Robert ZaretskyReviews

March 2020 the world changed. Robert Zaretsky’s university went to online classes. He volunteered at a nursing home, delivering and feeding meals to the elderly. For insight and clarity, Robert Zaretsky turned to writers who had written about the plagues they had lived through.

Victories Never Last looks to the past to understand our present. Pandemics have riddled human history; the result of the growth of cities and trade which fostered the spread of disease. The numbers of lives claimed by plagues is startling–until we consider that one of of four Americans have contracted Covid-19, and without the medical advancements and health care we enjoy, for our ancestors that meant one out of four died.

Fear and disorder were byproducts of disease, breaking down social, political, and religious order. Thucydides described the Athenian plague as stripping “society to its bones, baring a world of naked self-interest and preservation” Zaretsky shares.

Marcus Aurelius responded by writing his Meditations, his personal journal to aid his adherence to his Stoic philosophy.

Montaigne was still mayor of Bordeaux when the Bubonic Plague struck, taking nearly half the population. Retiring to a life of contemplation to write his essays, he concluded that “It is not what will be or what has been that counts, but our being at this moment that we should embrace.”

In his A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe chronicled the Great Plague in 1665 London.

Albert Camus responded to the ‘brown plague’ of the Nazis; he noted that the plague in his novel has both “a social and metaphysical sense.”

Zaretsky compares Mary Wollstonecraft’s’ novel of plague The Last Man and Camus’ last, unfinished novel The First Man.

Throughout the book, Zaretsky relates his experiences in the nursing home and his own struggles with mortality. We are all frail and flawed human beings, he ends, all both the first and last of women and men.

Over these last years, many have turned to the past to help understand the present. These histories sadly show that the divisiveness which has upended our social welfare under Covid-19 is not new. These writers offer philosophies that can help us cope with our awareness of mortality.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

As the subheader states: a work exploring reading and caregiving through the COVID-19 epidemic.

The author intersperses discussions of Thucydides, Defore, Camus, and others with his own experiences of helping to care for the elderly in a nursing home facility.

The discussions on the books are well historically informed and well nuanced. The choice of The Plague as opposed to finding something more related to H1N1 in 1918 is interesting but understandable in light of the veil of silence which covered that H1N1 outbreak.

The author makes good reflections. A history of pandemics, however, this is not.

**--galley received as part of early review program

Amazing book. Camus is très sympa, wise and humane. He nails much of what ails us—insights drawn from his experiences in Algeria and in WW2 are startlingly relevant. Especially good on means and ends, on rebellion vs revolution, according to his way of understanding these words. Infinitely quotable.

Zaretsky is charming; Boswell is charming; this is a somewhat aimless but very enjoyable, essayistic biography. The point, insofar as there is one, is to detail Boswell's relationships with or thoughts about other enlightenment bigwigs, including Smith, Rousseau, and of course Johnson. An ideal weekend read... if it hadn't been published by Harvard.

I'm not sure what's going on, but I can't remember reading a book published by Harvard that wasn't, apparently, edited by machines or perhaps ill-trained monkeys. Aside from general typos (really? you can spend thousands giving a book fancy end-papers, but can't pay a graduate student somewhere fifty bucks to get rid of typos?), we also have:

* the same anecdote about Hume repeated, I think, three times;
* Adam Smith called 'Author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments' multiple times within two pages;
* a joke about Mrs. Cowper before Mrs. Cowper has even entered the narrative;
* the story about Boswell getting into bed with Erskine repeated at least three times;
* Esse est percipi spelled Essi est percipi

That's a sample of cock-ups, not an exhaustive list. And this in a 'Balknap' book, supposedly the high-end of the press. Harvard, I edit books. Hire me.

It is easier to reflect on what I did learn in this slim volume. 1) Camus maintained a deep love for Stendhal and Montaigne. The concluding pages of The Strange reflect the influence on Sorel's resignation at the end of The Scarlet and the Black. 2) Camus was ready to beat Merleau-Ponty's ass after the philosopher published his Humanism and Terror.

Okay, that's about it.

Zaretsky begins the book examining how the ever opportunistic Nicholas Sarkozy used two events in an attempt to reappropriate the legacy of Camus. Later in the book, the case of Camus as pan-Mediterranean is explored in light of the Arab Spring. The arguments afforded in both situations appear half-hearted, as is most of the book. Camus' notebooks are mined for his thoughts on various themes: Absurdity, Silence, Measure, Fidelity and Revolt. The word jejune becomes handy when considering this book. Consider yourself warned.

This is a nice introduction to Camus, although some of the points are a little forced and at times it reads a little like someones doctoral dissertation.

The writer explores a number of Camus thoughts on a number of topics. What I came with is that Camus speaks to issues of our time. At least Camus speaks to me. I loved this book, it made me think

"In 'Nuptials at Tipasa,' Camus declared there is no shame in being happy. But Camus did not confuse happiness with laziness; it is a state we achieve neither through distraction nor entertainment, but instead through attention and effort."

