Bush, Camus, and ‘The Stranger’

August 14, 2006

For some reason, the president’s reading habits — every president’s reading habits — seem to generate considerable media interest. Apparently, it’s a peek into the president’s personality, coupled with insight into what might help influence his perspective.

But in order for these reading lists to be valuable, we have to believe the books are actually being read. In Bush’s case, I’m not so sure.

President George W. Bush faced major security challenges on three fronts on Sunday as he prepared to return to Washington after a 10-day working vacation at his ranch.

Bush puts down his summer reading — including Albert Camus’ “The Stranger,” and two books on Civil War President Abraham Lincoln — in favor of presidential briefing books.

Reading about Lincoln isn’t much of a stretch. Bush very well may consider himself something of a Lincoln-esque figure, fighting a costly war while enduring intense political criticism.

But Camus? I’m having a much tougher time buying this one.

We all like to joke about Bush’s limited intellectual prowess, but I think it’s safe to say even staunch Bush allies would concede that the president is not exactly “book smart.” According to his own carefully-crafted narrative, Bush is driven by instinct. By the president’s own admission, he doesn’t read newspapers and he won’t pore over briefing books; Bush will instead hire a loyal team he can rely on to distill information and offer him choices, which he will make based on his gut.

He is not, in other words, the kind of guy who reads Camus on vacation, in between brush-clearing and bike-rides in which he’ll shout “air assault!” to his companions.

Moreover, “The Stranger” is not … how do I put this gently … an easy read. It’s a novel steeped in philosophy, most notably Camus’ existentialism, and delves into a not-so-subtle atheism (Meursault rejects any suggestion of embracing religion and believes there are no supernatural influences on humanity).

If Bush has decided to branch out and challenge himself, considering a worldview that is clearly at odds with his own, I’ll be the first to congratulate him. But based on everything I’ve seen of the president, I simply find it hard to believe. I’m not suggesting the president offer us a book report, but if he wanted to take a moment, perhaps at his next press conference, to share his reaction to the book, I’d be anxious to hear his perspective.

Post Script: By the way, just an aside, if Bush did read the book, what will the GOP base think about the president picking up an existentialist novel with atheistic themes written by a Frenchman?

Perhaps Laura got “The Stranger” from the library where she used to work and put it on Georgie’s bedside table. If he flipped through it and put it back down because it had no pictures and hard words for him to understand, he still might be able to say he was “reading” it if he left it there.

  • I doubt Bush can properly pronounce Camus.

    I am reminded of the classic Dan Akroid SNL skit involving a Titian painting that included a bare breast. Replace Akroid’s Chicago accent with an East Texas drawl and there you go.

    I swear to god Titan T-I-T-I-A-N!

  • I disagree. If Bush were the stranger, Tony Snow might have had more reasons to for Bush capping the Arab on the beach, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from pulling the trigger. Bush could care less about some Arab.

    Then again, maybe Bush is reading it to get a better grasp of Cheney.

    Also, The Stranger has the benefit so many classics of literature have: it’s short. And if you don’t give it much thought, you can bomb right through it.

    Of course, if Bush had said he was reading L’Etrange, that would have been impressive.

  • Maybe it’s not such an inappropriate choice as you think. It is, after all, about a man who kills an Arab for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps Bush can identify –

  • No, something got lost in the translation here. He’s not reading “The Stranger”, he’s reading “Stranger than Fiction–Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”. He wanted to see his award for Worst. pResident. Ever.

  • All-time greatest book-related interview with Bush (Jan. 27, 2005):

    [C-SPAN’s Brian] LAMB: How much reading do you do a day, and what time of day do you read?

    THE PRESIDENT: I read, oh, gosh, I’d say, 10, maybe, different memoranda prepared by staff.

    LAMB: What about books?

    THE PRESIDENT: I’m reading, I think on a good night, maybe 20 to 30 pages. I’m exercising quite hard these days, and I get up very early. And so the book has become somewhat of a sedative. I mean, maybe there are some other old guys like me who get into bed, open the book, 20 pages later you’re out cold. But I read a lot on the weekends. I’m traveling — when I travel a lot I get a chance to read. I’m downing quite a few books.

