#AlbertCamus's 1947 novel "The Plague" is now a bestseller. Penguin is reprinting it to meet demand. But YOU can #StayHome & read the 1957 Nobel laureate's masterpiece for free online! / thread #Covid19 #quarantine antilogicalism.com/wp-content/upl… 
Algerian-born #AlbertCamus sets his novel in Oran, Algeria, which had 95 cases of the bubonic plague in 1944. He ends "The Plague" by reminding readers the bacillus never dies. He might've been surprised to learn it reemerged only 50 years later, in 2003. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
#AlbertCamus was editor-in-chief of the French-resistance newspaper, "Combat," from 1944-47, and his 1947 novel "The Plague" reads simultaneously as an exploration of #quarantine & of the Nazi occupation of France. openculture.com/2017/01/albert…
In "The Myth of Sisyphus," #Camus accepts suffering w/ "the clarity & courage of mind which refuses all comforting illusions & self-deception," David West writes. This "permits us to live for the instant, for the beauty, pleasure & the ‘implacable grandeur’ of existence."
"Altho 'The Myth of Sisyphus' poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert," #AlbertCamus writes. Read 1 of the most influential essays of the 20th century: www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/cours…
"Sisyphus" begins w/ the recognition that we could each choose to end our suffering at any time. If we choose to live, #Camus counsels, we should live fully, bravely, honestly. The last word of the essay's 1st sentence is suicide, but the last word of the last sentence is happy.
Reading "Sisyphus" can feel like pushing a rock up a hill. But #Camus could write like this, too: "At the hour when the sun overflows from every corner of the sky at once, the orange canoe loaded with brown bodies brings us home in a mad race." fivedials.com/files/fivedial…
In "Summer in Algiers" (linked above), #Camus writes, "if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
Daily #migraine's had me in #quarantine (I kid you not) for 15 years & 1 week. I count the companionship of #Camus as 1 of the things that's kept me sane & happy. But I sure miss teaching. If you pick up "The Plague" (ha!), I'd love to know what you think of it. #StayHome #HangIn
