[ButlerianJihad]

I heard of Camus around 1985 when I started listening to the Cure. For several years, I collected Cure records, saw the Cure live, and the Cure was near the top of my obsessions. I heard all about the controversy of their single, "Killing An Arab", how it had been introduced on the radio, and how it gained a disclaimer sticker.

I eventually read the first 3 pages of The Stranger and then I stopped. I also never read any Baudelaire or Charlotte Sometimes. I am probably in the majority of Cure fans in the United States.

[defrost]

FWiW you couldn't go to an Australian pub in the 1980s without running into a band drawing on French philosophy / poetry.

eg: Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls at the Hopetoun Hotel in '86 riffing on lines from Arthur Rimbaud

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTGWrQ4YGs

* https://www.paulkelly.com.au/lyric/the-execution/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud

[vixen99]

I am intrigued and wonder why you stopped at the third page?

[ButlerianJihad]

The books I prefer to read are YA fantasy, science fiction, The Chronicles of Narnia, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Clarke, Asimov, Michael Crichton, and so forth.

Mostly, action/adventure plots that are set in fantasy universes, from American/British authors.

I have also read Catholic philosophy, such as St. Thomas Aquinas.

I was curious about Camus' writing style and to see what had inspired Robert Smith to write his lyrics, but I wasn't interested in the philosophy of existentialism, or the gritty reality, or the setting. I don't really like France or French things at all.

Trivia about "Killing An Arab": on the single/studio version, the very last lyrics Robert Smith nearly mumbles: "oh, Mersault!"