    By the way, in this job, there are some simple pleasures in life that really help you cope. One is Barney the dog, and the other is books. I mean, books are a great escape. Books are a way to get your mind on something else.

    There is much more at the link.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

    Interesting items about Camus (emphasis mine)-

    -Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria to a French Algerian (pied noir) settler family….Algeria, isn’t that place full of “towel heads”?

    -Camus joined the French Communist Party in 1934 ….A COMMIE!

    -In 1934, he married Simone Hie, a morphine addict, but the marriage ended due to infidelity by both of them….Married a druggie, got divorced…cheated on his wife!

    -In 1935, he founded Théâtre du Travail — “Worker’s Theatre” — (renamed Théâtre de l’Equipe (“Team’s Theatre”) in 1937), which survived until 1939…Involved in community theater! Uh, oh! Big red f[l]ag there!

    -he had argued passionately against the institution of marriage, dismissing it as unnatural..Anti-Family

    – In the first stage of World War II, the so-called Phony War stage, Camus was a pacifist…Frenchy lefty wussie!

    -In the 1950s Camus devoted his efforts to human rights…whatever!

    -Through out his life, Camus spoke out against and actively opposed totalitarianism in its many forms…Maybe Rove and Cheney should borrow this after W is done.

    ON THE OTHER HAND Bushe might have some things in common with Camus…

    -He was rejected from the French army because of his tuberculosis…Draft Dodger.

    -Camus’s most significant contribution to philosophy was his idea of the absurd…Bush is about as absurd as it gets.

    It is a little too late four me to believe Bush would even be aware of a book written by a person with the resume of Camus.

  • It is, after all, about a man who kills an Arab for no reason whatsoever.

    This is the first thing that popped into my head as well. Given a reader who’s not likely to latch onto broad philosophical themes, plot points are the most likely thing to be taken away from that book. Thank God Bush doesn’t visit the beach much, and we can only hope he doesn’t mistake Texas desert for sand.

  • My question is: The president has stated he’s not much of a reader, so then what the hell is going to be put in his presidential library?

  • I think Bush spends more time with Dave Chappelle’s version of “the stranger” than any other “Stranger.”

  • Moreover, “The Stranger” is not … how do I put this gently … an easy read. It’s a novel steeped in philosophy, most notably Camus’ existentialism, and delves into a not-so-subtle atheism

    You’re giving Bush too much credit by assuming he’d be able to appreciate the subtleties. Like any good satire, The Stranger has a pretty simple, straightforward narrative form about a guy hanging out on the beach with his friends, shooting someone, and going on trial for it. It’s pretty short, with an intentionally simple writing style and no big words. I have no trouble believing that Bush would appreciate a book like this, but I suspect that the philosophical subtext somehow evaded his grasp.

  • One news report said that Bush “made quick work of it”. That I don’t doubt. Probably the speech writer who included a Camus quote in Bush’s speech gave it to him as source material. Maybe he thought it was Camus of the Jungle or alternatively Camus and Andy.

    Bush will have the first exclusively audio-visual presidential libary. I hope there’s a prominent place for My Pet Goat.

  • Come on, those reading lists are total nonsense, put together by Karl Rove soley for political impact. Remeber his reading list last year?

    1) Salt: A World History” by Mark Kurlansky; (2) Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar; and (3) The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.

    The shortest of these books is 480 pages long. You really believe that a guy who doesn’t even read the newspaper is going to read three tomes like these. Laughable

  • I hear that he is going to read “The Waste Land” next. He probably thinks that it is a story about wiping out all these towelheads who live in those vast stretches of sand…

    Bush reading Albert Camus? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

  • Someone told him about it in college, so he figured no one would read it.
    So he cut out the middle and now it’s where he hides his stash.

