Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Mar 14, 2008

Lauren rated it:

I ran into my friend Dan at the club last week, and he was drunk. So we talked Camus. We didn’t discuss Camus’s theories, or the fact that he avoided riding in cars and then DIED IN A CAR CRASH. We just talked about Camus in relation to Dan’s life and in relation to mine. The only really interesting thing about anything to me is how it affects me. That’s the honest truth.

Dan and I agreed that an interest in Existentialism is kind of a stage in your life – like when you liked Pearl J More...

0 comments like (27 people liked it)

Nov 01, 2007

Katherine rated it:

Eh. This book started off with potential, I thought, even making me laugh out loud, though I'm not sure it's supposed to be funny. But then again what's not funny about proclaiming that humans will be remembered only for reading the paper and fornicating?

It took me a while to get into the monologue form, and then I liked the casual banter for a bit. But then by page 40, and it's only 100-some pages, I found myself fast asleep face down in the book, literally. This book also fails the More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 06, 2011

Julia rated it:

Jean-Baptiste Clemence, advogado parisiense que se define como juiz-penitente e vive em Amsterdã, conta diretamente ao leitor a história de sua vida, sua queda. Clemence não espera pelo julgamento final: ele ocorre todo dia. Um marco da literatura do absurdo. O final é excelente.
L'homme est ainsi, cher monsieur, il a deux faces: il ne peut pas aimer sans s'aimer.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2009

Michael rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Abhilash rated it:

If you have never read Camus you are mostly surely missing something special. Absurdity explained with absolute clairvoyance.I must say this is a very special writer, the rare combination of great thinker who knew to write. The novel is a monologe by Jean Baptice Clemmmence, Jude -Penitent , the story of his fall form the high flying life in Paris though the concentric circles of hell in Amsterdam. The protagonist intorpects his life with brutal simplity , he finds himself to be absurd, his life More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2011

Nikolay rated it:

Свалям шапка на този шедьовър. Свалям шапка на прокараните велики идеи и едновременно с това им се изсмивам почтително.

Не знам откъде да започна!

Със същия чук, взет на заем, - с който Ницше удря като с камертон по главата на Бог, докато го разпардушини и оттук насетне всеки трябва сам да следва собствения си морален закон, - Албер Камю тръмбува безпогрешно в съзнанието на читателя идеите за отговорността на индивида и отхвърлянето на оправданията и извиненията. Вс More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 27, 2011

Evan rated it:

"Mon chéri, it seems Amsterdam has disagreed with you. You're so pale."

"Ah, mon amour, oui, I never want to leave the Paris sun again. I want to hold you naked and hang my fog-drenched clothes over the terrace to dry and never look at another dismal canal or smoky bar."

"But I thought my man liked those things about Amsterdam."

"I did, sweet, until I had the misfortune of running into this rather shabby, verbose character...Fre More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2008

Katherine rated it:

I read this for a class, which I admit may have colored my view of it, but honestly, I did not like it. I questioned my view because I know it is a classic, and I know Camus is supposed to be a genius. I freely admit I haven't read any of his other books, and it is entirely possible that they are all amazing, and I am missing out.

That said, this book just wasn't for me. It is essentially a long speech by one character, once a lawyer in Paris, on his fall from grace, and, in esse More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 14, 2008

Jake rated it:

As with most Camus, this book is, in the course of a hundred or so pages, an entire decade of therapy. If you don't feel worse—yet oddly optimistic—about yourself and people in general after this book, you're either inhuman, or you're the exact person this book was meant for.

Someone once extolled this book as "an examination of modern conscience," and it was through this lens that I first began this work. That's accurate, I suppose, to a point, but to leave interpretation at More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2008

Owen rated it:

This is my favorite of the Camus I have read. The style is one of the most interesting I have ever come across. It is written in a strange monologue. You follow the lead character through his entire life leading to that point as the lead explains it to some guy he met in the pub (someone who never speaks). As you follow the lead you learn more and more about this fall. A successful lawyer being reduced to getting drunk every night in upper class Amsterdam. Over the course of three or four eveni More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Nicole rated it:

I read the 1956 Vintage Books paperback copy of The Fall as translated from the French by Justin O'Brien (I am not aware of another translation, please let me know if there is one!), and found it a complex look at human morality. The clumsy preening of the narrator is, at first, a little hard to get past, but his predicament is essentially a human one: what responsibility do we have to action and to others? Although, like in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, there is a central focus on suicide, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 14, 2009

Bryan rated it:

More of a dialectic of Camus' existentialist philosophies and views than "novel", it can be an interesting read. If you're looking for a book of plot twists and character development and so on, this ain't your book. If you want a 100 book about the absurdity and meaninglessness of modern life, this is surely for you.

