I was looking through Camus’ Notebooks and found the following piece which connects The Stanger and The Myth:

On the Absurd?

There is only one case in which despair is pure: that of the man sentenced to death. (May I be allowed a short illustration?) A man driven to despair by love might be asked if he wanted to be guillotined on the following day and would refuse. Because of the horror of the punishment? Yes. But here, the horror springs from the complete certainty of what is going to happen – or rather, from the mathematical element which creates this certainty. Here the Absurd is perfectly clear. It is the opposite of irrationality. It is the plain and simple truth. What is and would be irrational is the fleeting hope, itself already near to death, that it is all going to stop and that this death can be avoided. But this is not what is absurd. The truth of the matter is that they are going to chop his head off while he knows what is happening – at the very moment when his whole mind is concentrated on the fact that his head is going to be chopped off.

Kirilov is right. To commit suicide is to prove that one is free. And there is a simple solution to the problem of liberty. Men have the illusion that they are free. But when they are sentenced to death they lose the illusion. The whole problem lies in the reality of illusion.
(Pg. 115-16)

point 1) and 2)
פשיטא

re point 3) also פשיטא
ועוד shestov says it too

The criticism of text as words on a page does demand “nothing but the text.” Of course there are things outside the text but they have no relevance for an interpretation of the text qua text. You can do it, but then it is not literary criticisms but epis andersh engantzen…

I liked The Stranger but wasn’t blown away…he just plays out the idea within a narrative structure…but no big chidushim…

Btw, regarding The Myth, (and a mutual friend agrees with me on this,) his kashis are way better than any of his terutzim and in a big way you can say that Camus coped-out…

I agree with atgate, that Meursault cannot exist. And why? because of Sisyphus, because Camus expect Sisyphus to be happy, when he discovers within himself the desire to undertake the absurd task once again. Absurdity for Camus does not have the final word. It’s been said that Camus rejected God out of love, because he could not stand his abandonment. I am with you de profundis on giving camus all the attention the noblest minds need and deserve.
He was a camplicated noble and profound soul, unlike the asshole Sartre.

(On another level it is quite possible that Meursault has feelings (though maybe not the feelings people expect him to have) but the novel is about the expectations and interactions between people and so we don’t see any eternal reactions…because essentially such a character does not and cannot exist…and that is the question - why not?)

genet, not a man deomar by me

I was only pointing out some dionisian elemnts in p.roth to expose the components of our discussion, to oppose his way of dealing with manichean obsession to the way Bellow dealt with it. No western writer is purely dionisian.

Your last question. I never meant sublime=morality. I meant that the sublime resides in the moment Sisiphus’s stone strarts falling back down, but he resolves to attempt to roll it up once again, in the moment when the immoralist realizes that he’s killing his wife and resolves to keep doing it. The sublime is a behinas “fun dested vegen”. Yes reality is idiotic, even absurd, yet we will seek beyond it. The sublime is the refusal to accept the immediate reality as final. It is a leap of our skin into the beyond, even if it ends up in failure.

A mutual friend once described Raish Lokish as a Jewish Dionisian.

Another question: does everybody consider morality to be sublime? I would think Gide and Genet would say the opposite.