The fall

La chute ((English: The Fall) is a short novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Albert Camus. The novel can be read at several levels, obviously the deeper levels are difficult and less accessible, depending on the knowledge and experience of the reader. The excellence of The Fall is that the

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novel, although short, has so much more depth to offer.

The form of the novel is interesting, as the story is told in the form of a monologue of the narrator Jean-Baptiste Clemence. This monologue is not a confession to a priest, but a bar conversation. Not at the bar in a court of law, Clemence is a barrister, but in a pub in the Amsterdam city centre. The monologue is written in the typical type of conversation people sometimes have in such places, when they can unburden themselves to a stranger without limitations.

Thus, Jean-Baptiste Clemence tells the reader the story of his life. The essence of his life is what many people would consider the essence of their lives. Everyone believes that they are a nice person. This remarkable fact should be recognizable to any reader. No matter how deep the conflict in any human relation, each party always feels right. We learn that Clemence has lived the larger part of his life with the snug belief and image of himself as a good man, with a good heart, always willing to help others, by supporting the weak. But ,metaphorically extending a helpful hand is a very different matter from extending a literal helping hand. One day as a woman falls of a bridge, Clemence hesitates, and does not rush to help. The scene is sufficiently clever constructed, with a delay between the fall, the realization of what happened for Clemence to make the confrontation easy to neglect. The urgency is finely balanced at that edge where man has to decide to rush into action on the instant and the realization that one is probably (already) too late. This event makes Clemence doubt his ability to truly help people.

A second event Clemence tells his listener was pivotal in shattering his self-image. In a traffic quarrel Clemence appears as fairly reasonable, when suddenly the other hits him and rushes off. Dazed Clemence is left standing there, unable to get into action, and react. His failure to take appropriate action, that is to say what would be appropriate is his eyes, makes him feel impotent. Again, the situation, which involves another person is sufficiently complicated to make it psychologically entirely convincing, resulting in a total feeling of humiliation on the part of Clemence.

The power of the novel is to make the reader see that, while we generally have negative associations with the word "humiliation, it is generally felt that "humility" is a virtue. The Fall takes the form of penance, in which Jean-Baptiste Clemence falls from an elevated position to a lower position, in his own esteem. This humiliation enables him to see a much truer image of himself.

The novel contains a lot of material and many images and references that enable readers to extend the basic theme, and explore this theme at deeper levels. For instance, the novel is set in a bar in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, both in English and French alternatively known as "the Low Lands" (les Pays-Bas), to emphasize the descend from high to low. During World War II, the Netherlands was the country most co-operative with the Nazis in the deportation of Jewish citizens to the death camps. The pub in which Clemence tells his story is located in that historical quarter that used to house the largest number of Jewish people, and that was turned into a ghetto during the occupation. While the Dutch were least helpful, the French in Vichy-France were not very helpful to their Jewish compatriots either.

The admirable quality of The Fall is that the main theme is accessible to all readers who are interested and willing to spend their time reading literary fiction, unlike some fiction which is so inaccessible that all but professional literary critics can make any sense of it. In the case of Camus novel The Fall is may definitely interest some readers to read some additional literary criticism on this novel to deepen their understanding, and reveal other, beautiful and interesting dimensions of the book.

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It's quite sad what alleged logic can do to morality or individual conscience. It should now be quite obvious to humanity what dangers arise from the lack of a conscience.

Camus gives us here the confession of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a lawyer turned "Judge Penitent".

"Have you noticed that

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Amsterdam's concentric canals resemble the circles of hell? The middle-class hell, of course, peopled with bad dreams. When one comes from the outside, as one gradually goes through those circles, life — and hence its crimes — becomes denser, darker. Here, we are in the last circle." (Camus 283)

Google an image of Amsterdam and you will immediately see how true Clamence's words are. Here in the red-light district of hell, at a bar, "Mexico City", Clamence confesses. Half the book is taken up with showing us what a wonderful and caring person Clamence had been at the height of his successful career as an attorney in Paris. He helped the blind, took on cases of the poor for no charge, et cetera, et cetera.... It goes on at length.

Due to Clamence not coming to the aide of a woman who commits suicide, his Fall begins. He begins to become aware of his duplicity. He helps people not to help them, but to gain respect, to build himself up. He suddenly feels the glaring reality of his falsity and he hears the laughter which acknowledges his acknowledgment.

"To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others."

