Albert Camus

Albert Camus appears in the narrator’s memoir not through an account of his public career but through two personal recollections that reveal the place he held in the narrator’s life. He is remembered as a friend whose words illuminate the narrator’s devotion to his mother, and as someone who offered immediate help when the narrator was overcome by news of his father’s death.

Identity and Introduction

The narrator identifies Albert Camus as his friend. The evidence offers no broader biography of Camus; instead, his character is established through his connection to the narrator and through two sharply different circumstances: a remembered principle of filial loyalty and a moment of private distress.

A Principle of Loyalty

While recalling how his mother sent him to confront people she believed had insulted her, the narrator explains that he obeyed despite his embarrassment and doubts about whether the alleged offense had occurred. He invokes a statement Camus made years later, in different circumstances, about choosing his mother over his ideas. In the memoir, the reference gives concise expression to the narrator’s own choice: he would put his mother’s need to feel protected before his scruples about the scenes she asked him to enter. It is the narrator’s use of Camus’s words, rather than an account of Camus’s motives or circumstances, that gives the recollection its significance.

The Publishing-House Encounter

Camus reappears after the narrator receives a correspondent’s letter about his father. The letter corrects what the narrator had previously been told: his father died of fright on the way to execution, before reaching the gas chamber. The narrator describes sitting with the letter for a long time, then going out onto the staircase of the publishing house where he had collected his mail. He remained there, leaning against the banister, in clothes made in London and wearing the insignia of his public achievements.

Care in a Moment of Shock

Camus happened to pass, noticed that the narrator was unwell, and took him into his office. The memoir gives no further account of their conversation or of what followed there; the action itself is the point. In contrast to the narrator’s outward signs of distinction, his response to the letter was emptiness and immobility. Camus’s recognition of his condition and offer of refuge make their friendship tangible in a small, direct gesture.