i was reading a book just recently and a part of the book was about the vietnam war. this immidiatly brought me to think about albert french's "patches of fire" which has stayed with me for ever after reading it a few years back. the reason this book is so special to me is that not only is the book so touching and amazing but i had the most unforgettable chance to meet the man himself. i so happened to be working at a restaurant where albert french was being interviewed by an english newspaper. this man was something out of the ordinary and was the kindest to me. we got talking while is was taking their order and i will never forget that moment. alert said he just wanted a simple lunch nothing to fancy, as long as it came with fries. he explained how he had been eating or rather not eating during his time in vietnam and how that had affected him for life. he started telling me a story, which is also in his book, about how his food had bacically been "alive" one day during his servicetime but cause of hunger and no other option had to simply eat it etc and his story could had gone on but i was busy serving other customers. and to cut a long story short, he said he was going to have his book sent to me, so i could sort of hear him out and so it happened.
reading "patches of fire" had an enormos impact on me, and i must admit that i truly cried finishing the book.
i give my highest recommandations for this book.

French gives the reader real insights into what war is like, and what Viet Nam did to the men that fought there. I have struggled to find books about Viet Nam and other wars from the point of view of real soldiers, not generals and journalists. This one does the job terrifically well.

French, as an African American gives us insight into what race meant before, during, and after the war. But the book does much more than that. What is remarkable and compelling for the reader is to see how much the black and white soldier had in common in the foxholes and rice paddies in Viet Nam, and then, as deeply troubled psyches, in the decades of recovery that our soldiers have gone through.

Finally, French's book is a fascinating book about writers and writing. Here is a man that first had to write to heal. In that he discovered his remarkable talents as an unschooled, but brilliant writer.

Albert French writes not only from the perspective of an American fighting in Vietnam, but also as an African-American, a view which is often neglected. I read this book for a college history course, and never before has an assigned text moved me to the point of tears. This book brings to life a time and place that many of us know little about. Though French obviously cannot, nor does he attempt, to speak for all Vietnam veterans, his story does offer an example of the long term effects of that period of time.

Albert Fitzmorris is part of present-day working class New Orleans. He works at a fish market in the French Quarter, a position he inherited from his now deceased father. On one side Albert faces a tightly knit Irish Catholic community, and the strict expectations that go along with it. On the other side is Albert's own preoccupation with unrequited love. Struggling with a self-image that is slowly falling apart, Albert puts his relationship with his community, his family and his daughter all at risk.

Albert is trying to live despite the shadow of the memory of his father. Fitting into his father's clothes too easily, or playing poker with his father's friends don't make it any easier. Things are made worse by the feeling that his role is diminishing in the life of Eileen, the mother of his daughter (the two aren't married), and in the life of Audrey, his daughter.
Pulling himself away more and more from friends and family, Albert finds himself in a doomed romantic fantasy. If only he could win the heart of the beautiful and unobtainable Chelsea (who works at a local hotel restaurant) his whole life would take a turn for the better. The biggest problem is that Chelsea makes it clear that she is only interested in a casual friendship.

This is a very quiet, and very good, psychological sort of novel about one person's slide into emotional oblivion. The author does a very good job showing the good, the bad and the ugly of a real human life--the aspirations, the messiness and the disappointments. It is very much worth reading.

I really thought the book had a good effective way of teaching French and helped a lot but if you didn't know how to pronounce anything in French then you couldn't use this book much.

Originally titled "Camus for Beginners", this concise biography combines personal information, short excerpts, and vivid cartoons to illuminate the man behind the modern literary myth.

Although I had read The Fall, The Plague, The Stranger, and a few collections of essays a decade earlier, I had only a vague memory of Camus' actual life and conflicts. This fine book, which I read in less than two hours, remains a solid primer. Both longtime admirers of Camus and undergraduate students forced to read his celebrated novels should find this brief work a valuable investment of time.

It's also worth noting that cartoons are often read by adults in Europe. The format provides readers with a superficial, yet accessible and non-threathening, way to enter into academic and philosophical discussions. College and high school teachers of French, literature, and philosophy would benefit from adding this book to their students while assigning any novel by Camus.