Clamence no longer believes in the speeches he must give in court on justice, law, crime... His descent into hell begins, and it is fairly ugly, though illuminating. There are many philosophical truths Camus strikes upon, yet there is more disillusionment.

The problem with Clamence is that he cannot accept his duplicitous nature. He goes from one polarization to the other, never finding a balance, but rather a comfortable position. He sees paradox as ridiculous, yet cannot escape it. In trying to do so, he becomes ridiculously tragic.

Paradox saturates our world to keep us from polarization. Clamence would lose much of his seething cynicism should he stop drinking gin. The gin philosopher is indeed, a false prophet. What do we gain from listening to false prophets? If we know not that they are false prophets, we lose much and chances are they know not that they are a false prophet. Clamence however, being a Judge-Penitent, confesses to us before we confess to him—that he is a false prophet.

The danger in this is losing oneself further into the abyss. How much more dangerous is the man who knows he is falling than the man who is falling and does not know it? Certainly the latter will not be as desperate or as illuminated.

This is a complex and shallow book. It ends on a sinister note. I believe that Jean-Baptiste Clamence was on the verge of death from alcoholism. After the woman who committed suicide awakened him to his reality, he goes on a dangerous voyage of self exploration, and at the end denies the importance of life and is happy that he did not save the woman's life. He traveled the circle of hell, ended upon the spot he started out on, and remains inside the circle.

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Jean-Baptiste Clamence was a highly successful lawyer in Paris. While behaving with a veneer of virtue and modesty, he felt himself to be above those around him and in a position where he could judge them as human beings. He would engage in minor acts of charity but always to satisfy his own

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self-regard rather than out of the spirit of true generosity. He felt like a Nietzschean superman, and that success in life was his destiny. This feeling of being above everything suffered a shock when, crossing the Pont des Arts over the Seine, he heard a splash in the water and a woman’s voice, but did nothing to investigate or raise an alarm. This experience came back to haunt him as years passed, and often when crossing the river (and once on a transatlantic trip) he would hear a woman’s laughter.

His sense of superiority and self-confidence began to break down. For the first time in his life he became aware that others were judging him. Clamence asserts that people judge others so as to avoid being judged themselves. He tried to escape from his new feelings by strategies such as showing his true contempt for others, pursuing true love with women and finally settling for debauchery to give him a feeling of immortality. None of these succeeded. He had become aware that his judgments of others were wrong and that he must judge his own guilt.

He left Paris and settled in Amsterdam, a dark city of concentric canals, possibly an allusion to Dante’s Inferno, and far from the sun of the Mediterranean. (Because of guilt, he cannot settle in Greece to live in the sun, a Camusian paradise, and remarks that Parisians must wash themselves before going to Greece). The book consists of his dialogue with a new friend he meets in an Amsterdam bar. We only have Clamence’s side of the conversation. He says he became a “judge penitent” in response to the laughter. Judgment by others is worse than judgment by God. Christ was crucified because he realized he was not innocent (as a result of the news of his birth leading to the massacre by Herod of the innocent newborns). We humans crucify each other. As a judge penitent, his purpose is to end the laughter and avoid the judgment of others, even though there appears to be no escape from this. But the technique is to spread the condemnation to everyone by persuading others to judge themselves as critically as he judges himself. “I am for any theory that refuses to grant man innocence, for any practice that treats him as guilty . . . . When everyone is guilty, we will have democracy.” Consistent with this belief in everyone’s guilt, he also denounces liberty and freedom, which might suggest one could take steps to free oneself from guilt. He also claims that all people desire to be slaves because of fear of freedom.

At the end of the book, we learn that his friend is also a Parisian lawyer. Clamence confesses that the goal of his conversation has been to encourage his acquaintances to judge themselves as he has been doing and in this way he can assert his superiority over them as they begin to blubber in facing the truth about themselves. However, he is not succeeding with his new friend. He makes further confessions, including that he stole the painting above the bar in the Amsterdam pub Mexico City. At the end of the book he has caught a fever and is weak. He is unable to make his new friend suffer. One wonders if his weakening state is linked to this failure and if his death is imminent.

The book is full of Clamence’s cynical witticisms that remind one of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. “A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.” On friendship he writes: “Friendship . . . Is long and hard to obtain, but when one has it there’s no getting rid of it, one simply has to cope with it.” On the death of friends and relatives: “Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with dirt!” “But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial in between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short. If they force us to do anything, it would be to remember them, and we have a short memory.” “[D]on’t believe your friends when they ask you to be sincere with them. They merely hope you will encourage them in the good opinion they have of themselves by providing them with the additional assurance they will find in your promise of sincerity. How could sincerity be a condition of friendship? … [I]f you are in that situation, don’t hesitate: promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can. You will satisfy their hidden desire and doubly prove your affection.” On intelligent men: “The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone.” These quotations just touch the surface.