"The writer, Camus declared, must remain faithful not just to her art, but to her fellow men and women, as well. The writer 'cannot put himself in the service of those who make History; instead, he serves those who endure it...' ... The nobility of our métier, Camus concluded, 'will forever be rooted in two engagements difficult to keep: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance against oppression.'"

There is no way I can do this wonderful little meditation on Camus' life and work and the political and social context in which they developed. Zaretsky explores Camus' relevance and impact through five fundamental themes that permeate his work: absurdity, silence, measure, fidelity, and revolt. Weaving together historical events that both threatened and elevated Camus' place in the canon, Zaretsky effectively humanizes the philosopher, providing perspective on the tensions that gave his work meaning and endurance. I read this straight through but will save the volume for a more deliberate, one-chapter-at-a-time reread.

Read how history repeats itself today.

Zaretsky’s introduction informs the reader that he will examine the issues that are more popularly associated with Albert Camus, which he says are: the probing of notions of freedom and justice and the conflict between them, the nature of being an exile and the idea of a man who gave voice to an entire spectrum of silence. His chosen method of examining these subjects is to pick four significant events in Camus life and look at these in some detail.

Chapter 1 takes Camus visit to and reports on Kabylia in 1939, when he was just starting to make a name for himself in his native Algeria as a journalist and essayist. Zaretsky skilfully sketches in Camus early life and influences, setting the scene that would shock the young man when he saw the conditions under which the Arab population were forced to live. He saw injustice at first hand and his reports shaped his early thoughts and honed his skills as a journalist.

Chapter 2 is titled “A Moralist on the Barricades” and takes us to 1945 and describes Camus wrestling with the issues of how to deal with the Collaborationists in Paris at the end of the war. Camus was the editor of Combat a newspaper which had been sympathetic to the resistance movement. President De Gauls’s new government carried out a limited campaign against the more high profile supporters of the Nazis. There were trials and death sentences were given and some were carried out. These actions were supported by Camus, however the post war trial of Robert Brasillach proved to be a watershed for him. Brasillach was the editor of a right wing news paper that had vociferously supported the Nazis campaign against the Jews. Francois Mauriac was a leading campaigner trying to get Brasillachs death sentence commuted and he wrote an open letter to Camus as a fellow journalist to sign a petition to that affect. Camus after much soul searching did eventually admit that Mauriac’s position was right agreeing that France was in need of charity more than blind justice.

Chapter 3 “French Tragedies” focuses on the public debate between Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, that took place in 1952.. Les Temps Modernes edited by Sartre had become the leading voice of the intellectual left and he and Camus had been good friends, however their views were diverging and when Sartre’s journal finally got around to reviewing Camus book “The Rebel” it was no surprise that it was unfavourable. Camus wrote a public letter explaining his position in reply to the review and Sartre countered this in a very personal and at times vindictive reply. Sartre’s position was supported by many intellectuals on the left and Camus found himself once again out in the cold. Zaretsky does an excellent job in explaining the differences of opinion and the reasons why the break had to come.

Chapter 4 takes us forward to 1956 and Camus stance on the coming war for Algeria. Camus was Algerian and as a leading intellectual involved himself in the politics. He had never shied away from a fight, but on this issue he found himself in an impossible position. He had previously fought for the Arabs of Algeria to be given equal rights with the French colonists, but he was horrified by the escalating violence from both sides. He could not support the French government or the Arab FLN who were both advocating terrorism. His only recourse after a heroic attempt to broker a truce was to stay silent and he refused to talk about the issue. The old arguments with Sartre surfaced once again and it came down to Camus refusing to accept that the end justified the means. .

In selecting these four incidents Zaretsky has managed to cut to the quick into the personality and thoughts of Camus. He interweaves his narrative with extensive references to Camus most famous publications, showing how Camus ideas and thoughts developed through his experiences. Camus was a brave free thinker who never lost sight of his humanity and these selected incidents serve well in providing a lasting impression of the man and his thoughts. Zaretsky also links Camus reflections to other thinkers from history including St Augustine, Thucydides, Rousseau etc, however I found this aspect of the book a little forced, but it did not get in the way of my enjoyment of the book as a whole. At 200 pages including notes and references the book serves as a good introduction to the work of Camus. It is very well written and will hold the interest of anyone interested in its subject. A 3.5 star read½

This is a short and very readable book about the relationship of Hume and Rousseau. I'd love to have some psychiatric clinicians get out their DMSOs and diagnose Rousseau, who clearly had some issues. The book is insightful about the struggles and sufferings of the skeptics and philosophers at odds with th European status quo during the Enlightenment. Rousseau seemed to revel in suffering as much from the figments of his imagination as from the political and social realities of his lifetime.