Albert Camus 1913 - 1960

Albert Camus died on this day, in 1960, behind the wheel of his car.

A writer and thinker, he also walked the walk. Camus wrote for an underground paper in occupied France during the war. He later took a stand against Stalin, for whom his fellow French intellectuals had been busy apologizing. That earned him a public split with - and the wrath of - that pissy little queen Jean Paul Sartre. He later won the nobel prize, and accepted it with great misgivings.

I've always admired the way Camus followed his thoughts to their conclusions. Like Orwell, he never submitted to any orthodoxy, preferring instead to remain a free thinker. And though he saw the absurdity of life, he also recognized the beauty of struggling for decency and kindness in the face of that absurdity. If anyone could have come up with a moral code for a morally bankrupt world, it would have been Camus. We are the worse for his death. For my money, he rounds out the troika of the three worthy Frenchmen - the others being Voltaire and Lafayette.

So Albert wherever you are, take care of yourself my brother. I will see you on the other side.