Clamence may represent Camus himself. The quote from Lermontov’s A Hero of our Time at the beginning of the Vintage English edition suggests he may be a composite of the vices of the current Parisian generation. Or maybe Camus is Clamence’s friend, who withstands Clamence’s efforts to make him judge himself guilty. Or most likely both characters reflect different aspects of Camus’s character.

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Jean-Baptiste Clamence would be your worst nightmare to happen upon if you were attempting to have a quiet drink in a bar. He commences to tell you the details from every moment of his past life and goes on for five evenings! Really, I wonder what sort of a man it was who showed up on the second

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night to hear more. It would take a lot of gin to make me expose myself to that.

That being said, I read through the whole thing in what amounted to about five nights! With mostly no gin. So, what made me continue to show up? It was the insight into human motivations, the mirror for examination, and the fact that Camus is an author who is a stretch for me, so I wanted to know. Having read this at the same time I was reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, I was amazed at how the two tales dovetailed to give the complete story. Reading this is like reading the success story for the demons. I just realized that both tales are written in second person, although Lewis' is in the form of correspondence so you don't get the whole "self-obsessed monologue conversation" thing.

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In this existential masterpiece, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a French lawyer who had been first revered and then reviled, unburdens himself to a stranger in a bar in Amsterdam. Clamence was always considered the 'good guy', ready to help the blind cross the street, give up his seat to the elderly on

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the bus and defend victims of injustice.

However, as he gets into the details of his good deeds, the underlying hypocrisy of his motives are exposed. And through his confession lies the truth behind his actions. His acts of altruism hide the fact that he actually doesn't like those he 'helps' and that he extends his hand to those he considers less fortunate than he is because he relishes in the glow of self-satisfaction after.

This book will make the reader consider the age-old question of the meaning of life and death, and to stop and consider how we're living our lives, whether the decisions we make are borne out of the sincere desire to do what's right or if they are masks for vanity and selfishness. I doubt anyone could read this and not cringe occasionally in self-recognition.

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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

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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, the narrative adds another level of self-serving horribleness, and the reader recognizes the commonality of all people with each other in Clamence's descent...fall...from the peaks of public acclaim and well-wishing into the pits of a personal hell, made up of the deeds done and undone that bend us into new internal shapes with our regrets.

My Review: I read La Peste when I was seventeen, and I ***HATED*** it. I was angry at the waste of so much as a single tree to print it, in any and all languages and countries around the world. I despised each and every syllable. I vowed never, ever, ever to read another word by Camus. From that cold winter's night in 1976 to the point I was forced by the Book Circle to pick this book up, I kept to that promise.

Well. I sit corrected. La Chute is a fascinating moral tale told by a story-teller of great power and flawless control of his material and his language. (I am reliably informed that the original French is superb; this translation is sterling.) I am so glad that I didn't make the mistake of letting my teenaged judgment stand unchallenged. I would have missed out on a life high point in reading. I am accused, with Clamence, of leading a life grounded in the illusions of one's own superiority, one's own infallible rightness. HA! Wisdom comes, when it does, at a high price...the life of an innocent, the decision to be silent, the power of life and death over a virtual stranger are all things that happen to many, even most, of us; they're not always instantly obvious, of course, so we let them slide away unmarked. But how do *you* know that your call to complain about the service you received didn't result in someone losing a last-chance job, spiraling into depression, and ending her life? You don't. Clamence does. (That didn't happen in the book, by the bye.)

This book did what only the very best books written by the very best writers can do: It reoriented my internal compass. Permanently. Read it! Soon!

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Leaving the cumbersome translation aside, this is a short but deep exploration of conscience, guilt, and ulterior motives. I wish I had even a tenth of Camus' introspective powers and blinding honesty.

Wow!

Camus was a master at writing the powerful book. “The Fall” is an easy book to read in that it is short and conversational, but it forces the reader to think, which can be exhausting. It forces one to think about oneself, one’s self-image and one’s behaviour to others.

The technique

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used for writing the book is giving one side of a conversation between the main character and his chosen interlocutor. Mohsin Hamid used this approach to great effect in his book, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”.

