It is truly strange to consider the possibility that Tony Snow was telling the truth when he said that George W. Bush just read Albert Camus’s The Stranger. For those of you that haven’t read it, The Stranger is an odd little bit of existentialism, based on the life of a vaguely sociopathic anti-hero named Meursault. It takes place in Algeria. Meursault’s mother dies, but he doesn’t really feel any grief. He seems incapable of any genuine empathy. The day after her funeral he begins a love affair with a secretary from his office. She comes to love him and wants to be married. Meursault is indifferent. He is incapable of love.
Meursault has a friend named Raymond Sintes. Raymond is a serious misogynist that beats his Arab ex-girlfriend. This leads to a confrontation at the beach between the ex-girlfriend’s brother and his Arab friends, and Mersault and Raymond. Mersault leaves the beach and gets a gun. He then returns to the beach and kills the brother, pumping four shots into him.
He is arrested for murder and put on trial. Even though he has many character witnesses, it is the testimony of his girfriend that dooms him to the guillotine. The jury is outraged to learn that he started a love affair the day after burying his mother.
In the end, a chaplain tries valiantly to get Mersault to accept Christianity and ask for forgiveness. Mersault finds him insulting and annoying. He cannot embrace religion. He goes to his death with a positive attitude.
The basic outlines of the character Mersault are his total lack of responsibility and his near total lack of empathy.
It really got me thinking about how George W. Bush would react to reading The Stranger, if he were actually capable of reading more than two double-spaced pages in a row without succumbing to his itch to play video golf.
There is a real sense in which Mersault’s character can be seen as a parable for Bush’s life. The death of Mersault’s mother can be seen as the death of 3,000 people on 9/11. Bush tried but was incapable of feeling real empathy.
Today we’ve had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice President, to the Governor of New York, to the Director of the FBI, and have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act.- September 11, 2001, 9:30AM, Media Center, Emma Booker Elementary School, Bradenton, Florida.
Before the funerals could even begin, George W. Bush began his love affair.
“The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.
“I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’
“He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”- Richard Clarke’s account of September 12, 2001.
Meanwhile, Bush’s friends Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld authorize the use of torture, including on Arab women. When this is all revealed at Abu Ghraib, the intensity of the fight between George W. Bush and Arab men intensifies.
Bush responds by nudging Israel to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon.
The parallels are eerie. The only question is whether the ending will be the same? Will someone eventually arrest George W. Bush for war crimes, and will the testimony of his lover, Iraq, be what dooms him at trial? Will the jury look at Iraq and become convinced that Bush is an unfeeling sociopath?
Strange reading choice for George W. Bush.
very well done Booman!
nice sig, and thanks.
he thought it was the illustrated version of the lyrics to Billy Joel’s album “The Stranger”.
After all, “Albert” and “album” do sound similar.
yeah, I kind of doubt that Bush read the book. He is more known for children’s books.
From what I saw of Dood Abides diary, it didn’t seem to me like he really understood a lick of it.
Qouting from Dood;
Charade: So tell us, Mr. President, what was the story of “The Stranger” about, and what impressed you so much?
Bush: Well the story is about this fellow… and I always have trouble with names… it started with an M… French sounding… and he smoked a lot… we’ll call him Marlboro. This guy Marlboro finds out one day that his Mee-Maw died, that’s how the book starts, it says, “Mee-Maw died today”. You can tell that he’s pretty broken up about it because he doesn’t show it, but nobody else seems to get it.
Our Pres. ‘The Philosopher King.’
I’ve got to take exception to your characterization of The Stranger as an “odd little bit of existentialism”. It is much more than that. There is, however, an “odd little bit of existentialism” in the neo-con program. They really do want to create their own “reality”. They will act to do that, regardless of popular political or moral support. They neither need nor especially care about such things except as it might more easily enable their creation of the world as they see it.
He probably just recognized a fellow absurdist.
It’s almost inconceivable that Bush actually read The Stranger. More interesting is to speculate about why Snow would say he did. Kidding? Making oblique, allegorical predictions about Bush’s fate? A muted cry for help?
I heard he read the Spanish translation of The Stranger because, you know, he’s totally fluent and loves to show off his Spanglish fluency.
I have this book at home and can not remember th ename of the author for th elife of me, but it is called BUSH ON THE COUCH. i SUGGEST YOU GET A COPY AND READ IT. This will tell you exacely how bush is and I have been saying this to a friend for ever so long even while he was gove of TX. Boy boy, if babs would have treated him like a regular boy he might have turned out a better person. I do think he has some features of that of alcoholic a mother while carrying him. Then to have the drug and alcohol problems of his past, dimmed his means to actually see clearly as a person. Did you ever wonder why he and Laura did not attend the twins graduation from college? I sure have. I just have to wonder about them both. YUP, I can ot fanthum bush reading even that goat story…did I not see a pix of him reading a book upside down someplace???? ;o) Anyhow do get bush on the couch. It will be a treat for your review…I promise…..
He should also read The Plague. Oran is a perfect metaphor for America, and the disease a perfect metaphor for Bush.
What a joke! Actually he stole the dust jacket and covered this book so Laura wouldn’t know.
Proving once again why you are one of my favorite bloggers. Nice parallel, and chilling thoughts.
I see the death of Meursault’s mom paralleling the death of his sister, and the way his parents presided over that earth-shaking event, to the point where W can’t go to any funerals.
The part about entering an affair with a woman so soon after the death of his mother, with the woman caring more about him than he does about her…all the people who have personally invested into this empty, narcissistic, irresponsible shell of an individual, only to find that he’s a psycho.
I remember reading The Stranger when I was a sophomore in high school. It was a creepy book, and I couldn’t agree that Meursault was ever a hero. I think it has parallels with Salinger’s banana slug story.
I see the death of Meursault’s mom paralleling the death of his sister, and the way his parents presided over that earth-shaking event, to the point where W can’t go to any funerals.
That is addressed in the book I referred to earlier as bush on the couch. He does not know death and so this is how he responds to death by ignoring it. As long as he remains in his own little world he will never know much about the world outside…never, ever….