Finished: The Stranger (Camus). Now there was a concise and riveting book. Not riveting in the sense that there was excitement...but just that I couldn't stop reading this story about this man, Mersault, who had no apparent emotional attachment to anyone or anything but his basic physical needs. He wasn't a bad man. He had a job and a girlfriend and acquaintances. He just didn't connect emotionally with people. He was content in his life that way, yet it also led to his soon-to-be tragic fate. Although...he didn't even see that as tragic. To him, he was actually happy that the "indifference of the world" as to his fate was so much like himself and his own feelings of indifference that he actually, for the first time, felt a brotherhood to that indifferent world. Hmm...interesting book.

I couldn't figure out why the book was called The Stranger, though, until I read one review that said the man was a stranger to society, i.e., not caring about what society thought of his thoughts or actions, and not striving to fit in with society, while at the same time not doing anything purposely to hurt anyone in society. Here's one excerpt between Mersault and his girlfriend, Marie, that explains how he was:

That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't love her. "So why marry me, then?" she said. I explained to her that it didn't really matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married. Besides, she was the one who was doing the asking and all I was saying was yes. Then she pointed out that marriage was a serious thing. I said, "No." She stopped talking for a minute and looked at me without saying anything. Then she spoke. She just wanted to know if I would have accepted the same proposal from another woman, with who I was involved in the same way. I said, "Sure." Then she said she wondered if she loved me, and there was no way I could know about that. After another moment's silence, she mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me but that one day I might hate her for that same reason. I didn't say anything, because I didn't have anything to add, so she took my arm with a smile and said she wanted to marry me.

Huh. I am so the opposite of an emotionless person, but I still couldn't put the book down. :-)