For the Heck of It

Already, it seems, the President has polished off the Camus and had a debate with his new press secretary, Tony Snow, on the origins of existentialism. Now, it’s possible to feel misgivings about the President’s ranch reading. Hasn’t there been, over the years, more useful material for him to scrutinize – memos, for instance, about Osama bin Laden’s intention to strike in the United States, or some State Department studies on the difference between Sunnis and Shiites in a country he was about to invade? (Adam Gopnik, Read It And Weep, The New Yorker, August 28, 2006)

A couple of years back, an interviewer asked President Bush which books he was reading those days. Bush struggled for the right words for a short while and then said Bible. He said that he read the Bible every day.

Recently, he has made up the deficiency, if deficiency indeed it was. During his last vacation at Crawford, he read Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger. Although I am not sure if anybody asked him about it, it got into the news nonetheless. Even a sneeze of a prominent person is newsworthy. Or choking on a piece of pretzel for that matter.

Yahoo! News (August 11, 2006) reported, “White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush, here on Texas ranch enjoying a 10-day vacation from Washington, had made quick work of the Algerian-born writer’s 1946 novel – in English.” Quick work indeed! The novel is only 117 pages long. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is about 1300 pages and Anna Karenin is more than 800 pages.

The President all of a sudden seems to have developed a taste in existentialism and one of its prominent expositors, Albert Camus. He quoted Camus in a February 2005 speech in Brussels when he said, “We know there are many obstacles, and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that ‘freedom is a long distance race.’ We’re in that race for the duration.”

He is known to have told the reporters that he doesn’t read the newspapers. He relies on his gut feelings. His aides prepare daily briefs for him which he seldom reads. Instead he depends on verbal briefings in which the aides proffer him a few alternative actions on a given issue and he selects one of them.

And now he was interested in Camus particularly at a time when the political scene was ablaze with Israeli bombing in Lebanon and Hezbollah’s rockets falling at random into Israel. That was the time for him to catch up and improve his knowledge, one may wonder, about how the Arab mind works in tough situations. Somehow he and his proxy warrior, Israel, miscalculated about Hezbollah’s resolve and failed to rub it into the dust as had been planned. It seems, he also needs to make a serious effort to comprehend the psyche of the Arab kids who choose to become suicide bombers. To say that they hate the American democracy and social values is too simplistic; there is definitely more to it. And although to suggest the coveted prize of 72 virgins in the next life might be titillating, it is too superficial and shallow. What about the young girls who blow themselves up as suicide bombers?

The critics and analysts have been trying to figure out what is common in existentialism and Bush’s faith as a re-born Christian. The main character in the novel, Meursault, shot and killed an Arab. The magistrate who was examining him was a true Christian and due to the goodness of his heart was trying to help him. He asked the killer if he believed in God and he responded “no.” The magistrate was mortified. Camus wrote in The Stranger, “But from across the table he (magistrate) had already thrust the crucifix in my (killer’s) face and was screaming irrationally. ‘I am a Christian, I ask Him to forgive you your sins. How can you not believe that He suffered for you?’ I was struck by how sincere he seemed, but I had had enough.”

President Bush is also perhaps at a loss to understand how the Middle Eastern countries can not believe in the virtues of the western democracy? It is also as if he is wondering why they are not Christians like him. May be he found some commonalities in his outlook, the Arabs, and the Christian God in The Stranger, some analysts mused. Whatever it was, the novel is a good read. I was also motivated to read it.

I had read about Camus, Sartre, and existentialism from here and there but didn’t have the opportunity of reading any of their original works. Not that I have read any original works of any other French philosophers with the exception of Rousseau and one or two others. It is not that I have not tried to enhance my knowledge of the French philosophers; there is simply too much to read. I therefore tried some short cuts. Recently, I bought “Modern French Philosophy” by Robert Wicke which includes essays on Henri Bergson, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin among others, 4 philosophers of Structuralism including Jacques Lacan, and 8 philosophers of Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism including Luce Irigary and Jacques Derrida. I have read the essays on de Chardin and Camus and have yet to read the remaining essays.

It reminds me of an anecdote. A special evening was arranged for Bergson where Bernard Shaw was asked to introduce the celebrated guest. Shaw started confidently talking about Bergson and his philosophy but went quite off the mark in as much as his philosophy was concerned. Bergson was embarrassed and he tried to interrupt him. Shaw told him pointedly something to the effect, “Keep quiet, you do not understand your own philosophy.”

A thing which is apparently complex and hard to understand impresses the common folks the most. When many Pakistani speakers and writers (including me) try to impress their audience, they start quoting from Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz and Faraz. It is quiche to quote something in Persian and preferably Arabic (which is more difficult to understand and is the language of the Holy Quran) for this purpose. Quoting from English authors serves the same purpose for the Urdu writers.