It’s the birthday of the French author Albert Camus (1913-1960, #diedtooyoung), best known for his novels The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947) and for his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he founded the philosophy of Absurdism, which asserts that humans should persistently search for meaning in an inherently meaningless world, which is probably exactly as much fun as it sounds.

Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria. His father was killed in WWI when Camus was an infant, and his mother moved the family to a small apartment in Algiers shared with relatives. In spite of these bleak beginnings, Camus had a happy enough childhood and felt enriched by the beauty of nature. In primary school, he studied under a teacher named Louis Germain, who gave him big heaping buttery handfuls of free tutoring and helped him get a scholarship to the local high school; Camus would later dedicate his Nobel Prize for Lit acceptance speech to this teacher. Camus also loved sports but had to quit athletics due to tuberculosis.

(Fun fact: at 44, Camus was the second youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Lit. The youngest was Rudyard Kipling at 41, and the oldest was Doris Lessing at 88. Actually that’s three fun facts for the price of one. You’re welcome.)

Camus studied philosophy, evidently on purpose, at the University of Algiers and completed his B.A. in 1936 (though tuberculosis again interrupted his work). Around this same time, he mucked about some with the Communist Party and then with the French anarchist movement, like you do. He also began writing and working in the theatre, and while nobody seems terribly excited about Camus’ plays in general, there seem to be occasional revivals of his cheery little 1945 play, Caligula, who perfectly embodied the philosophy that life is meaningless so you might as well do whatever the hell you want. By this time, Camus had already achieved literary renown with The Stranger, the story of a Frenchman on trial for murder whose apathy does not show well in court (little pro tip for you there), leading to his being sentenced to death by guillotine. But the Frenchman comes to accept his death, so it’s a super duper happy ending after all.

Camus married a couple of times and had a ton of affairs and twin children. During WWII he edited Combat, a Parisian resistance paper; he was one of the first to speak against the bombing of Hiroshima; and he was called “the moral conscience of his generation.” He was often lumped in with Sartre as an existentialist but vehemently denied this label. He loved football (soccer) his whole life. At the age of 46, he changed travel plans at the last moment and instead of taking the train, went by car and was killed in a car accident. Which he had literally said would be an absurd way to die.

Have a Wednesday bursting with actual meaning and stay scrupulously honest to the data, which, come to think of it, probably helps.