Al Gore and Albert Camus

When Al Gore recently won the Nobel Prize for his work on Global Warming (he's either warning people of the dangers or causing it with his jet-setting depending on your point of view) - many people took the opportunity to point out that Gore joined a long list of people who won the award as much for their political views as anything else. Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, and Le Duc Tho are the names most often mentioned as examples of the leftward-leaning of the selection committee.

A name that I have not seen mentioned by anyone but who also shows how the award is political as much as anything is Albert Camus who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 for his writing against capital punishment. Does anyone read those essays today as literature? I don't think so.

I am currently re-reading The Plague and I guess that is what got me thinking about the connection to Al Gore.