The Fall (Penguin Modern Classics)

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A philosophical novel described by fellow existentialist Sartre as 'perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood' of his novels, Albert Camus' The Fall is translated by Robin Buss in Penguin Modern Classics. Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.

But also, in case I overdid it - this is still not intimidating. It's funny and short and it's clear. You could read it in an hour if you wanted to. The Fall is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. This is a very skinny little thing, and yet I did spend hours with it. Just letting its ideas sink in and its prose stay with me for a moment longer than necessary for basic understanding. The Fall” is a lyrical poem, suffused with Christian themes, mixed with the images of autumn in New England. The themes are allusive and suggestive but nonetheless stark and an integral part of the poem, imbuing the seasonal descriptions with a transcendent quality. I loved the line where he said we should forgive the pope. It was a refreshing take on a topic that is usually too feel good for literary circles and that we expect to be broadcast on the “O” network, which kind of blunts it’s existential value, because it makes a market for it and blunts it’s truly existential scope. In a world where we’re always judging, being judged, the one solid defense is for one to humbly, awkwardly, soberly, forgive oneself, the more private and quiet, the better. It’s interesting to think about. This book was such a rewarding read.

The heart of the novel is the depiction of the various ways in which individuals react to the fear and isolation imposed by this sudden state of siege, in which the invading army is invisible. To convey the variety of responses to such an extreme and concentrated crisis in human affairs, Camus deliberately eschews the convenient device of the omniscient narrator, making the depiction of every event and scene an eyewitness account in some form: the spoken words of reports or dialogues, the written words of letters or private diaries, and, as the main device, the written record of the daily observations of the novel’s main character, Dr. Rieux. Whereas in The Stranger first-person narration is primarily a device of characterization, used to portray an alien figure’s disconcertingly remote and hollow personality, in The Plague it is a device of narrative realism, used to reduce devastatingly incomprehensible events to a human, hence believable, scale by portraying the way these events are seen by a representative group of ordinary citizens.

Camus majored in philosophy at the University of Algiers and his interest in philosophy shines through in some of his writing (more on that later!). He also lived a very tumultuous personal life, as most writers do. He was a famous womanizer and was involved with several different women over the course of his life. He was only married twice but had multiple affairs.Clamence then relates the story of how a famous fifteenth-century painting, a panel from the Ghent Altarpiece known as The Just Judges, came into his possession. One evening a regular patron of Mexico City entered the bar with the priceless painting and sold it for a bottle of jenever to the bartender who, for a time, displayed the piece prominently on the wall of his bar. (Both the man who sold the painting and the now-vacant place on the wall where it hung are cryptically pointed out at the beginning of the novel.) However, Clamence eventually informs the bartender that the painting is in fact stolen, that police from several countries are searching for it, and offers to keep it for him; the bartender immediately agrees to the proposal. Clamence attempts to justify his possession of the stolen painting in a number of ways, primarily "because those judges are on their way to meet the Lamb, because there is no lamb or innocence any longer, and because the clever rascal who stole the panel was an instrument of the unknown justice that one ought not to thwart" (Camus 346). The Fall is set in Amsterdam, whose concentric canals remind the cultivated, loquacious, 40-year-old narrator, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, of the circles of hell. In a seedy sailors’ bar, he recounts his story to an unseen listener: how he attained a pinnacle of worldly success as a well-known lawyer in Paris, admiring his reflection in the gratitude of downtrodden clients who he served pro bono, not to mention in the submissive bodies and adoring smiles of the women he collected like medals. After a sinister confrontation with his own cowardice on the banks of the Seine, however, Clamence’s glowing self-appraisal begins to crumble: a strange disembodied laughter pursues him through the Paris streets. And so it is that he winds up in a dim Amsterdam bar, recasting himself as a “judge-penitent” who seduces unsuspecting listeners with his self-damning monologue, but only to force an equally nasty self-confrontation in the other, thereby affirming his own dominance. Origin and his experiences of this representative of non-metropolitan literature in the 1930s dominated influences in his thought and work. Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. His childhood was poor, although not unhappy. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, and became a journalist as well as organizing the Théâtre de l'équipe, a young avant-garde dramatic group.