The Fall [Paperback]

Albert Camus (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 7, 1991

Elegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

From the Inside Flap

Elegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (May 7, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679720227
• ISBN-13: 978-0679720225
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (123 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

143 of 155 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget The Stranger. This is the man's masterpiece. July 5, 1999

By "appassionata_1804"

Format:Paperback

Soon after publishing The Fall, Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature. On the strength of this book alone, he deserved it. As a novel, The Fall improves upon its two predecessors, The Stranger and The Plague, in almost every way. The writing itself is much more confident, full of scathing wit and eloquent outrage. The intertwining of artistic aim and philosophical conviction is utterly seamless. Neither is compromised, as they were at times in the earlier works. Rather, both art and philosophy are employed here to serve the STORY. In short, The Fall delivers on what Camus had always promised- a masterful work of literature that also FORCES the reader to examine his/her life.

Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a "good guy." He uses his abilities as a lawyer to protect the poor and weak. When asked, he helps blind people across the street. Wherever one finds a righteous cause, he appears to support it. He is a well-respected member of the community. Could one truly find SERIOUS fault with such a person?

Well, as of late, Clamence has had a slight problem: he has felt the need to be honest, both with others and himself. The truth often leads people to strange places, and so Clamence, formerly rich and recently disgraced, finds himself at a sailors' bar in Amsterdam. Here, he finally comes clean about his life and his actions (one and the same, possibly?). He's no criminal, surely not, or not the WORST kind anyway. His crime is much more insidious, and it consists of what we are all guilty of: he is two-faced. His purest acts of selflessness are actually forms of self-deception, for they mask that in the end, he is really satisfying himself. The purest altruism hides a secret loathing of those he "helps"; the deepest, most self-sacrificial love conceals a seething desire to dominate.

In this dingy bar, Clamence unburdens himself, not just of his "crimes," but of the author's (catch the quote at the beginning of the book) and humanity's too. Only a strong (and dishonest) reader can finish this book without cringing in self-recognition at the daily hypocrisies that add up to the modern human condition. Camus does not necessarily counsel despair though. At different points in The Fall, one can see the ever-present potential of humanity to better itself. What Camus does doubt though is the general willingness of people (himself included) to make the personal choices needed to truly bring ABOUT this "betterment."

The Fall is not entirely bleak reading. In several places, it is laugh-out-loud funny (No! Surely not sober Camus...), displaying the humour of a barroom Voltaire. Moreover, few could fail to delight in the sheer craft and elegance of the author's prose. Still, the book does raise searing questions about how to live (or waste) one's life. If one has been "sleepwalking" before reading The Fall, it will be almost impossible to do afterwards. Wake up with this brilliant, unsparing slap in the collective face of mankind (including me....)!

(Note to above confused reviewer: the book is written in the SECOND PERSON.)

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Classic French Existential Novel April 13, 2002

By "botatoe"

Format:Paperback

Barely more than a hundred pages, "The Fall" represents Albert Camus' ultimate foray into the recesses of psychic anguish. Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a once-respected and successful Paris barrister, sits alone in an Amsterdam bar delivering his stark monologue to an unknown listener. It is a confessional narrative, a tale in which Clamence slowly unravels the spare facts of his life, his deceptions, his inauthenticity, his bad faith.

As he sits in the dimly lit bar, Clamence makes the locus of his telling a metaphor for the narrative to follow: "We are at the heart of things here. Have you noticed that 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 throught those circles, life-and hence its crimes-becomes denser, darker. Here we are in the last circle." It is a metaphor that resonates with existential imagery, reminiscent of Sartre's claim, in "No Exit", that "hell is other people." From this grim place, Camus writes a classic of Existentialist literature, building on this metaphor, writing an extended trope of unremitting self-examination, self-doubt and anguish.

Clamence was, by all outward appearances, both a virtuous and a modest man. His courtesy was famous and beyond question. He was generous in public and private, literally exulting at the approach of a beggar. He helped the blind man cross the street and the indigent defendant secure a reduced sentence. He ended his afternoons at the café with "a brilliant improvisation in the company of several friends on the hard-heartedness of our governing class and the hypocrisy of our leaders."

