The Fall
by Albert Camus
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Book Summary Information
Author: Albert CamusEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-05-07
ISBN: 0679720227
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780679720225
- Condition: New
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Book Reviews of The Fall
Book Review: "God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves."
Summary: 3 Stars
Written in 1955-56, THE FALL is the last of Albert Camus's three finished novels. To me, it is the least satisfying. To the extent that I can get a purchase on the novel (which, at 147 pages, might be thought to be a novella), it is cheerless and cynical.
THE FALL is presented in the form of a monologue by a middle-aged Frenchman and former lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who has exiled himself to drab and dreary Amsterdam. He holds court in a seedy sailors' bar in a red-light district. At the beginning of the novel, he buttonholes an anonymous patron of the bar who happens also to be French. The entire novel consists of Clamence's side of a very one-sided conversation that extends over six episodes. (One wonders why the anonymous interlocutor keeps coming back for more.) At first, Clamence tends to portray himself in a relatively favorable light, but as the novel progresses the boasting turns to self-condemnation and the monologue becomes an extended confession of cowardice, shamming, and selfishness. Moreover, it appears that Clamence does not see himself to be appreciably worse (more self-centered and amoral) than the vast majority of contemporary Europeans.
As told by Clamence, the central event of his life was a night in Paris as he walked to his home on the Left Bank by way of the Pont Royal. On the bridge he passed a slim young woman leaning over the railing and staring at the river. About fifty yards beyond, he heard the sound of a body striking the water and then cries, drifting downstream. He paused, but in the end did nothing, not even inform the police. A few years later, on another evening as he again walked up the quays of the Left Bank, he heard behind him, as if from the river, a "good, hearty, almost friendly laugh". That was the first of many instances where Clamence found himself pursued by a mocking yet good-natured laugh, so many that it becomes a theme of the novel.
On one level, the novel can be understood as a very personal confession of Albert Camus. In 1954, Camus's wife Francine twice attempted suicide. When, in early 1956, Camus showed Francine parts of the book, she told him, "You're always pleading the causes of all sorts of people, but do you ever hear the screams of people who are trying to reach you?" Clamence ignored the screams of the suicide and Camus knew that he had selfishly turned away from the cries for help from his wife . . . and probably others as well. Clamence is suave and charming and sexually promiscuous with women; so was Camus. (Indeed, Camus's inveterate philandering likely was the prime cause underlying Francine's suicide attempts.) There are several other notable correspondences between Clamence and Camus. To be sure, there are some biographical discrepancies too. Still, I sense it is Camus as much as Clamence who says, near the end of the novel, "Ah, mon cher, we are odd, wretched creatures, and if we merely look back over our lives, there's no lack of occasions to amaze and horrify ourselves."
Nonetheless, Camus undoubtedly was trying to do more with THE FALL than publish a moderately veiled self-denunciation. There are numerous religious elements: the novel's title, Clamence's given name ("Jean-Baptiste"), a stolen panel from a Van Eyck altarpiece popularly called "The Just Judges" which Clamence keeps in his bedroom, the sobriquet "the pope" that Clamence was given in WWII when interred in a prison camp, and many more. I frankly don't know what to make of them, especially since Camus was a steadfast atheist. There are also numerous allusions to other works of Western literature (for example, Dante's "Inferno") as well as what appear to be several allusions to "The Stranger". Again, I have no theories about what Camus was up to. And speaking of other authors, THE FALL reminds me of some of the works of Joseph Roth, though I doubt that Camus was familiar with any of Roth's writing.
I do agree with a statement on the back cover of my old Vintage paperback (priced at $1.65) that at least one of the novel's messages is that "no man is innocent and no man may therefore judge others from a standpoint of righteousness." Beyond that and the personal confession, I found the novel ambiguous and mildly disorienting. Perhaps my biggest problem with it is that I was unable to identify with, or feel much empathy for, Jean-Baptiste Clamence. He is more alien to my sensibilities than, say, Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. Hard pressed though I am to explain why, THE FALL leaves me rather indifferent. Three-and-a-half stars.
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