I have to say flat out that I don't buy into his philosophy, as I find it inherently flawed. He creates quite a compelling world view of humanity and modern More...

0 comments like

Dec 21, 2011

Richard rated it:

Rating: 4* of five

The Book Report: Told as a long monologue stretched over several days, Jean-Baptiste Clamence reviews the very great highs of his life as a respected criminal attorney, and the very great lows of his life as a libertine without a discernible conscience or moral compass. He narrates his life to an unseen and unheard Other, a tourist from France in Clamence's adopted home of Amsterdam who runs into Clamence at a seedy bar. At each major turning point in Clamence's life, More...

8 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Sjonni added it

Au Mexico-City, un bar miteux du port d'Amsterdam, on croise Jean-Baptiste Clamence, homme d'après la fin de l'homme qui nous raconte son vécu soi-disant exemplaire parmi une humanité effondrée, abstraite et bête.

Publié en 1956 lorsque les blessures de la seconde guerre mondiale encore douloureuses interdisaient tout optimisme même le plus innocent, Camus en 150 pages de monologue sape toute la légitimité humaine et fait s'exprimer à travers son personnage principal l'homo zombie moderne que n More...

0 comments like

Oct 07, 2010

Victoria rated it:

I love Camus. He's generally lumped with the existentialists but was actually an absurdist. I mean, when your protagonist gets convicted of matricide because he doesn't cry hard enough at his mother's funeral (The Stranger)---THAT, folks, is black humor.

And The Fall doesn't disappoint. In this marvelous twist on first-person narrative, the protagonist speaks not to all readers in general but to you specifically, cast as you are in the role of an intelligent Parisian lawyer the myster More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jun 13, 2009

Eric rated it:

Sartre is supposed to have said,"perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood" of Camus' books. It's just like Sartre to claim to find something profound in what seems to me just one of those things that didn't quite come off.

For once, I can agree with Sartre, at least half way. This is certainly not the most beautiful of Camus' books --- I'd choose "L'homme revolte", but you might choose "La peste" and I wouldn't argue with you. Sartre's right ab More...

0 comments like

Sep 08, 2010

Sam rated it:

This book has got me thinking real deep and philsophical. It has got me analaysing my interior and exterior motives, questioning my demons, and revaluating my morals, has got me quizzing my thoughts, demolishing my quires and at times even sguandering and blunting my hopes. I know it's praccticually blonderd my verdbrae.

This is in no way I assure you a bad thing. Though Camus has given my brain and thoughts the kind of sincre flushing they ever so derley needed. After reading this i More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2010

Justin rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Jun 04, 2011

Crystal rated it:

This book could not keep my attention now matter how much I tried. I actually never got to the end- so maybe I shouldn't write a review, but I think I read enough to be a little useful. I really love some of Camus' other works, but this one is sort of a rotten egg. As compared to his other works it sort of pales in comparison. In The Stranger you have events such as death of the character's mother and murder, in the Plague you've got, well, the plague. In this you've kind of got nothing. In fact More...

0 comments like

Apr 23, 2011

John rated it:

What an odd book, its a long one sided conversations, of screwed up man with a horrible philosophy who like a drunkard stumbles from one rant and raving, to another. As other reviewers mentioned there is some wit. Among the nonsense there were some lines that stuck out to me, creative ways to express his warped perspective.

here are some quotes I jotted down from the book while reading it

I would here myself asking "Do you love me?" you know that it is customary t More...

0 comments like

Oct 01, 2011

Hoda rated it:

بسيار عالي. سه گانه كتاب هاي مورد علاقه م الان شامل بوف كور هدايت، سبكي تحمل ناپذير هستي كوندرا،‌سقوط البر كامو و به علاوه تهوع سارتر هست برترين كتابهايي كه خوندم.
حالت نوشتاري اين كتاب و صراحتش رو در بيان عقايدش بايد ستود. پرستيدنيه. به نوعي از لحاظ اعترافات صريح نويسنده مشابه سبكي تحمل ناپذير كوندرا ست.
البته هنوز نميدونم اين اعترافات صريح كامو از روي شجاعت هست يا از روي تحقير آدمهاي اطراف؟
اگر اين سقوط داستان مثل مني باشد (هرچند كه من هنوز در نيمه ي اين سقوطم اما تمام مراحل قبلش More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2010

Sparrow added it

I have a weird edition, with a photograph -- a kind of minimalist collage -- on the cover, it looks very 1971. Plus pages are falling out, as I read them -- including the one saying who is the translator. Or the publisher. As the book went on -- and I read it over many long months -- I began to feel more and more accused, by the nameless protagonist. (Or does he have a name? I think so.) Setting it an Amsterdam was a touch of genius. In a bar called Mexico City (reminds me a lot of the fa More...

