the instinct that made Camus refrain from beginning his career as a novelist with La mort heureuse was quite sound. He would have been recognized at once as a born writer since the book contains passages of great brilliance, but it would have produced only a muffled impact because, as M. Sarocchi freely admits in his commentary, it does not fully coalesce as a work of art, and the influence of certain immediate literary models is rather too obvious. L' Etranger，as I shall argue in a momment, is not a complete success either, but its good features are fufficiently sustained and coherent to mark a new development in french literature. To compare the two books is to see how Campu, who was nothing if not a dogged exploiter of his own possibilities, moved on from being a man of talent to become a major writer with something original and permanent to say.
Actually, the french title, La mort heureuse, does not mean "A happy death," a more general expression with something of the force of "The art of happy dying." Campus always prefers the definite article, because his constant urge is to universalize on the basis of his particular experience; hence La Peste, La Chute, L'Homme revolte, etc. Richard Howard is a prolific and fluent translator, but he tends to disregard the finer points of accuracy, as if they didn't matter in the over-all effect.
