Posted on 08/11/2006 6:31:41 PM PDT by Arec Barrwin
Bush reads Camus's 'The Stranger' on ranch vacation Aug 11 7:14 PM US/Eastern
US President George W. Bush quoted French existential writer Albert Camus to European leaders a year and a half ago, and now he's read one of his most famous works: "The Stranger."
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush, here on his Texas ranch enjoying a 10-day vacation from Washington, had made quick work of the Algerian-born writer's 1946 novel -- in English.
The US president, often spoofed as an intellectual lightweight, quoted Camus in a February 21, 2005 speech in Brussels praising the US-Europe alliance and urging other nations to help Washington spread democracy in the world.
"We know there are many obstacles, and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that 'freedom is a long-distance race.' We're in that race for the duration," Bush said in those remarks.
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He's reading Camus, but he's feeling Sartre (No Exit).
Lizavetta's suggestion to Bush - pick up some H.L. Mencken.....please.
That's pretty clever. Kudos.
"To do is to be," Sartre.
"To be do be do," Sinatre.
I thought Camus most famous work was "The Guest"
Read it in high school, Only thing that has stuck with me is Calvados.
actually, Sinatra said, "do be do be do be do."
I wonder how many of Bush's oh-so-intelligent detractors have read "The Stranger"?
Bush's detractors are, by and large, empty-headed pretenders.
Not enough...they are still existential nihilists at heart.
Nietsche is peachy, but Sartre is smarter...
Come now, surely you recall Algore telling Arianna dahlink that he spent one teenage summer in Cannes, "reading the existentialists in the original." The same summer he also spent plowing a hillside behind a pair of mules in Tennessee.
My favorite Camus work is "The Myth of Sisyphus"
I once read 20 pages or so of Camus' "The Plague."
I've been halfway through Hesse's "Steppenwolf" for months now.
I once bought the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
"you recall Algore telling Arianna dahlink that he spent one teenage summer in Cannes, "reading the existentialists in the original."
If I was a teenager in Cannes, I could think of things I'd rather be doing than reading the existentialists. I always thought that Gore was a strange guy.
Next he'll be smoking Gaulois and forsaking Crawford for a shack in the Atlas Mountains. La Guerre est Finis.
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