Camel cigarettes billboard in Occasions Sq., 1943. {Photograph} by John Vachon. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Images Division, Farm Safety Administration/Workplace of Struggle Info Black-and-White Negatives.
Sunday. They announce we’ll arrive within the night. The week handed in a whirlwind. Tuesday night, the twenty-first, our desk decides to have fun the arrival of spring. Alcohol till 4 within the morning. The subsequent day, too. Forty-eight hours of nice euphoria, throughout which all {our relationships} rapidly deepen. Mme D. is rebelling towards her class. L. confesses to me the wedding she’s headed for is one in all comfort. On Saturday, we exit the Gulf Stream, and the temperature turns awfully chilly. Nonetheless, the time passes in a short time, and finally, I’m not in such a rush to reach. I’ve completed making ready my speak. Within the remaining time, I gaze out on the sea and chat, principally with R., who’s actually fairly good—and with Mme D. and L., after all. At twelve within the afternoon, we catch sight of land. Seagulls have been flying alongside the boat since morning, hanging above the decks as if suspended and immobile. Coney Island, which appears just like the Porte d’Orléans, is the very first thing we see. “It’s Saint-Denis or Gennevilliers,” L. says. It’s completely true. Within the chilly, with the grey wind and flat sky, it’s all fairly gloomy. We’ll anchor within the mouth of the Hudson however gained’t disembark till tomorrow morning. Within the distance, Manhattan’s skyscrapers stand towards a backdrop of mist. My coronary heart remains to be and chilly, as it’s when confronted with sights that don’t transfer me.
***
Monday. Went to mattress very late final night time. Obtained up very early. We sail by means of New York Harbor. An incredible sight regardless of, or due to, the fog. Order, energy, financial energy, they’re all right here. The guts trembles earlier than a lot exceptional inhumanity.
I don’t disembark till eleven o’clock, after a protracted sequence of formalities the place, out of all of the passengers, I’m the one handled as suspect. The immigration officer finally ends up apologizing for having stored me. “I used to be required to take action, however I can’t let you know why.” A thriller—however after 5 years of occupation …
Welcomed by C., E., and an envoy from the consulate. C. hasn’t modified. E. both. With the entire circus over at immigration, the goodbyes with L., Mme D., and R. are fast and chilly.
Drained. My flu is coming again. I catch my first glimpse of New York on shaky legs. At first sight, a hideous, inhuman metropolis. However I do know folks can change their thoughts. Listed here are the small print that strike me: the rubbish collectors put on gloves, the site visitors is orderly, with out the necessity for officers on the intersections, et cetera, nobody ever has any change on this nation, and everybody appears as in the event that they’ve simply stepped off a low-budget movie set. Within the night, crossing Broadway in a taxi, drained and feverish, I’m actually staggered by the circus of vivid lights. I’ve come from 5 years of night time, and this intense and violent illumination is the very first thing that offers me the impression of being on a brand new continent (an enormous fifteen-meter billboard promoting Camels: a GI, his mouth vast open, lets out large puffs of actual smoke. All of it yellow and purple). I’m going to mattress as sick at coronary heart as in physique however realizing completely effectively that I’ll have modified my thoughts in two days.
***
Tuesday. Stand up with a fever. Unable to go away the room earlier than midday. When E. arrives, I’m a bit higher, and I’m going with him and D., an adman initially from Hungary, for lunch at a French restaurant. I discover that I haven’t seen the skyscrapers, that they’ve appeared solely pure. It’s a query of total scale. And in any case, you’ll be able to’t at all times stroll round together with your head turned up. An individual can hold solely so many flooring in sight without delay. Magnificent meals outlets. Sufficient to make all of Europe burst. I like the ladies within the streets, the hues of their attire, and the colour of the taxis, which seem like bugs dressed of their Sunday greatest, purple and yellow and inexperienced. As for the tie outlets, you must see them to imagine them. A lot unhealthy style hardly appears possible. D. assures me Individuals don’t like concepts. That’s what they are saying. I don’t actually belief “they.”