This is a very good introduction to the most famous French baroque composers: Lully, Charpentier, Lalande, Couperin and Rameau. The book gives an account of each of the composers' lives, lists all their works and comments on their style and major achievements. It is easy to read and one quickly gets a basic overview. However, if you are interested in a deeper exploration of the composers' opus, you may find yourself wanting more details. In that case you may want to read "Marc-Antoine Charpentier" by Catherine Cessac for more information on Charpentier or "Jean Baptiste de Lully and his Tragedies Lyriques" by Joyce Newman. Both books are very informative and detailed.

A long time student of Camus' works, I thought I knew everything there was to know about this man. However, this book along with "Albert Camus and the Minister" have left me with a fresh perspective on Camus. Not to say that it destroys the image of the man that other works personify, but it does work to fill in the gaps and in some cases bring to light new things about a well known man, of whom little is truely known.

Well, here I am again with Albert Camus. This is the third review of one of his works that I've written. I thought The Stranger was a great work and so I went on to The Fall and found it lacking. I've found that Camus is at his best when he concentrates on a story instead of preaching to his audience. Yeah, you can put philosophical ideas in fiction but you have to clothe it deeply enough in story. In Exile and the Kingdom (1958), a book of 6 short stories comes closer to the storytelling brillance of The Stranger but doesn't quite pull it off.

Most of the stories in the book are about people that are being repressed by society in one form or another. They have gotten sick of their lives and are on the cusp of breaking down or screaming out or surrendering to their fate. Some of them escape and some of the characters don't.

The first story, "The Adulterous Woman" is about a woman who has been married too long and while visiting an Arab town begins to awaken her physical being to the sights and sounds of the desert and of other men.

"The Renegade" shows what happens when a missionary priest is captured by a tribe of savages and is forced to worship a pagan idol. This is one of the more effective stories and reminds me of the first person style of The Fall.

"The Silent Men" concerns us with one of the favorite pasttimes of Europeans, namely the labor dispute. It is about the relations between some barrelmakers and their boss. Not exactly high drama.

In "The Guest", a schoolteacher on a remote mountain, isolated from civilization, is given the responsibility of escorting a murderer to the civil authorities.

"The Artist at Work" is the greatest story in the book. It is about the continual conflict between an artist's desire to be a part of society and the need he has for solitude. The painter in this story gets married, has kids, tries to be a celebrity, and almost destroys his very reason for being. Almost everyone, even his disciples, are unknowingly killing him because they never allow him time to work.

The last story in the book, "The Growing Stone" was almost completely a waste of time. I know it was about a French engineer going to a rainforest village to construct a flood prevention system but beyond that it got shaky. I know he went to one of their celebrations and saw something like a voodoo ceremony but beyond that I didn't have a clue as to what was going on. I'm sure it was one of those Heart of Darkness things where civilized European confronts dark forces of the jungle and loses.

This book as a whole was OK. Nothing bad. Just Ok. The artist story was quite good even though it was a bit melodramatic and romantic. "The Renegade" I'll have to read again but I believe it to be quite masterful too. As for the other stories, I don't see that you would miss anything if you didn't read them. There just doesn't seem to be a lot going on in them. The characters aren't given enough to make us interested in them. In fact, I don't think any of these stories are essential to Camus' work or French literature. They were just average to me. Read The Stranger instead.

I believe that this book should be read along with the Fall, for as Camus intended, the two works lend insight into each other. I don't believe it's quite accurate to boil these stroies down into existential philosophy and social crticism. There is something to Camus' work which speaks to more hidden aspirations. This is an incredible collection of stories, who's diversity defies Hemingway. However, unlike the other reviews, I don't believe that the stories are about exile in such a simple way. Many of the charcters seem to be liberated at the end of their stories...or, imprisoned. Either way, the exile involved here, I think, may have more to do with the kingdom of God. Take that as you will. This is a strong piece of literature.

A riveting and utterly haunting book, this anthology of Camus's short stories is not only my favorite of all his works, but it is one of the best books I have ever read.

The underlying theme in each of his stories is exile, whether it be spiritual, physical, or mental. From the tale of the school teacher put in care of an Arab prisoner to the missionary who finds himself worshipping a cruel graven image, each tale pits man in a pivotal moment in time which defines his future. This is at the very heart of existentialism, a predominant literary vehicle of contemporary authors.

The tales are simple in style, yet vividly written and rich in detail. You'll find youself shocked by the tragic irony in each of the characters, and haunted by the stories for years to come.

Among the many pearls of insight offered by Alfred Kazin is one to which this author should pay much more respect: "What brings us closer to a work of art is not instruction, but another work of art."

