I think in adolescence I started to take off. What I felt, saw, heard and read became the basis of all of my work
THE FALL
Stephanie
I didn’t read Camus’ novel The Fall until I was fifty one, but read the Englishman William Golding’s Free Fall when I was sixteen. This was a start. In the school library, I picked up Free Fall.
Later, many children were set to read Lord of the Flies.(1954)
Camus (1913 - 1960)Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 for La Chute ( The Fall ) * (I )quote : 'He was the ninth French author to become the recipient of the prize and the fourth philosopher after Bertrand Russell in 1950.’ (2 ) Author William Golding received this award in 1983.(3)
The Fall was published five years before the assassination of J.F. Kennedy. I remember hearing about that American death on the national radio on a transistor as I gathered with others around a tray of donuts at school. At the time I was drinking hot chocolate. Steam from the mug rose in the air and I had a huge shiver. From that point I was cognizant of International, Cold War and American relations. I recognized that events could reach us all.
Where Camus came to me is that he was the first writer that I became aware of as a young man who emerged out of a colonial experience. His first large mystery was to ask and wonder why, how and for what end did his father go off one day to be a soldier, by order, and quickly die. Then, as it occurred in 1994, with his children publishing his unfinished novel of 1962, The Last Man, I asked, what actual succor did Camus draw from his formative life? It came down to sunshine and poverty. He had a sentence, the joy of poverty. In child terms that did mean a summer of swimming and play - not a clerical job in the hot season.What gave Camus pleasure, as an adult, was to recognize the bliss of literate autonomy as well as its duties of seriousness. I determined to seek out the Simone de Beauvoir preface , then, that she wrote for Violette Leduc writing about her mother ( La Bâtarde. 1964) ( English translation only available in this country at the local University) . I read Mad in Pursuit ( 1971) . The fresh caterwauls into history in this novel's style and content reminded me of the credentials of de Beauvoir 's ' Second Sex'. thesis( 1949)(4) Leduc's story was made into a film in 2013, by Martin Provost . It is a biographical film about Leduc. It exhibited in the special presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. at the same year that I made a global release of my third film. Mine was on designers in videogames in Los Angles. Sensibilities and interests in culture have spread broadly due to several digital accelerations. I never took time to read The Second Sex, even at age twenty five when I was given a copy, for, I rather sought out the ideas about existentialism via cinema first not literature alone, as soon as I got underway with school in 1975. Coming from ' business class' I only thought about ' struggle' in a virtualizing sense. I had so little experience of recognition of poverty, but I did know the power of fear and violent action. For example, I was witness to a Warf strike in Sydney in 1970, there, graphic and voluminous in sound and image - we , David and I , were only passing through ---. I knew that I had been protected inside the 'The Pastoral 'of my migrant stories - Kent and Essex style - my inherited country life, whilst the cities of the world were going to throw up the discourses of politics.
The time of the 'Bay of Pigs’ ( 1961) crisis it was only eight years before I married David Robinson and then set out to see the world. Years would grow where I could build my own critique of how, when and where there are dangers when insights get ' lost in translation'. (5) The horror to me was my monolingualism. It took the mid seventies to start delivering me first books in translation from French about film, whilst the women of my past families, just four generations back, were fluent in German, English and Italian, let alone could perform or teach Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms or Chopin. At my high school, a boarding school for Presbyterian Girls, I had become very hungry for the rather charming ritual whereby the girls rotated around the dining table each week, so that once every sixth week or so, one was dedicated to make conversation at the dinner table with a staff member at table top. For me, this was at least a start, to start conversations with adults. This piece of luck was one of my first incentives to accept a leadership role at school and increase my ratio of being nearer head of table more often. At age sixteen I accepted to be a House Captain. This at least gave me some mileage in speaking and sharing abstracts of thought. Also, ideas of valour - all in hyperbole, of course.