At three o’clock, I’m going see Régine Junier. Admirable spinster who sends me all the pieces she will afford as a result of her father died of tuberculosis when he was twenty-seven, and so … She lives in two rooms, amid a mountain of selfmade hats which might be exceptionally ugly. However nothing may overshadow the beneficiant and attentive coronary heart that shines by means of in all the pieces she says. I depart her, devoured by fever and unable to do something however return to mattress. Too unhealthy for the scheduled conferences. New York’s scent—a fragrance of iron and cement—the iron dominates.
Within the night, dinner at Rubens [sic] with L. M. He tells me the very “American tragedy” story of his secretary. Married to a person with whom she’s had two kids, she and her mom come to search out out the husband’s a gay. Separation. The mom, a puritanical Protestant, works on the daughter for months, instilling the concept in her that her kids are going to grow to be degenerates. The fool finally ends up suffocating one and strangling the opposite. Declared not responsible by motive of madness, she’s let loose. L. M. tells me his private principle about Americans. It’s the fifteenth one I’ve heard.
On the nook of East First Avenue, a small bistro the place a screaming mechanical phonograph drowns out all dialog. To get 5 minutes of silence, you must put in 5 cents.
***
Wednesday. Somewhat higher this morning. Liebling, from The New Yorker, visits. Charming man. Chiaramonte then Rubé. These final two and I’ve lunch at a French restaurant. Ch. speaks of America as nobody else does, in my view. I level out a funeral residence to him. He tells me the way it works. One of many methods to grasp a rustic is to know the way folks die there. Right here, all the pieces is deliberate. “You die and we do the remaining,” the professionalmotional flyers say. Cemeteries are personal property: “Hurry up and safe your spot.” It’s all purchased and offered, the transport, the ceremony, et cetera. A lifeless man is a person who has lived a full life. At Gilson’s place, radio. Then at my place with Vercors, Thimerais, and O’Brien. We talk about tomorrow’s speak. At six o’clock, a drink with Gral on the Saint Regis. I stroll again to the lodge alongside Broadway, misplaced within the crowd and the large illuminated indicators. Sure, there’s an American tragedy. It’s what’s oppressed me since I arrived right here, although I don’t know what it’s manufactured from but.
On Bowery Avenue, a avenue the place the bridal outlets stretch for greater than 5 hundred meters. I eat alone within the restaurant from this afternoon. And I come again to write down.
The Negro query. We despatched a person from Martinique on project right here. We put him up in Harlem. Vis-à-vis his French colleagues, he noticed, for the primary time, he wasn’t of the identical race. An statement on the contrary: a median American sitting in entrance of me on the bus stood to provide his seat to an older Negro girl.
Impression of overflowing wealth. Inflation is on the way in which, an American tells me.
***
Thursday. Spent the day dictating my speak. Just a few jitters within the night, however I head straight out, and the viewers is “glued.” However then, whereas I’m talking, somebody filches the cashbox, the proceeds of which had been to go to French kids. On the finish of the speak, O’Brien declares what’s occurred, and somebody within the viewers stands as much as counsel everybody give the identical quantity on the way in which out that they gave on the way in which in. On the way in which out, everybody offers far more and the proceeds are appreciable. Typical of American generosity. Their hospitality and cordiality are additionally like this, instant and with out affectation. That is what’s greatest about them.
***
Their fondness for animals. A multistory pet store: canaries on the second ground, nice apes on the prime. A few years in the past, a person was arrested on Fifth Avenue for driving a giraffe round in his truck. He defined that his giraffe didn’t get sufficient air out within the suburbs the place he stored it and that he’d discovered this to be a great way to get it some air. In Central Park, a woman introduced a gazelle to graze. To the courtroom, she defined that the gazelle was an individual. “But it doesn’t converse,” the decide stated. “Oh, sure, it speaks the language of lovingkindness.” 5-dollar high-quality. There’s additionally the three-kilometer tunnel beneath the Hudson and the spectacular bridge to New Jersey.
After the speak, a drink with Schiffrin and Dolorès Vanetti— who speaks the purest slang I’ve ever heard—and with others, too. Madame Schiffrin asks if I used to be ever an actor.
