Vol 1 Brooklyn: How did you first end up reading Camus? And what about The Stranger initially appealed to you?

Seidlinger: I wasn’t much of a reader until after I moved away from music (I’m a failed musician), and it was when I finally went to college that I came across books like House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski, Life After God by Douglas Coupland, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, and, yup, Albert Camus’s The Stranger. It all happened in quick succession. I bought House of Leaves and swiftly devoured countless other books, many of them transgressive, experimental, surreal, and absurdist in nature. The Stranger crept up on me; I believe I bought it alongside a few other titles by Hubert Selby Jr, Italo Calvino, and Georges Perec. At the time, I had become completely enamored by the Oulipos and other formally experimental practitioners. Structure was paramount and a puzzle I became obsessed with solving. The Stranger was an accident. Amazon “also bought” wormhole style purchase. I think I tossed it into my shopping cart because it was under ten dollars. I had no idea what awaited me. The book completely changed me, more than most. Perhaps more than any other title ever will.

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