THE DEATH OF CAMUS

For the record, Albert Camus was a passenger in the Facel Vega in which he was killed, not the driver, as stated by Richard Eder (“Getting to Know the Stranger,” Sept. 3). Four people were in the car when the accident occurred. The driver was Michel Gallimard, a member of the Gallimard publishing family, publishers of Camus’ work. Camus sat next to him. Gallimard’s wife, Janine, and her 18-year-old daughter, Anne, were in the back seat. Camus died instantly of skull and spine injuries, with, a reporter said, “a look of horror on his face.” Gallimard died 10 days later. The two women were not seriously hurt.

Camus was not in charge of these final moments of his life, and I think the passivity and random absurdity of his death would have appealed to him. In “The Stranger,” he wrote, “Hope, naturally meant to be shot down at a street corner, while you’re running, and by a stray bullet.”

KAREN SODIKOFF, DEL MAR