***
Friday. Knopf. Eleven o’clock. Cream of the crop. Broadcasting. Gilson’s a pleasant man. We’ll go see the Bowery collectively. I’ve lunch with Rubé and J. de Lannux [sic], who drives us round New York afterward. Lovely blue sky that jogs my memory we’re on the identical latitude as Lisbon, which is difficult to think about. In tune with the circulation of site visitors, the gold-lit skyscrapers flip and spin within the blue above our heads. A second of delight.
We go to [Fort] Tryon Park above Harlem, the place we tower over the Bronx on one facet and the Hudson on the opposite. Magazinenolias blooming just about in all places. I attempt a brand new kind of those ice cream that I get pleasure from a lot. One other second of delight.
At 4 o’clock Bromley is ready for me on the lodge. We’re off to New Jersey. Immense panorama of factories, bridges, and railroads. Then, abruptly, East Orange, probably the most postcard-good countryside there could possibly be, with 1000’s of cottages, neat and tidy, set down like toys amid the tall poplars and magnolias. They take me to see the small public library, vivid and cheery and utilized by the entire neighborhood—with its large kids’s studying room. (Lastly a rustic that basically takes care of its kids.) I lookup philosophy within the card catalogue: W. James and that’s it.
At Bromley’s, American hospitality (although his father is from Germany). We work on the interpretation of Caligula, which he’s completed. He explains to me that I don’t know how one can deal with my very own publicity, that I’ve a “standing” I needs to be profiting from and that Caligula’s success right here will permit me—my kids and me—to be free from need. In response to his calculations, I’ll earn $1.5 million. I snort, and he shakes his head. “Oh, you haven’t any sense.” He’s the most effective of fellows, and he desires us to go to Mexico collectively. (Nota: he’s an American who doesn’t drink!)
***
Saturday. Régine. I take over the presents I introduced for her, and he or she sheds tears of happiness.
A drink at Dolorès’s, then Régine takes me to see some American malls. I consider France. Within the night, dinner with L. M. From the highest of the Plaza, I like the island, coated in its stone monsters. At night time, with its thousands and thousands of illuminated home windows and tall black constructing faces blinking and flashing midway as much as heaven, it makes me consider a huge blaze burning itself out, leaving 1000’s of immense, black carcasses alongside the horizon, studded with smoldering embers. The charming countess.
***
Sunday. A stroll to Staten Island with Chiaramonte and Abel. On the way in which again, in Decrease Manhattan, immense geological excavations between tightly packed skyscrapers. As we stroll previous, the sensation of one thing prehistoric overtakes us. We have now dinner in China City [sic]. For the primary time, I’m in a position to breathe straightforward, discovering actual life there, teeming and regular, simply as I prefer it.
***
Monday morning. Stroll with Georgette Pope, who got here all the way in which to my lodge, God is aware of why. She’s from New Caledonia. “What’s your husband’s job?”
“Magician!”
From the highest of the Empire State Constructing, in a glacial wind, we admire New York, its historical waters and flood of stone.
At lunch, Saint-Ex’s spouse—an exuberant individual—tells us that again in San Salvador her father had had, alongside seventeen legit kids, forty bastards, every of whom obtained a hectare of land.
Night, interview on the École Libre des Hautes Études. Drained, I’m going to Broadway with J. S.
Rolley skating [sic] on West Fifty-Second Avenue. An enormous velodrome covered in purple velvet and mud. In an oblong field perched shut beneath the ceiling, an previous lady performs a most eclectic mixture of tunes on a pipe organ. Lots of of sailors, of ladies dressed for the event in jumpsuits, move from arm to arm in an infernal racket of metallic wheels and pipe organ. This description could possibly be pushed additional.
Then Eddy et Léon [Leon & Eddie’s], a charmless membership. To make up for it, J. S. and I’ve ourselves photographed as Adam and Eve, like a type of images you discover at gala’s, the place there are two utterly bare cardboard cutouts with openings on the head the place you’ll be able to put your face by means of.
These diaries are tailored from Travels within the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World by Albert Camus, translated by Ryan Bloom and with annotations by Alice Kaplan and Ryan Bloom, to be revealed by the College of Chicago Press in April. First revealed within the French as Journaux de voyage by Éditions Gallimard.
Albert Camus (1913–1960) was a French thinker, author, and journalist. His books embrace the novels The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall, and the philosophical works The Fantasy of Sisyphus and The Insurgent.
