The Fall in Around the World in 80 Books

Sep 26, 2017 Steve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

I'm somewhat hesitant about giving this one 5 stars, not because it doesn't deserve it (it does), but because I don't think I've sufficiently peeled back the book's layers. It was something of an accident that I even read this book. A few days back I was looking for a Camus quote on a subject, and I bumped into this title -- which had a large number of very provocative and thoughtful quotes. Soon after that I was able to score a cool old Everyman copy at the local used book store (they still exi I'm somewhat hesitant about giving this one 5 stars, not because it doesn't deserve it (it does), but because I don't think I've sufficiently peeled back the book's layers. It was something of an accident that I even read this book. A few days back I was looking for a Camus quote on a subject, and I bumped into this title -- which had a large number of very provocative and thoughtful quotes. Soon after that I was able to score a cool old Everyman copy at the local used book store (they still exist!). As pages go, the book is slight (147 pages), but as far as reading experiences go, it's an excruciating read. Don't get me wrong, it's very well written, never boring. It's just, sentence by sentence, so demanding.

On surface, I suppose it's fair to call it a novel. The Fall is anchored in the concrete world of 1950s Amsterdam, and the voice (the only one throughout) is that of a one time famous defense lawyer named Clamence. The novel opens in a bar -- Mexico City --in the red-light district of the city. Clamence is having a conversation with an unnamed person, though from the start the conversation resembles an unfolding confession of sorts. Amsterdam, as a backdrop, you are informed, is both underwater and a place of concentric circles (an obvious h/t to Dante's Inferno), with the bar being ground zero. The bartender is described as an ape, and Clamence provides his interpretive skills in order to get a drinks. I'm not a fan of Freudian interpretations, but this seems to me, given how the book unfolds, a conversation between Id (ape), Ego (Clamence), and Superego (unnamed friend). As the novel goes on, the growing intimacy in how Clamence's addresses his new friend seems to signal this interpretation. Clamence goes from addressesing the unnamed friend as "monseiur" (sir) to the more friendly "mon cher compatriot" (my fellow countryman) to the even more intimate "cher ami" (dear friend). I may be straining at a gnat here, but Camus' changes his method of address with each shift in the novel. When dealing with such a careful writer, I have to feel this is deliberate.

And with these accompanying shifts in intimacy, come deeper revelations from Clamence, a man who yearns (like Satan) for a return to "high places," but is self-damned (The Fall) to the lowest. Clamence is a man of appetites, and he has spent a life satisfying them. But at one point a sin (of arguably both omission and commission) is committed that, to his mind, cuts through the fog of his selfish life. Repentance is not enough, and belief doesn't exist ("God...is not in style"). The Miltonic & Satanic "I myself am Hell" is obvious. To underscore this Clamence mentally condemns himself to a medieval torture device (a tiny cell) called a "little-ease."

At 147 pages, this can be some suffocating stuff. It also, weirdly enough given Camus was agnostic, comes across as some sort of brilliant Christian meditation on sin and pride that one might find in Dostoevsky's desk. A Karamazov outtake to be slotted next to The Grand Inquisitor. There's no doubt in my mind that the great French writer was well acquainted with the great Russian one. Soulmates of a kind, both of whom could peer into the darkest recesses of the human heart. This is a book I will need to re-read again and again. ...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Amy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: eastern-european-literature

I read this book as an undergrad and proceeded to write a paper comparing it to Kieslowski's film, "Red" -- I'm sure the director was influenced by Camus' judge and his moral debate throughout. Of course, he needed a pretty girl to liven up the debate, but anyway ... the book itself was apropos for a young undergrad coming of age, shedding the 'way life is' mentality as inherited, debating right and wrong, what to do with one's self, etc. Camus' judge gave unto words the brewing ideas my expandi ...more

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