(in an effort to not forget what I read this year I will record each completed book here)
I'm currently on a stint of reading the first novels of recognized contemporary authors to see what they produced the first time around. However, concurrently, I've digressed slightly into some philosophy texts. This set of essays here by JPS was inspired by recently reading L'Etranger by Albert Camus (sometimes translates as The Stranger and other times as The Outsider). One of the essays is a commentary on the novel, JPS articulates why L'Etranger is strikingly different from anything that ever preceded it. Further, this is interesting as Camus and Sartre have not yet met at this point, when they did meet they became fast friends, until their views diverged and they became critical of one another.
There is another great essay that puts into somewhat simple terms what existentialism is and how it is not what people think it is.
"What do we mean here by "existence precedes essence"? We mean that man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterwards defines himself."
"Whatever he (man) does, he cannot avoid bearing full responsibility for his situation. He must choose without reference to any preestablished value, but it would be unfair to tax him with capriciousness. Rather, let us say that moral choice us like constructing a work of art."
"What art and morality have in common is creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what ought to be done"
Camus writes: "A man is more of a man because of what he does not say than what he does say."
"That is because silence, in the words of Heideger, is the authentic mode of speech. Only he who can talk keeps silent"
"Kafka is the novelist of impossible transcendence; for him, the universe is full of signs that we cannot understand; there is something behind the scenery. For Camus, to the contrary;the tragedy of human existence lies in the absence of any transcendence."
"Each sentence refuses to exploit the momentum gained from the preceding one."
"...it is designed in such a way that things are transparent and meaning are opaque."
