrast through bursts of hyper-sensitivity to what the world offers to Mersault.

"Every day, his life alternated, from this calm consumptive to Emmanuel bursting into song, from the smell of coffee to the smell of tar, alienated from himself and his interests, so far from his heart, his truth. Things that in other circumstances would have excited him left him unmoved now, for they were simply part of his life, until the moment he was back in his room using all his strength and care to smother the flame of life that burned within him."

We see Mersault as your fortunate enough sample of humanity, able to sustain himself in an average lifestyle - one that permits him occasional indulgence to relish the pleasures of life, but not extraordinary enough to isolate him from the degradation and its fear. He works for a living, has an enjoyable love life and has friends to pass time with. But in the shelter of his habits lurks that shadow of uncompromising consciousness which outlines the hollowness of his happiness. Mersault's does not want to settle for the definitions of happiness that he considers hypocritical, a counterfeit circulating and being advertised as the way to live and the thing to pursue. We start the search with Camus' defiance against all forces of "bad faith" which try to curb this aspect of one's existential freedom by providing him/her templates of what a happy life should consist of - a successful job, a happy love life, the luxurious experiences of travel. Camus criticises this straitjacket over consciousness thought and choice through Mersault's renunciation of the life he should lead. He wants his own pure, untainted happiness and that's the only thing he will settle for in this life of his.

"Today, in the face of abjection and solitude, his heart said: ‘No.’ And in the great distress that washed over him, Mersault realized that his rebellion was the only authentic thing in him, and that everything elsewhere was misery and submission."

This rebellion does not come without a cost though. If the hopes, desires and pleasures that he knows, had access to and left behind are not the ones, then where is his diamond in the rough. Here comes the existential loneliness that comes from the indifference of this world that his life resides it. Its abject coldness is made harsher by the warmth and enticing beauty it has to offer. But Mersault is not prepared to expect any sympathy of direction or the comfort of meaning in the definition of "happiness" that he so desperately seeks. Camus wants you to stand in Mersault's shoes and recognise the defiance that ennobles this crazy, haggard looking person. Being conscious of the purity of the only deserving happiness is what one should really strive towards. And realising the trap in expecting it in a shiny, ornate treasure chest of meaning, lined with the lush pelt of purpose. The contradiction of man's finite consciousness and limits of reason and the threshold of universe's cold reason-devoid existence will later become the starting point for Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.

"He wanted to crush himself into that mud, to re-enter the earth by immersing himself in that clay, to stand on that limitless plain covered with dirt, stretching his arms to the sooty sponge of the sky, as though confronting the superb and despairing symbol of life itself, to affirm his solidarity with the world at its worst, to declare himself life’s accomplice even in its thanklessness and its filth."

In this act of rebellion, Mersault murders a man - this pattern of impulse and cold-blooded crime reminds us of The Outsider. This victim (Zagreus) however, is not really a stranger per se, but somebody who reflects the same anguish that was festering Mersault's conscious lack of happiness. Was there an ulterior motive or rebellion against the man through this act? I don't think so. It's still unclear to me as to what transpired between the two but this much became evident that Zagerus inspired Mersault to abandon everything for the truth destined for Mersault's life since Zagreus could not achieve it as he planned due to his physical disability. It almost seems like a cry for help which is responded in converting a suicide to a consensual murder. Mersault obviously flees from the spot (unlike The Outsider confronting the society unfeelingly when caught). Zagreus' murder serves as Mersault's forced escape - not out of fear though; instead as a spark of protest against society's institutional morality.

"He had to create his happiness and his justification. And doubtless the task would be easier for him now. At the strange peace that filled him as he watched the evening suddenly freshening upon the sea, the first star slowly hardening in the sky, where the light died out green to be reborn yellow, he realized that after this great tumult and this fury, what was dark and wrong within him was gone now, yielding to the clear water, transparent now, of a soul restored to kindness, to resolution. He understood. How long he had craved a woman’s love! And he was not made for love. All his life – the office on the docks, his room and his nights of sleep there, the restaurant he went to, his mistress – he had pursued singlemindedly a happiness which in his heart he believed was impossible. In this he was no different from everyone else. He had played at wanting to be happy. Never had he sought happiness with a conscious and deliberate desire."

He tries to desperately escape his past world, in the hope of starting with a clean slate and abandoning the very routines that placated his previous desire to live. Being a stranger in a strange land, he tried to obtain a chance encounter with the truth that would satiate his desire for pure happiness. But wandering did not rebate his anxiety. Rather than seeking respite from the dread of escaping the false happinesses that come with strings attached, Mersault decided to return back to Algiers and met people who resonated him in their unconventionality towards life. From their, his rebellion took a stubborn desire to live, to be happy without caring about world's weary muteness to his desperation. He abandoned himself to the world he existed in, the finiteness of the life that is granted to him with patience and submission. Not back to the previous pleasures which we was running away from - but to the raw ones which the very finiteness and physicality of his existence let him enjoy. In the desolation of bare existence, Mersault sees the freedom to define happiness for himself.

"Beyond the curve of the days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity – happiness was human, eternity ordinary. What mattered was to humble himself, to organize his heart to match the rhythm of the days instead of submitting their rhythm to the curve of human hopes."

"‘You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters – all that matters, really – is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever-present consciousness. The rest – women, art, success – is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.’"

Mersault then lives as he always wanted to really live, inside the very world which previously suffocated him. Where he once saw unending drought of meaninglessness, he now saw infinite depth to quench his thirst. Rather than finding an escape beyond existence or a "higher" dimension of living life, he humbly accepted his limited part in a limitless world. Mersault finds a paradoxical conclusion of the noble pursuit of his consciousness in abandonment. The conscious will to exist is the choice towards happiness. Then follows what Camus does best - bring in his philosophical lucidity in his narrative. He describes with ultra-sensitivity of how Mersault passes his days, mostly in solitude but doing things which make him happy. The medium becomes the message.

"Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched – just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance – so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned."

Near the end of his life, Mersault holds on to the precious consciousness he acquired and desperately fears it being taken away in stages of weakness. However, he realises that having acquired this will to be happy, no matter how brief, is fulfilling in its finiteness, even if for a short while. He and his happiness cease to exist after a happy death.

"For he had played his part, fashioned his role, perfected man’s one duty, which is only to be happy. Not for long, no doubt. He had destroyed the obstacle, and this inner brother he had engendered in himself – what did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed."

3.5 stars … no plot just vibes