Happy Birfday

Today would have been Camus' 100th birthday, and THIS GUY HERE wonders why he's still such a stranger in his homeland.

Camus is “the single reason people outside Algeria know about this country,” says Yazid Ait Mahieddine, a documentary filmmaker and Camus expert in Algiers, as we sit beneath a photograph of the writer in the El- Djazair bar, alongside images of other celebrities who have passed through here, from Dwight Eisenhower to Simone de Beauvoir. “He is our only ambassador.”

Yet despite Camus’ monumental achievements and deep attachment to his native land, Algeria has never reciprocated that love. Camus is not part of the school curriculum; his books can’t be found in libraries or bookshops. Few plaques or memorials commemorate him. “Algeria has erased him,” says Hamid Grine, an Algerian novelist whose 2011 Camus dans le Narguilé (Camus in the Hookah) imagines a young Algerian who discovers that he is Camus’ illegitimate son, and embarks on a quest to learn about his real father.

On a personal note, one of the most memorable passages of L'Etranger (sorry - The Stranger, you fucking hicks) was Camus sensuously writing about making a fried egg, continuing the European tradition of yammering on and on about breakfast. I've noticed it in any and all British Victorian lit, specifically Elizabeth Gaskell, who couldn't seem to go two pages without someone eating an egg and piece of toast for breakfast. Proust mentions breakfast throughout Swann's Way. Finally, one of the first things Heinrich Boll tells us about Leni in Group Portrait with Lady is what she likes to eat for breakfast, an obsession for her the author returns to it throughout the book. So that's England, France and Germany. Maybe I've always missed it, but I can't seem to remember breakfast playing such a part in American Lit. Should I move to Europe to open my dream restaurant?