  • We took my niece down to the Mall yesterday, and made a stop at the Lincoln Memorial. One of my favorite things down there is Abe’s second inaugural address. Here was a president who faced a crisis of unimaginable complexity, had a reality-based grasp on the situation which he was able to articulate, and a vision for its resolution. Bush can read all the Lincoln in the world and it’s not going to matter — he doesn’t have what it takes or we wouldn’t be where we are.

    By the way, if anyone is visiting DC this summer, you can really reset your meters but making a quick loop of the Vietnam, Lincoln, Korean and WWII Memorials.

  • Mystery solved…

    http://www.classicscentral.com

    Here are the first ten titles from the vast library of Classics Illustrated Comic Books.

    1. THE THREE MUSKETEERS Alexandre Dumas
    2. IVANHOE Walter Scott
    3. THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO Alexandre Dumas
    4. THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS James Fennimore Cooper
    5. MOBY DICK Herman Melville
    6. TALE OF TWO CITIES Charles Dickens
    7. ROBIN HOOD .
    8. ARABIAN NIGHTS .
    9. LES MISERABLES Victor Hugo
    10. ROBINSON CRUSOE Daniel Defoe
    11. DON QUIXOTE Miguel DeCervantes

  • citizen_pain: My question is: The president has stated he’s not much of a reader, so then what the hell is going to be put in his presidential library?

    from Time: ‘Gottesman collects artifacts for a future presidential library, down to the whistles Bush blows to start the White House Easter Egg Roll.

    those empty booksheves won’t fill themselves, y’know.

  • ***My question is: The president has stated he’s not much of a reader, so then what the hell is going to be put in his presidential library?***
    —————————————–citizen_pain

    Why, signing statements, of course! Hundreds upon hundreds of signing statements! And then there’s “The Greatest Tirades of Stonewall Scottie—Volumes 1, 2, and 3.” (By the way—they’re currently negotiating with FOX for the sequel series by SnowFlake—something about him being their physical…um…er…, intellectual property, and all that). Also, don’t forget “The NAACP Speech” (although they’ve dubbed a very large amount of “canned” applause into the soundtrack). Then, there will be the audiotapes of Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and a bunch of speeches by some guy who did a lot of blabbering at torchlight rallies some 7 decades ago. Some place called “Nuremburg.” Blast it all, I just cannot remember that name—begins with an “H,” though….

  • “The Existentialist Goat.”

    Synopsis: A recently discovered manuscript by Albert Camus. The plot involves a world leader who, when suddenly confronted with a major crisis, struggles with mixed and conflicting feelings, including the gnawing fear that his followers will find that he is an infantile dumbass. The leader (called Merdehead) struggles to find a path away from what he suspects may be an unpleasant task he cannot avoid. On his tortured journey to the salvation of rescue and complete denial, he meets the terrifying figures of his father, his irate world history teacher, and a tall, long-bearded Arab with an AK-47 and a towel about is head, who jeers and makes faces at the leader. In the end, the leader is saved by his loyal, but Faustian, chief-of-staff, who promises to show him how to disguise himself as a bold commander by making other people’s tragedy his friend. Ironically, however, he must carry the secret knowledge that those around him only pretend that he is not an infantile dumbass. And that he hasn’t read anything since the morning of 9/11/01.

  • The comments here have been great. “The Stranger” was highly influential in my life (although I have problems with existentialism as a whole – also, “The Stranger” is lies on the fringes of existentialism, and is more of an absurdist, humanist parable) and Albert Camus is one of my moral heroes. I truly can’t think of an intellectual figure of the past century who would be more at odds with Bush’s mindset than Camus. His final, unfinished novel, “The First Man”, along with “The Rebel”, are masterpieces – flawed, but mostly in ways than command even greater respect, as those flaws usually derive from facets of Camus’s sometimes overwhelming humanism.

  • Wasn’t there just a flap about Al Gore and his high school summer trip? He went to France either to read existential authors or to improve his French. Now, anyone who has ever studied French knows that the first book you read is Camus’ L’Etranger, so my guess is that Al Gore did both and Georgie is just catching up because in his mind he’s still running against Al and John.

