Camus killed by the KGB?

August 9, 2011 6:14 PM

Was Albert Camus killed by the KGB?
posted by anothermug (27 comments total)

I hope so.
posted by Bookhouse at 6:17 PM on August 9, 2011

Maybe!
posted by Sys Rq at 6:17 PM on August 9, 2011

Single link conspiracyfilter?

I'm going to come down on the side of no. I bet the KGB a). had better things to do and bigger targets to kill. b). the KGB probably wouldn't have succeeded.

Also, The First Man should have burned up in the wreck. It would have been better to know this book could have been great than to be given the half finished thing that kinda sucked.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:19 PM on August 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

He was killed by a stranger.
posted by storybored at 6:21 PM on August 9, 2011 [4 favorites]

probably not, according to the article...
posted by tomswift at 6:25 PM on August 9, 2011

does the pope shit in the woods?
posted by facetious at 6:37 PM on August 9, 2011

Camus can do
But in Soviet Russia
KGB do Camus!
posted by tumid dahlia at 6:51 PM on August 9, 2011

The KGB killed Camus. Or maybe not, I don't know.
posted by kmz at 6:53 PM on August 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

In Soviet Russia, KGB kills you. No joke. Now get in line, comrade.
posted by vidur at 6:53 PM on August 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

So they were just assassins?
posted by unliteral at 6:58 PM on August 9, 2011

I hope so.

Why?
posted by Hoopo at 7:17 PM on August 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

the accident that had cost Albert Camus his life in 1960 was organised by Soviet spies. They damaged a tyre on the car using a sophisticated piece of equipment that cut or made a hole in the wheel at speed.

Like...a bullet?
posted by clockzero at 7:21 PM on August 9, 2011

He was killed by the little device. A secret device that guides you into trees...seems that Corriere della Sera needs some money... OHHHHH....

"In 1981 the newspaper was involved in the P2 scandal; the secret Italian Freemason lodge had the newspaper's editor Franco Di Bella and the former owner Angelo Rizzoli on its member lists."

camus you
posted by clavdivs at 7:32 PM on August 9, 2011

Can I just add that the Facel Vega is one cool looking automobile.
posted by the noob at 9:21 PM on August 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

"Camus was killed instantly when Gallimard's powerful Facel Vega car left the icy road and ploughed into a tree."

The accident was the result of an unreliable automobile. Camus and Gallimard should have taken Sartre's advice and purchased a Dodge Dart.
posted by homunculus at 10:33 PM on August 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

laughable
posted by Ironmouth at 11:38 PM on August 9, 2011

"Camus was killed instantly when Gallimard's powerful Facel Vega car left the icy road and ploughed into a tree."

The accident was the result of an unreliable automobile. Camus and Gallimard should have taken Sartre's advice and purchased a Dodge Dart.

Yeah, but it would have constantly broken down, so he'd have to keep pushing it up hill only to find it rolled back down and he's have to start again.

Or is that just a myth?
posted by spectrevsrector at 2:07 AM on August 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

He'd damn it, he'd...
posted by spectrevsrector at 2:08 AM on August 10, 2011

They did. And the KKK? They took my baby away.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:44 AM on August 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have to say that the best part of the article is the witty comments. My favorite "Myth, sissies, fuss.
posted by vac2003 at 2:51 AM on August 10, 2011

Because that's way cooler, Hoppo. I mean, he's dead either way; it's not like I'm hoping for his death. I'm just hoping his already-occurred death is more interesting.
posted by Bookhouse at 7:25 AM on August 10, 2011

Next week in Corriere della Sera: how the KGB reached forward in time and killed Princess Diana, at the request of her mother in law, a secret commie dupe. (Seriously, it's August. Ignore all European newspaper filler stories.)
posted by Nelson at 7:35 AM on August 10, 2011

There was an actual Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters

It's possible Camus was assassinated for Cold War reasons.

During Cold War times suspicions about covert malice by secret agencies sometimes turned out to be real: As it turns out, Humes’s belief that he was being followed wasn’t entirely paranoid. After filing a request through the Freedom of Information Act, Immy Humes learned that the government had kept tabs on Humes from the time he applied for a job with the Marshall Plan in Paris in 1948 until the late ’70s. One document has a note from J. Edgar Hoover himself advising someone to check the files on Humes, Immy said.

In a May 27, 2008 interview with Charlie Rose, Matthiessen stated that he "invented The Paris Review as cover" for his CIA activities. (Confession of his CIA involvement begins at 15:23) .
posted by nickyskye at 7:39 AM on August 10, 2011

Wait, one guy claimed this in a diary? That's it? That's all the evidence? Did I miss something?
posted by maryr at 8:59 AM on August 10, 2011

Dingos killed Albert Camus!
posted by Xoebe at 9:03 AM on August 10, 2011

It doesn't matter how he died, Bookhouse, he was an existentialist. The important thing was it was an inevitable part of his existence that ultimately rendered his life meaningless.
posted by Hoopo at 9:06 AM on August 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

Nope, "The Illuminati did it"...spread the meme!
posted by Capricorn13 at 1:20 PM on August 10, 2011