Camus’s story is a real ripping away of the masks people wear and is a fundamental questioning of the real reasons behind why people do what they do and say what they say. A key element of Camus’s argument, or should I say, the argument of his character, is paradox. He questions why people do good things: is it because they want to make the world better for others or because they want to feel good about themselves and appear to morally soar above their peers? It is the old chestnut of all charity being selfish because it is ultimately self-serving.

This story tells of the success and decline of a high flying lawyer in Paris, full of self-confidence, a master of his own destiny, who has a momentary doubt about himself. This momentary doubt, this sudden crisis of confidence, plays on his mind. It grows. It takes over his life. “The Fall” leads the reader to the discovery of these facts through the conversation in which the protagonist “confesses” his weaknesses and flaws, and in which he justifies his views and turns the tables on every member of the human race.

Having reached the end of the book I have to recover my breath. I have underlined more quotes and comments in this book per page than in any other book I can think of, but rather than sharing these quotes and ideas here I am inclined to say, “Read the book. Enjoy the quotes in their natural surroundings.”

“The Fall” is a worthwhile read and I think it is a book that everyone will get something from. Whether you agree with the protagonist’s views or not, it will help you think about life and put things in perspective.

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A few years ago my wife and i were in the UK, in Reading, and we had went out for drink with her brother. A gentleman walked over and sat next to us and began unfolding his life story, one rife with accomplishment i.e. he had been kicked out of the French Foreign Legion for being too violent and

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then he had made millions speculating in global markets. Presently, he "was between things",as it were. He went on and on about the superiority of the German and Japanese people and why ego was all that mattered. This grew uncomfortable and polite asides weren't working. We finally left. I had a similar impression in finally reading The Fall.

Effective, yet I felt it was an essay as monologue and not a novel. It certainly must have been evocative at the time of its publication.

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The Fall is a fantastic book that I was surprised that I had not already read. The story is about a London lawyer that has changed his life from the selfish, self absorbed, career enhancer that he was to a more reflective recluse that helps others. His transformation did not come easy to him. The

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book is a diatribe of the main character's life to a stranger he meets in a bar in Amsterdam. The personal demons that caused him to pause and reflect reside in all of us. What would cause you to question how you are living your life?

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The ramblings of Clemence - where we are the listeners - is brilliantly constructed. It seems accidental, but no - every little casual remark is planted with great care by a genius storyteller. Clemence babbles along, first full of confidence, bravado and cheering for himself - his own goodness and

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then suddently - a splash - a women drowning in the river and he does nothing. Brushes it away...

But forever haunted by this scream (now a laughter) - how he discovers he really do not know himself - he cannot trust himself - all his good deeds is just to polish his own ego. And I think that Clemence’s basic fear is that people will find out who he really is - that the world will discover what he really thinks when he is totally alone with himself. Without anyone to confide in.

Oh, he is clever, and honest, that Camus. He makes me think. A lot.

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825 The Fall A Novel, by Albert Camus translated by Justin O'Brien (read 19 Oct 1965) I did not post-reading note on this book and do not recall it much. I think I was not very with the deeper meaning in the book. Wikipedia has an extensive article on the book:
The Fall (Albert Camus novel) -

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Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Wow, what a mind-fuck of a good book. The human voice is the most atrocious sound in the world. This book is like an endless replica of that voice, turned into a little human bone, lodged in the human ear.

Anyboody interested in exploring the question: 'Do lawyers have any conscience whatsover?' might be interested in how it's explored here. Those who already know the correct answer (no) will still find a remarkable and edifying read. Deserves to be as well read as 'the outsider'.

After finishing the Math history ‘Prime Obsession’ I picked up “The Fall” by Albert Camus. I think I understood the math in ‘Prime Obsession’ better than the philosophy in “The Fall”. The character labeled ‘Clamence’ whose ‘real’ identity is questionable has an ego the size

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of New York City but the style of a Parisian Hedonist. Pontificating with philosophical ruminations on the nature of good and evil and our relationship not so much with those two ‘qualities’ (good and…) but with the schema we have constructed within which to place these two labels. I think the character suggested that without criminals to prosecute, society’s moral framework would become a joke. (Because we are all guilty; it is just that with criminals being the objects upon which we project ‘the bad’ and the foil with which we construct our own innocence.) Albert Camus had me scratching my head and wishing I might sit in with a student seminar on French Literature of the fifties so that I could get a better handle on the meat of the book. At one point ‘Clamence’ becomes descriptive of the Paris around him and I relax and start to enjoy the prose when suddenly ‘Clamence’ catches himself being lyrical and castigates himself before getting back to what really matters. I guess I’d better go Google Camus.