  • Christopher Hitchens has sneered publically at John Kennedy’s reported reading, which I suspect was genuinely stuff he read. I wonder what he thinks about the boy wonder’s reading list?

  • C’mon! Really!

    He’s either reading the Cliff’s Notes- or he’s got The Cure on his iPod.

  • Alibubba said, “The Existentialist Goat”

    Hey I want to read that. Is it on Amazon.com? Especially the denial part of his journey.

    As Bush says, “Denial is not just a river in Iraq.”

  • I’d be happy if Bush would read just the first part of Eric Hoffer’s “True Believer”.

    Here’s a Camus sentence for Bush to contemplate and maybe try to parse: While “The Stranger” and “The Rebel” spent their time “Betwixt and Between” “Summer” and “The Fall” deconstructing “The Myth of Sisyphos”, “Caligula” was “The First Man” to seek “A Happy Death” by going into “Exile and the Kingdom”.

  • What strikes me as really, really odd (even more so than the oddities pointed out by everyone else) about the choice of L’Etranger is the book’s prominent position as a visual gag in Talladega Nights (it’s being read by the gay French driver played by Sacha Baron Cohen — while he drives).

  • Good catch, Confidence Man. I bet NASCAR George saw that movie in a private showing at the White House. Perhaps he thought L’Etranger was a sexy French novel about “laying Rangers”. We know how George feels about his beloved Texas Rangers.

    I wonder if Bush’s expression, “Civil War this and Civil War that” came from his reading of Lincoln?

  • Ah. Here’s a fun idea. How about if several prominent Democrats express their outrage at his disloyal reading and require him to defend it?

    No, that won’t work — I know, we send several letters of outrage to the extremist wing of the Republican party and get the ball rolling for them to express their outrage…

    Then we see what the president does — will he defend the book or admit to the lie? Will he fire the staffer who also hadn’t read it and thought it would be a cool book to say he was reading?

    These and other questions need an answer…

  • I was thinking it before you put it in your postscript, wondering if Bush realizes that Camus was French.

    Coincidentally, my GF just read this book last week, and it’s been on my list for a while. I’m currently actually reading The One Percent Doctrine and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

  • Geography note: “Denial” is not a river in Iraq. It’s a river in Egypt. The river in Iraq is the “Esophagus.” It runs through Baghpoppy.

  • Maybe I missed it it, but nobody seems to have notedd–The Stranger is actuallya pretty easy read. Lots of monosyllables from a monosyllabic and more or less disconnected guy who doesn’t seem to know what to do when the spotlight hits him.

  • Bush reading Camus??? When pigs have wings and afterburners. Funniest dialog I’ve heard in months..

  • Perhaps he’s a fan of The Cure. He wanted to know what “Killing an Arab” was all about.

    Ha!

  • I read The Stranger during my sophomore year at college. The book is not a difficult read. Anyone who can write hundreds of signing statements should be able to read it. Understanding a literary work is vastly different from just reading it. I have no doubt that Bush may have read it. I do doubt however that he may have achieved a full understanding for it and it’s content. Think about it this way. Bush spends hours upon hours flying back and forth overseas. He rarely, if ever watches television. It would not be hard to imagine that Bush read a book or two during a 23 hour plane ride to fight off boredom.

  • i want to see helen thomas make bush do a book report on “the stranger” for the next question she asks at a white house press briefing.
    extra points for neatness.

  • I second Shaun’s sentiments. The Stranger is, at face value, a rather easy read. Camus’ style in that book is similar to the American novelists of the same time period – using simple writing structure to force the read to delve under the surface to tease out the more difficult themes. Not to mention that it is a very short book.

    I think the grounds for speculating that this is a lie are extremely thin. (The “lie” language is from your post on C&L) Even the skepticism has to be based on the difficulty of the book, and the difficulty in The Stranger is easily missed, so to speak.

  • “I’m most of the way through the damn book, and nobody’s been strangled yet!”

    A whole week shot to hell.

  • Actually that’s a typo. He’s reading Condi’s movie script for a remake of “The Strangler”:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058622/

    Tagline: Based on the terror that has shocked the nation!

