MY INTERVIEW WITH ALBERT CAMUS (Number 5 in the series.)
ME: Comment vont les affaires, Monsieur Camus?
AC: Tres bien mais je suis mort.
ME: Quelle dommage. Est-ce que mes yeux brillent trop?
AC: Why do you ask if your eyes are too bright?
ME: Wow! Vous parlez Anglais. I was asking how you feel as a great genius.
AC: Am I?
ME: Yes – the second youngest winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the all-time greatest philosophers.
AC: I’d rather have been a professional footballer.
ME: Where you went wrong is that there is only one goalkeeper but there are ten outfield players in a team.
AC: You are an idiot.
ME: I’m interviewing Zeus next and he was to blame for Sisyphus having to push that boulder up the hill all day only for it to fall down to the bottom again when he reached the summit. Can we really imagine Sisyphus might be happy with his daily task?
AC: Oui.
ME: Did you know that all your novels; The Stranger; The Plague – a massive hit during Covid – congrats; The Fall and The First Man begin with a “The” in the title?
AC: Oui.
ME: Can you explain how you managed to be married twice and yet had numerous affairs with younger women while married? You had three mistresses at the time you were killed in the car crash.
AC: Non.
ME: Were you assassinated by the KGB?
AC: How would I know?
ME: Like you, I chose “acceptance” rather than “suicide” or “faith” but can we ever know if we made the right choice?
AC: That’s absurd
ME: We also share a love for Melville as a brilliant philosopher-novelist. I interviewed Moby Dick in this series. Why do you think Melville was not a success, like you were, in his lifetime?
AC: He was ahead of his time. I was of the moment.
ME: It’s been an honour et mon plaisir to interview you, Monsieur Camus.
AC: You are an idiot.
ME: Oh!
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