Bronner begins his book with a lengthy apologia that explains in detail why every single other thing written about Camus is inadequate. I think such an introduction betrays the sort of scholar who would merrily have joined the pompous Parisian literati of the 1950s that banded *against* Camus, denouncing him as a traitor to the Left, and thereby proving forever their own hollow lack of substance. Therein lies the irony of tone with which this book is laced. Bronner is a man who purports to love Camus, but had he been writing fifty years ago, at the time when Camus most needed friends, I can easily see him being Camus' worst enemy.

As for substance, Bronner appears quite confident that his contribution is entirely original and more significant than anything heretofore written about Camus. I think in fact it is not particularly insightful, or at least no more so than what any intelligent layperson could get by reading Camus' works and the already existing biographical material.

Most insulting is Bronner's brusque disrespect for the Camus biography written by Herbert Lottman. Bronner first explains that the two major English-language Camus biographies in print -- one by Lottman and one by the Frenchman Olivier Todd -- are both inadequate because they are basically factual and not critical. However, the thing I found most frustrating about Bronner's book is that he commits exactly the sin from which Lottman mercifully spared us. Lottman writes in the preface to the second edition of his wonderful book that he will not deign to preach to us about how we should understand Camus. He so refuses because, as he explains, the essence of an artist is not in his biography (or, by extension, in secondary scholarship by university professors like Bronner), but in his works.

Notwithstanding Bronner's lengthly explanation of his own importance, I think his book will very quickly be relegated to the obscurity it deserves.

"Camus" Portrait of a Moralist" is a splendid book. I came across it after just finishing a 400+ biography of the subject that bulged with facts and quotes but lacked insight and analysis. These later two virtues Stephen Bronner provides in abundance. His remarkable achievement is to offer in 150 pages a persuasive interpretation of Camus that brings together his life events, artistic achievements and activities, and his philosophical and political thinking.

Bronner argues that Camus' career evolved in three stages. During his early period he developed his concept of the absurd. The Second World War and Camus' involvement in the resistance heralded a focus on rebellion and the human solidarity that grows out of a shared struggle against a powerful and demonic foe. In the post-war era, however, this solidarity splintered over issues such as communism and the French-Algerian War. During the last 10 years of his life Camus was distinguished by his refusal to embrace ideologies and fanatical devotion to causes regardless the cost in human life and dignity.

Bronner discusses Camus' artistic, philosophical and journalistic works to both demonstrate and illustrate Camus' development until his death at age 47. Within this framework, Bronner draws welcome attention to neglected aspects of Camus' outlook such as his almost contemplative atheism.

In sum, Bronner's stellar accomplishment if to write an interpretation of Camus that is both clear and concise for the uninitiated, and subtle and nuanced for those already acquainted with his subject.

Galen Tinder galen@blast.net

Larry McMurtry once wrote that one should never set out to read everything written by a particular author. Of course that was Larry McMurtry and I have come to realize that he was right about himself and many other authors. "Notebooks 1935-1942" is evidence that it is true even about Albert Camus. Enthralled by "The Stranger" and "The Plague", I set out to read everything by this author. I blamed myself for not enjoying his complicated essays. I also blame myself for thinking that this collection of random thoughts, scenarios, and quotes would be worth the time it took to read it. There are occassional observations of note but they are lost in the lack of continuity of thought. The art of literature lies not in having great ideas. The art of literature lies in creating stories and scenarios that enable the reader to discover the truths the author would like discovered.

For students of Camus there could be some benefits in reading this "book". The first part of the notebook generally focuses on material used in "A Happy Death" while the very latter part of the notebook generally focuses on material used in "The Plague".

So many Books, so little time. Don't waste your time on this one.

A wonderful collection of the random thoughts of a brilliant writer..he later used these notes to create his masterpieces, unforgettable and poignant, a treasure to have in one's library.

This book is a somewhat anachronistic Marxist interpretation of Impressionist and Post-Impressionistic French painting on the basis of the old-fashined Base-Superstructure model. The author strives to prove that the Impressionits' concentration on landscape and private life painting was, above all, a kind of bourgeois whitewashing of the recent events of the Paris Commune. This would make the book too much one-sided, were it not for the author's later remarks on Seurat's paintings, that allow him to fully grasp the fact that the pseudo-organic character of these pointillist paintings reflect, more than bourgeois fear of a renewed Commune, the self-confidence of a sucessful bourgeoisie in creating an stable social order based on individualism and private accomplishements.