Camus (1913 - 1960)Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 for La Chute ( The Fall ) * (I )quote : 'He was the ninth French author to become the recipient of the prize and the fourth philosopher after Bertrand Russell in 1950.’ (2 ) Author William Golding received this award in 1983.(3)
The Fall was published five years before the assassination of J.F. Kennedy. I remember hearing about that American death on the national radio on a transistor as I gathered with others around a tray of donuts at school. At the time I was drinking hot chocolate. Steam from the mug rose in the air and I had a huge shiver. From that point I was cognizant of International, Cold War and American relations. I recognized that events could reach us all.
Where Camus came to me is that he was the first writer that I became aware of as a young man who emerged out of a colonial experience. His first large mystery was to ask and wonder why, how and for what end did his father go off one day to be a soldier, by order, and quickly die. Then, as it occurred in 1994, with his children publishing his unfinished novel of 1962, The Last Man, I asked, what actual succor did Camus draw from his formative life? It came down to sunshine and poverty. He had a sentence, the joy of poverty. In child terms that did mean a summer of swimming and play - not a clerical job in the hot season.What gave Camus pleasure, as an adult, was to recognize the bliss of literate autonomy as well as its duties of seriousness. I determined to seek out the Simone de Beauvoir preface , then, that she wrote for Violette Leduc writing about her mother ( La Bâtarde. 1964) ( English translation only available in this country at the local University) . I read Mad in Pursuit ( 1971) . The fresh caterwauls into history in this novel's style and content reminded me of the credentials of de Beauvoir 's ' Second Sex'. thesis( 1949)(4) Leduc's story was made into a film in 2013, by Martin Provost . It is a biographical film about Leduc. It exhibited in the special presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. at the same year that I made a global release of my third film. Mine was on designers in videogames in Los Angles. Sensibilities and interests in culture have spread broadly due to several digital accelerations. I never took time to read The Second Sex, even at age twenty five when I was given a copy, for, I rather sought out the ideas about existentialism via cinema first not literature alone, as soon as I got underway with school in 1975. Coming from ' business class' I only thought about ' struggle' in a virtualizing sense. I had so little experience of recognition of poverty, but I did know the power of fear and violent action. For example, I was witness to a Warf strike in Sydney in 1970, there, graphic and voluminous in sound and image - we , David and I , were only passing through ---. I knew that I had been protected inside the 'The Pastoral 'of my migrant stories - Kent and Essex style - my inherited country life, whilst the cities of the world were going to throw up the discourses of politics.
The time of the 'Bay of Pigs’ ( 1961) crisis it was only eight years before I married David Robinson and then set out to see the world. Years would grow where I could build my own critique of how, when and where there are dangers when insights get ' lost in translation'. (5) The horror to me was my monolingualism. It took the mid seventies to start delivering me first books in translation from French about film, whilst the women of my past families, just four generations back, were fluent in German, English and Italian, let alone could perform or teach Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms or Chopin. At my high school, a boarding school for Presbyterian Girls, I had become very hungry for the rather charming ritual whereby the girls rotated around the dining table each week, so that once every sixth week or so, one was dedicated to make conversation at the dinner table with a staff member at table top. For me, this was at least a start, to start conversations with adults. This piece of luck was one of my first incentives to accept a leadership role at school and increase my ratio of being nearer head of table more often. At age sixteen I accepted to be a House Captain. This at least gave me some mileage in speaking and sharing abstracts of thought. Also, ideas of valour - all in hyperbole, of course.
References1.Camus. https://caans-acaen.ca/Journal/issues_online/Issue_XIV_ii_1993/HOVEN&KINGSTONE.pdf2.Russell. Bertrand. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".3.Golding, William. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Golding#:~:text=In%201983%2C%20Golding%20was%20awarded,in%20the%20world%20of%20today%22.
4. De Beauvoir. Le Deuxième Sexe. The Second Sex. 1949 ( Full text available in English online now. First translated into English in 1951 )
5. The example ( alone ) of de Beauvoir being missed. e.g what is Existentialism
, être-pour-soi (implying a potential for free choice) ?
go to all Steph References
The Myth of Sisyphus. 1955
For me The Myth of Sisyphus marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel...
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Although the " Myth of Sisyphus poses moral problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and create, in the very midst of the desert.
Camus.
Summertime countryside. Canterbury. A break beside the Waiau River. 2022
