The Plague
By: Albert Camus / Narrated By: James Jenner
Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
Pretty sure it wasn’t Camus, and goodness knows I ain’t gonna blame m’self for it, but…
Sometimes I review Classics here, and I always begin them with an Unholy: Good GOSH! We never read this in Literature class in high school! What on God’s Green Earth DID we read, exactly? For Camus? It was The Stranger, but of course, and my oh my: Didn’t our 17 and 18-year old selves think we were all big and mighty contemplating Existence?!
Still, I don’t like contemplating an Extreme Lack of Meaning, but I HAD been having longings to get into Fiction To Make Me Ponder, and so I’d offered The Plague as one of the options for my Next Listen votes. Jeez, could I say LANDSLIDE?! loud enough? And so I settled down for nearly 11-hours of a journey into the bubonic plague hitting in modern times (Takes place 1947 in Oran). It was interesting as, during Covid, the “New York Times” revisited it and had some commentary about how it aged. All of this made me even more jazzed to get into it.
>>>YAWN<<<
-And-
>>>GROAN<<<
Because, you see, dunno if it was a subpar translation (This is the Stuart Gilbert translation, not the newer Laura Marris updated one), dunno if it was narration which was all Folksy when p’raps it could’ve been done in a Weightier and more Thoughtful manner. Dunno if it was cuz I’d seen exACTly how people, individually and in groups, DO behave during trying times. And it is most certainly NOT in a brave fashion, assisting one’s fellow man, carrying on and making-do with shortages, giving meaning and weight to actions and personal responsibility in the face of impersonal annihilation.
Okay so, like, Oran is just a town, an ordinary town, where people work from dawn to dusk, chasing money and power. At first it’s but a single bloody and dead rat on Dr. Rieux’s doorstep. He kicks it away, and the doorman assures the Dr. that it was probably pranksters. As the days go on, however, it becomes apparent that all the town’s rats are staggering, writhing, spewing blood, and dying in agony. Still? Ain’t no problem…. …Until it is… Until humans start turning up with troubling symptoms, start suffering and dying.
Rieux and one other doctor wish to name it for what it is: PLAGUE, and they wish measures be taken posthaste to contain it. If these measures aren’t taken, it will almost certainly consign half the population of Oran to death.
Uhm, nope nope nope, we’ll take itty bitty steps, do NOT say Plague as we don’t wanna alarm anybody, all very hush hush, you doctors just make do (Which was m’ FIRST Spaz as I remembered one particular jerk who told us all nope nope nope Coronavirus was just one guy in one state and it’s been handled…).
Then things really start hitting the fan as the plague spreads like crazy and harsher measures become inevitable in the face of full-blown epidemic and widespread death. The city gates are closed, people are separated from loved ones in other towns, the infected are taken into quarantine where they shall die alone (Second Spaz of lockdown and much-loved elders seeing families through windows, of stories where medical staff held the hands of those dying on ventilators).
Through it all, Rieux drives himself ragged, following what he knows is right to combat the plague, even as he’s reviled and vilified by family members who understand that the diagnosis will mean their loved one(s) will be taken to die in hospitals and makeshift quarantines. As Rieux does this, other characters in the story seek to defy quarantine, while others seek to help—becoming sanitary details who collect the diseased, or who take the dead to be buried in pits, even knowing that they themselves might become infected.
There’s a priest who begins the epidemic by preaching that it is God’s wrath and the townspeople deserve it; until he watches a child die the slowest and most brutal death possible. How does one live when one sees that God will take the Innocent as well?
This whole time narrator James Jenner speaks in a jaunty and unpretentious manner, when the writing, the concepts CRY OUT for drama, and perhaps at least a bit of affectation, as this IS Camus we’re talkin’ here: Yeh yeh yeh, Literature and all that… but let’s have a Conversation About The Meaning Of Life, shall we? And sometimes, I dunno, p’raps it’s not Jenner’s fault, but characters such as Rambert the journalist have strident conversations which are either delivered in flat tones by Jenner -OR- the translation falls oh so totally shy from having any meaningful weight. He verbally attacks Rieux for not knowing the heartache of separation, and it falls flat. Then he realizes the doctor’s wife is in a sanatorium far away, and Rambert has a total change of heart and decides to act in an honorable fashion. Soooo, either Jenner did NOT deliver this in any way where the Listener could see the true evolution of spirit… or Stuart Gilbert didn’t capture the essence well in his translation.
Or maybe Camus stuck to concepts and truly didn’t fine hone his writing skills enough to make things emotionally evocative whilst being intellectually stimulating and fine articulations on how one should behave honorably in the face of there being no point in Life other than to act bravely and honorably. A run-on sentence indeed, but I’m making a point: I’m guessing that considering he was made a Nobel Laureate at age 44, ‘tisn’t him…
So anyway, other than a few citizens coming into their own by taking advantage of stuff like black market commerce, or by seeking personal gratification over the well-being of their fellow man, the vast majority of individuals met this plague with maybe not courage, but certainly with resilience. People checked on each other, waited in a resigned yet accepting manner as there were shortages in shops, thought of and even joined essential workers as the original essential workers died off. Camus depicts a dignity and a courage that I sooo have not seen during this New Reality that Covid brought us, where the 1% got richer, where our politicians took advantage of insider trading info, where most of our leaders thought it was fine to overwork medical staff and thought refrigerated morgues were much preferable to masking. Where a Lieutenant Governor of a Certain State said he thought elders, our Greatest Generation, should Take One for the Team and risk death from Covid to keep the Economy open…
Okay okay okay, but Albert Camus lived a life full-well on a soapbox… it’s hard NOT to find one’s self stepping up on it as well.
Off the box now, and saying: Gonna wait and see if the Laura Marris translation ever becomes available as an audiobook. And gonna keep m’ fingers crossed that it’ll slot in a different narrator as well…
A book as important as this? Yesss, it’s worth another go.
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