Richard Wright on Albert Camus’ The Stranger

The Stranger. Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1946.

“It [The Stranger] is a neat job but devoid of passion. He makes his point with dispatch and his prose is solid and good. In America a book like this would not attract much attention, for it would be said that he lacks feeling. He does however draw his character very well. What is of course really interesting in this book is the use of fiction to express a philosophical point of view. This he does with ease. I now want to read his other stuff. There is still something about this Camus that bothers me. Maybe it is because he is the artist and Sartre and de Beauvoir are not primarily.” (Unpublished journal, Sept. 6, 1947)

SOURCE: Fabre, Michel. Richard Wright: Books & Writers (Jackson; London: University Press of Mississippi, 1990), p. 24.