    Now do you understand? I’m glad. (Rumor has it that Leo Kroll will be played by Karl Rove.)

    -drl

  • Could the staffers who dropped this dogbomb about Bush reading Camus actually be telling us in code that Bush is like Mersault?

    Now there is a thought.

  • Oh great, now Bush will be diving headlong into the rest of the 9th grade reading list.

    The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway): Reminds me of my greatest moment as Preznit, when I managed to catch a fish in my privately-stocked lake.

    The Red Badge of Courage (Crane): This here one’s about the Civil War. Our Civil War, not that civil war over in Iraq. Which is not a civil war, so forget I even said that. I got my own red badge of courage once. Not in Vietnam but in hand to hand combat with a tree limb on the ranch. Clearing brush is tough, I tell ya. Want to see my scar?

    Diary of Anne Frank (Frank): Got to admit that this one didn’t grab me. It’s about a girl who just sits around all day indoors with her family. Never gets out, never does nothing. Guess they didn’t have mountain bikes back then, but, geez, can’t they ever even go fishing?

    The Prince (Machiavelli): Never did like him much after he changed his name to that symbol that no one could pronounce. But I did take his advice to party like it was 1999. In fact, for me it was going on 1999 from about 1965 right on up ‘til I got saved. And, to be honest, you’d be surprised at how often 1999 still comes around on the ole Oval Office desk calendar. Just don’t tell Laura. Or Bar. Or Karl. Don’t care if you tell Dick Cheney. He unnerstands.

    Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck): For some strange reason, this one really hit home for me. One thing I didn’t understand was why George wouldn’t tell Lenny more about the rabbits. Geez, George, can’t you tell me again about the rabbits?

    The Lord of the Flies (Golding): I have to admit I ran out of time on this one so I saw the movie instead, which was totally awesome. All three of them. Not sure why they changed the fly to a ring, but it was a good change. Highest rating.

  • Are you kidding me? Camus? Next you’ll say he’s reading Mishima’s tetraology Sea of Fertility next. Then he’s going into Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Mammoth bullshit from the WH…

    Besides, I thought Bush was proud of his ignorance. Isn’t that the image he’s been presenting for 6 years?

  • He should read Orwell’s 1984, but maybe he alrady has, seeing as the current government appears to be using it as a defacto manual…

  • Ok. So the’re lying about him reading the Stranger. But if they are going to lie, why wouldn’t they pick something that people might actually buy?

  • #56: That’s the point – no one can buy this a summer reading choice for Bush. You know it. I know it. Tony Snow knows it.

    Ergo: the lie about this “The Stranger” comes purely out of spite. It’s an “f-you” to the press (and to liberals) who KNOW that Bush is a moron, and KNOW that he’s not reading Camus – but who also have no way to prove that Bush didn’t read this book. (Betcha W is ever asked about Camus at a news conference, he won’t respond in any detail. Then the right-wing pundits will whine how the “librul media” is playing gotcha.)

    This whole thing just once again demonstrates the contempt this administration has for the media – and for Americans. I mean, Camus? Please.

  • Maybe Bush identifies with the protagonist, a white man who kills an Arab and can’t come up with a good reason why.

  • This worries me…a sociopathic in existential crisis could spell real trouble, especially if he controls ten thousand nuclear warheads.

  • For someone who could not even handle a debate without being hooked up by a rectangular shaped tape behind his jacket (the wire is CLEARLY seen coming from the top of the tape up over his shoulder on a recently enhanced picture, thus debunking the theory of a badly laundered shirt), i.e. a man who cheated his way into the White House, does anyone doubt that he hasn’t cheated on anything else in his presidency, including claiming he has read a book like “The Stranger”? This question I pose is moot and totally rhetoric.

  • All-time greatest book-related interview with Bush (Jan. 27, 2005):

    [C-SPAN’s Brian] LAMB: How much reading do you do a day, and what time of day do you read?

    THE PRESIDENT: I read, oh, gosh, I’d say, 10, maybe, different memoranda prepared by staff.

