KEY POINTS:
The question that always catches my attention in those pre-holiday media interviews of various notables is what books they will read during their period of r&r at the beach.
Now that the holidays are sadly over, wouldn't it be interesting if those same media returned to those interviewees to glean any appreciation they might have had from the books they said they hoped to enjoy?
Although not, of course, one of those surveyed, may I nevertheless take the liberty of sharing an insight into a story that touched me deeply during my holiday reading?
The book in question is a fictional but basically autobiographical story by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Albert Camus, called The First Man.
So moved was I by the powerful stream of feeling and sensitivity running through the pages of Camus' unedited draft published 35 years after his death, I did something I have never done before: I turned at once to the front and began immediately to read it a second time.
My reactions to this tale were further sharpened during the past week by the media news focusing on the many children who, it is said, come to school in bountiful New Zealand without sufficient nourishment to sustain them during the day, just like those described in Camus' story.
The book, published after the author's tragic death in a car accident in 1960, describes the pilgrimage back to Algeria of Jacques, now aged 40 and an honoured literary hero in France. He begins a search for clues and contacts that might reveal something of the history and character of his pied-noir father who had died during World War I in the north of France.
This journey takes him back into his poor childhood in Algiers, and recalls, in a series of beautiful sketches, memories of his deaf-mute mother whom he loved beyond the capacity of his childhood understanding, his tough French peasant grandmother, his caring teachers and his boisterous mates.
The emotional power of some of the simple family scenes and childhood memories sent shivers down my spine.
He describes living in "the neighbourhood island of poverty, bound together by stark necessity, in an ignorant and handicapped family, with his youthful blood boiling, a ravenous appetite for life, an untamed and hungry intellect, and all the while an ecstasy of joy".
Those stirring reactions evoked by Camus' narrative were reinforced this past week by school principals interviewed about their admirable efforts to provide care and food for their young students in places where there is real need.
It is also good to be reminded of the often unheralded practical compassion of so many of our teachers today. I believe their vocational commitment is a deep river of generosity and skill which must be fully appreciated by fellow Kiwis.
It was one such teacher that enabled Camus to climb from his poor social milieu by assisting him to gain a scholarship to an elite lycee. That led him to university and greater honours, culminating in the Nobel Prize.
The Camus book ends with a profoundly touching letter, not fictional but real, to his former teacher in which the famous author, having just received news of his Nobel Prize, expresses his heartfelt gratitude to the man who had been the key to his successful life journey, sadly soon to end so tragically.
I quote it here in full, as a sincere testimony to the personal commitment of so many such devoted teachers today.
"19 November 1957
Dear Monsieur Germain,
I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.
But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.
I don't make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.
Albert Camus."