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different than the Stranger in the sense that our narrator is a witty jack-ass, this book also influenced the post-punk movement in a similar way clearly with the band The Fall and numerous other artists that were moved by Camus' mentality. an existentialist reader isn't especially an 'exi' but

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should understand the idea well after reading The Fall.

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I love Camus' novels, and his essays are among the most thought-provoking I have read, genuinely shaping my outlook in life. The latter are, however, undoubtedly dense, hard work. Unfortunately, to me 'The fall' was neither one thing nor the other. It is written as a novella in which a man accosts

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another and gradually reveals his fall from virtue (an absurd state) to one of being a 'virtuous satan' (Camus' term for post-God fearing 20th century people). Anyone who has read 'The Rebel' will recognise these themes instantly. However, the narrative is too sporadic to be a driving force of the book, so it reads more like a philosophical essay, but the attending need to express it as words in the narrator's mouth reduce the amount of historical context that Camus can put in. Consequently it is neither essay nor novel. 'The Rebel' is a much better example of the former, 'The Outsider' and 'The Plague' better examples of the latter. This is an okay addiion to my Camus reading, but I think that if I had started here I wouldn't have got much further.

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Bleak but beautiful, The Fall is one of those books that reveals humans for what they are. The lawyer protagonist has worked all his life for justice, but to what end? He would like to believe that he has a selfless interest in downtrodden people and lofty ideals, but as the book progresses he is

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forced to confront his hypocrisy. He works hard ultimately for himself, he enjoys the public image of himself as a selfless person. The realization tortures him, and to resolve the hypocrisy he stops all his charitable endeavors and hurls himself into a life of selfish pleasure. But can any of us claim true selflessness? Camus is of course a master at showing us the hypocrisy and ridiculousness lurking under our highest ideals, and this book is no exception.

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It is humbling to read anything by Camus. In this novella, set up as a monologue by the narrator with an audience of a man he met in a bar, Camus, as usual, evokes self-examination. The narrator has set himself up as a "judge-penitent" whose mission is to teach the truth that all people are

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responsible....guilty...and can only be set free by acknowledging this. If you choose to read the novella, you will learn how the narrator "fell" from his prior life into his current one, and how civilization also "fell". A powerful treatise of judgement, truth, and just being human.

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Although The Stranger is the book that Camus is probably best known for, in my opinion The Fall is right up there with it in terms of brilliance. This book is an incredibly quick read and a great introduction to Albert Camus for readers new to his work. The book is made up of a series of

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conversations between two men that meet in a bar in Amsterdam. The reader is only hearing one side of the conversation, and the novel quickly turns into a confessional. The man who is divulging his secrets is Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a judge-penitent. Clamence boasts of his good deeds, intelligence, popularity, and success. He claims that he is only comfortable when he is “up high.” His reasoning for this is because “living aloft is still the only way of being seen and hailed by the largest number.” It is evident that Clamence not only is well aware of his vanity, but embraces it. This novel may be slight, but in its few pages it presents a number of substantial ideas, which culminate in the perfect ending that shows just what man is ultimately capable of. The Fall is an eloquent commentary on the scruples of a generation of men and women going forward into a bleak future, the pathway to which being lined with their judges--their husbands, wives, children, friends, coworkers, etc. It is impossible for one to read this novel without finding in it a part of oneself. The laughter that follows Clamence could very well be the personification of the guilt that is nurtured and flourishes in every human being’s heart--not just the guilt that accompanies committing evil deeds, but the guilt that comes with the knowledge that one’s deeds are sinful and wicked, but committing them anyway with indifference and apathy.

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Wow, what an amazing novel! Camus’ theological-philosophical inferences painted within in a fog-filled arena of muted tones make for a heavily weighted, entrancing read. With its universal implications, The Fall should be on everyone’s, “to read” list.

A short story that bears rereading to get the gist of the plot, a tale of depth where more is happening than what is going on the surface. Also a healthy knowledge of the Bible will illuminate a lot.

This is my first work of Camus and it was tremendous. It's not something I can sit down and digest in one sitting, but something that has to be contemplated and discussed, or the book will beat you. The first time I read it, it was definately smarter than I, but round two with some discussion was

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well worth it. Great read.

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I found that in this book Camus explores the edges of existentialism. somewhat similar in what he did in the stranger, same sort of main character, expect this time the character feels some remose. he looks back on his life and feels regart