    LAMB: What about books?

    THE PRESIDENT: I’m reading, I think on a good night, maybe 20 to 30 pages. I’m exercising quite hard these days, and I get up very early. And so the book has become somewhat of a sedative. I mean, maybe there are some other old guys like me who get into bed, open the book, 20 pages later you’re out cold. But I read a lot on the weekends. I’m traveling — when I travel a lot I get a chance to read. I’m downing quite a few books.

    By the way, in this job, there are some simple pleasures in life that really help you cope. One is Barney the dog, and the other is books. I mean, books are a great escape. Books are a way to get your mind on something else.

    There is much more at the link.

    Comment by &y — 8/14/2006 @ 11:31 am

    Thanks for the great link &Y! Brian Lamb seems to make W nervous…

  • In 1961 Robert Anson Heinlein published a novel called “Stranger in a Strange Land”., it’s usually referred to simply by Stranger, it’s a work of science fiction. To me that would seem to be more George W. Bush’s speed.

  • Why is W reading “The Stranger”? Go back and look at the very first sentence of that book….

  • On Monday, Aug. 14, ’06, Washington Post blogger Dan Froomkin’s wrote in his column titled, “Did Cheny Go Too Far?” a segment called “Stranger than Fiction:”

    “What is the least likely book you could possibly imagine Bush reading during his downtime? Agence France Press reports that Bush read French existentialist writer Albert Camus’s ‘The Stranger.’ ” [in English]

    I wrote to Mr Froomkin & suggested it was Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Jean Girard, in “Talladega Nights” who must’ve given Dubya the idea. The character is a gay, French, “Formula Un” race car driver who is so nonchalant about being able to beat Ricky Bobby, that he reads a Gallimard paperback edition of Camus’ “L’etranger” while he drives. I was the only one in my small town multi-plex who laughed out loud at that point (Sacha Baron Cohen also sips a macchiato in his Perrier-sponsored race car, funny scene…). So I figure Dubya (who gets to screen new movies in the comfort of the White House movie room) heard his movie-watching guests laughing at that, and he, Doonesbury-like, asked what was so funny. Maybe he decided he better read some of that gay, Frenchy lit he’s heard tell about.

    English-only, please.

  • Some excellent responses here! Its a shame he read l’etranger at age 60+ – the buffoon. And Merseult offing the arab / Bush’s policies – this is more than irony. This is humor in its darkest of darkest forms.

  • I don’t have time to read through all these comments, but did anyone bring up the fact that Bush is a born-again, and well, I always thought born-agains don’t read much of anything but the bible and bible-related books. “Food for the soul” they call it.

    Just puttin’ it out there.

  • I think what they meant to say was his ass read it, so to speak, after a particularly bad bout of diarrhea.

  • Of course, the first reaction from the vast majority of you is negative.

    Get over yourselves.

    I’m sure none of you have ever read books that don’t align with your exact philosophies.

  • #69
    Right, Most of us do read books that don’t align with our exact philosophies. But we don’t have our press secretaries announce it as if it’s some special accomplishment.

  • Re: Bush Summer ’06 “reading” list

    Dubyah could hardly read the graffiti on
    a bathroom wall , let alone the books attributed
    to his “attention”.
    Maybe Tony Blair told him it would be a good idea to feign a farthing’s worth of literary acumen.
    “Thanks f’r the suggestshun Tony, but I tried
    acumen a while back, an’ all them needles done
    bothered my spine!”

    -A.C. Attlee

  • You’re on the wrong track here. Forget Camus. Somebody ask Bush where Andau is and which of the five decisive battles at sea was the most interesting. Chances are, he read Camus. No way he read the rest of that stuff.

  • I wouldn’t call the Stranger a difficult read. It’s very provactive, but it’s not exactly Finnegan’s Wake. I don’t mean its shallow–I love the Stranger–but it is, as someone already pointed out, high school level reading. Plus it’s pretty short. I would be a little more impressed (and suspicious) if he was reading it in French.

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