"I made donations to the Plague..."

I've purchased a copy of "The Plague" a few weeks ago when visiting my brother. (He lives in a college town; there were bookstores all about, very good weekend! Usually, I have the option of one bookstore with only one shelf devoted to literature; most everything else consists of memoirs, Stephen King/Dean Koontz dime-a-dozens and Twilight-esque books. As my tone suggests, I find this almost sinful. A Books-a-million was to be built several years ago, but the production was cancelled due to a lack of interest. A restaurant with a motif of eating peanuts and discarding the shells onto the floor was built in its place.)

Anyway, this isn't about my distaste for business decisions! This is one of my usual blogs; comments on a particular book I've enjoyed or disliked. If you've forgotten, "The Plague" by Albert Camus.

I've moved on from the key points of any philosophy supported by Camus, but I cannot refused him the title of a wordsmith. First, literary devices: Never before have I read anything where fluent but exemplary citations of applied literary devices could be found. It speaks volumes that Camus could allude to his own works in this book; I believe he recognized himself as a marvelous author. The second allusion I have found, is to Franz Kafka's relatively short work, "The Trail." Kafka is easily in my list of greats, so this further amused me. The revelation of the narrator was surprising; it was who the reader should have suspected from the beginning, but there was such misdirection in the way of Grand. Falsified foreshadowing is something I can honestly say I've rarely seen used.

Usually, this final paragraph is devoted to some sort of critique, but the only negative I've found in "The Plague" is how utterly depressing it is. Like any Camus book, this ends abruptly and pointlessly, as his absurdest title should have suggested. (Also, in my Vintage International print of the book, there is a misspelling on the seventh page, a minor flaw.)

(I didn't have a chance to revise this post yesterday, so there were a few misspellings, sorry. Also, I forgot to cite the title when I typed this up. It's a section of the fourth line in the first and third stanza of a Destroyer song called "Your Blood." [Destroyer, despite its name suggesting otherwise, is not a metal band. I just felt it necessary to mention this.])