Correspondence 1932-1960

by Albert Camus

"As a philosophy teacher, mentor, and friend, Jean Grenier (1898-1971) had an enormous influence on the young Albert Camus (1913-1960), who, in fact, acknowledged that Grenier's Les Iles had touched the very core of his sensibility and provided him with both a "terrain for reflection, and a format" that he would later use for his own essays. Their correspondence, beginning when the seventeen-year-old Camus was Grenier's student at the Grand Lycee of Algiers, documents the young man's struggle to become a writer and find his own voice, a period in which he turned frequently to his mentor for advice, comfort, and direction. The letters cover a period of almost thirty years, from 1932 to Camus's untimely death in 1960. Because Camus destroyed the earlier correspondence he received, the first twenty-six letters in the volume are his only; the full exchange begins in 1940." "These enlightening letters offer invaluable glimpses into the development of Camus's aesthetic ideas, literary produc