But appearances give lie to the truth, for the truth in "The Fall" is that life has no meaning, that it is full of ennui, and that people act unthinkingly, inauthentically, habitually. Thus, Clamence reflects on a man he knew, a man "who gave twenty years of his life to a scatter-brained woman, sacrificing everything to her," only to realize in the end that he never loved her. How does Clamence explain this? "He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people." And from this boredom, the man married and created "a life full of complications and drama." For, as Clamence suggests, "something must happen-and that explains most human commitments."

Clamence describes himself, too, as "a double face, a charming Janus," for his motives and feelings, his very psyche, belie his outward virtue. While outwardly supporting the poor and downtrodden, he is "well aware that one can't get along without dominating or being served, [for] every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air." While known as a defender of justice, a great Parisian lawyer, his "true desire" is not "to be the most intelligent or the most generous creature on earth, but only to beat anyone [he] wanted to, to be the stronger." While professing deep love and affection for the many women in his life, he is a misogynist who "never loved any of them." As Clamence cynically suggests, "true love is exceptional, [occurring] two or three times a century more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom."

"The Fall" is a little novel that makes the reader ponder big questions, questions of meaning and existence and death, of how we live our lives and of what motivates our actions. It is, in other words, a novel that articulates the open-ended questioning characteristic of the French Existentialism of the 1940s and 1950s. But it is more than that, for it is also perhaps the finest work of one of France's greatest Twentieth Century authors, a work that deserves to be read, re-read and pondered.

34 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Classic French Existential Novel November 30, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Barely more than a hundred pages, "The Fall" represents Albert Camus' ultimate foray into the recesses of psychic anguish. Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a once-respected and successful Paris barrister, sits alone in an Amsterdam bar delivering his stark monologue to an unknown listener. It is a confessional narrative, a tale in which Clamence slowly unravels the spare facts of his life, his deceptions, his inauthenticity, his bad faith.

As he sits in the dimly lit bar, Clamence makes the locus of his telling a metaphor for the narrative to follow: "We are at the heart of things here. Have you noticed that 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 throught those circles, life-and hence its crimes-becomes denser, darker. Here we are in the last circle." It is a metaphor that resonates with existential imagery, reminiscent of Sartre's claim, in "No Exit", that "hell is other people." From this grim place, Camus writes a classic of Existentialist literature, building on this metaphor, writing an extended trope of unremitting self-examination, self-doubt and anguish.

Clamence was, by all outward appearances, both a virtuous and a modest man. His courtesy was famous and beyond question. He was generous in public and private, literally exulting at the approach of a beggar. He helped the blind man cross the street and the indigent defendant secure a reduced sentence. He ended his afternoons at the café with "a brilliant improvisation in the company of several friends on the hard-heartedness of our governing class and the hypocrisy of our leaders."

But appearances give lie to the truth, for the truth in "The Fall" is that life has no meaning, that it is full of ennui, and that people act unthinkingly, inauthentically, habitually. Thus, Clamence reflects on a man he knew, a man "who gave twenty years of his life to a scatter-brained woman, sacrificing everything to her," only to realize in the end that he never loved her. How does Clamence explain this? "He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people." And from this boredom, the man married and created "a life full of complications and drama." For, as Clamence suggests, "something must happen-and that explains most human commitments."

Clamence describes himself, too, as "a double face, a charming Janus," for his motives and feelings, his very psyche, belie his outward virtue. While outwardly supporting the poor and downtrodden, he is "well aware that one can't get along without dominating or being served, [for] every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air." While known as a defender of justice, a great Parisian lawyer, his "true desire" is not "to be the most intelligent or the most generous creature on earth, but only to beat anyone [he] wanted to, to be the stronger." While professing deep love and affection for the many women in his life, he is a misogynist who "never loved any of them." As Clamence cynically suggests, "true love is exceptional, [occurring] two or three times a century more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom."

"The Fall" is a little novel that makes the reader ponder big questions, questions of meaning and existence and death, of how we live our lives and of what motivates our actions. It is, in other words, a novel that articulates the open-ended questioning characteristic of the French Existentialism of the 1940s and 1950s. But it is more than that, for it is also perhaps the finest work of one of France's greatest Twentieth Century authors, a work that deserves to be read, re-read and pondered.