1 comment like

Aug 21, 2009

Andrew rated it:

I have been reading some of the existentialist writers lately...reading Sartre's trilogy and now The Fall by Albert Camus, and I am still trying to figure out this "philosophy."

I remember once hearing in a lit class that it means that the only reality is the one that you perceive...if you perceive it is real, nothing else is. People can tell you that it is different, but your perceptions are the only things that count and so there are as many realities as there are pe More...

0 comments like

Mar 18, 2009

Steve rated it:

Camus is one of my favorite writers. That said, this is not his best work. Sartre said that it was his least understood and most beautiful book, but I cannot agree.

I was a little disappointed because I found the idea of the book more interesting than the book itself. As much as I hate saying this, not much really happens. Yeah, it's "modern." But, c'mon. I was hoping for the spare Camus prose voice of L'etranger but got the blabbermouth Clamence.

There are, of More...

0 comments like

Jan 25, 2012

Roger rated it:

Camus’ novel reads as a monologue, narrated by the protagonist of the story, Clamence. His past is immersed in guilt and shame as he spills out his painful memories. As he confesses more and more, he reveals the moral consequences he faces as a result of continual wavering over decisions. As he retrieves his past, lies and contradictions become apparent. He tries to escape judgment from others by calling his own ethics and values into question. Camus essentially surrenders his morality through C More...

0 comments like

Dec 02, 2011

Josh rated it:

As I remember it, I read The Stranger at a coffee shop in a sitting, and I rather enjoyed it. It was an effortless read with such a unique point of view that it left me wanting to read more Camus.

Well, it is nearly five years later, and I have just now gotten around to revisiting Camus, due entirely to a transatlantic summer book club that I took part in. The third and final book that we read was The Fall, and despite the fact that the book comes in at a mere 147 pages, it wasn't the f More...

0 comments like

Dec 02, 2011

Simon rated it:

Those Frenchies sure know how to hate themselves whilst hating everything else in equal measure. It's not fiery, dramatic misanthropy,but rather of the disdainful, shrug-of-the-shoulders variety. Camus puts humanity on trial through this engrossing monologue of a man who thought he was doing everything right, only to realize no one can ever do anything right. Right on. His slow decline into a "judge-penitent" is described in painstaking detail: he is a man who includes himself in the u More...

0 comments like

Oct 08, 2009

Joe rated it:

Like a litmus test for psychosis and self-absortion: see how far you can read before your disgust overcomes your intrigue. And then, like any of Camus's works, you are intrigued again. Probably one of the best dramatic monologues constructed in the 20th century. A true vision of humanity's delusions of grandeur and eternal shortcomings.

"A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers" [6:]

"May heaven protect us from bein More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 14, 2011

maitr+margarita rated it:

«Μην πιστεύετε, κυρίως τους φίλους σας, όταν σας ζητούν να είσαστε ειλικρινείς μαζί τους. Ελπίζουν απλώς ότι θα τους βοηθήσετε να διατηρήσουν την καλή ιδέα που έχουν για τον εαυτό τους, προσφέροντάς τους μια επιπλέον βεβαιότητα που θα την αντλήσουν από την υπόσχεσή σας ότι θα είστε ειλικρινείς.…»

«Ξέρετε όμως γιατί είμαστε πάντα πιο δίκαιοι και πιο γενναιόδωροι με τους νεκρούς; Η αιτία είναι απλή! Δεν έχουμε καμιά υποχρέωση απέναντί τους.…»

More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 17, 2008

Olegas rated it:

Keista knyga.. Prasideda visai nekaltai, bet nuveda i tokia minciu bala, is kurios norisi begti, bet negali, nes traukia kazkur i apacia..
Yra fraze: kada tu pradedi ziureti i tustuma - tustuma pradeda ziureti i tave. Puikiai tinka sitai knygai.
Uzteks vienam vakarui skaitymo, nes sunkiai atitruksi.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)