s.penkevich's Reviews > The Fall

You there! What’s to-day, my fine fellow goodreader? Christmas day? Humbug, nay! Today is the day I ramble to you about Albert Camus’ The Fall! Come, come, get yourself a drink. I’m buying. You know, The Fall, the one where Clamence monologues to a stranger at a bar for days on end—he must enjoy it as he returns again and again while also accompanying Clamence on walks—and he implicates all of humanity in a story that surrounds someone leaping from a bridge. What’s that? Angels getting wings when a bell rings? No no no, Clamence not Clarence, and a totally different bridge, different vibes. And there are no angels here, mon cher, and one of the many ‘falls’ that make up the titular The Fall is a fall from one’s own grace in recognition of your own flaws and guilt over actions. Or even your inactions. Happy stuff, eh? Drink up, and now where were we? Ah yes, Albert Camus, 1956, still riding the high of his celebrated novels and war hero status from his time in the French resistance, though this tale takes us far from his home in Paris or the Algeria of to a bar in Amsterdam curiously named Mexico City. You are asking me why Amsterdam? Well, the canals of course! They make rings around the city and if ‘Amsterdam's concentric canals resemble the circles of hell,’ Clamence says, this bar would be ‘ in the last circle,’ This fall for which our narrator monologues parallels a descent into hell a la Dante Alighieri. But now you must ask yourself, is Clamence our Virgil or perhaps the devil himself? Considered to be a highly personal and described by Jean-Paul Sartre as ‘perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood’ of Camus’ works, The Fall is a brilliant plunge into existential quandaries on ethical living, judgment, freedom and more as our narrator weaves his tale towards the shocking heart of the matter.

There, you see, the circles of Amsterdam

What’s that, mon ami? Who is Clamence? Oh yes, yes, I suppose I should start with him. Jean-Baptiste Clamence—the name a reference to John the Baptist I’m sure you understand, though the goodness of John is in direct contrast to the goodness of our narrator, you shall see, though the only person putting his head of a platter is himself—was a lawyer. A good one, you see, he lets us know how much he helped those in need and was an ideal humanitarian. His earlier monologues—the course of the book is several days of conversation, but don’t worry I won’t keep you that long. But please, order another drink on me in the meantime—but early on he appears entirely self-satisfied. He lists his accomplishments in sports, career and women, and assures you he is a good person. People who go on and on about being a good person are always actually good people, right? Oh you disagree? Well surely his litany of good deeds can—wait, whats that? You mean to tell me that good deeds are inherently selfish in at least some form? The egoism vs altruism debate?Ah yes, Knut Hamsun discusses this well in Mysteries, that the recognition or even simply feeling good about oneself is a reward and he thereby questions if there can be any truly selfless acts. ‘I admitted only superiorities in me and this explained my good will and serenity,’ our narrator here admits, ‘when I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension, in utter freedom, and all the credit went to me: my self-esteem would go up a degree.’ Well surely this puts some light on his earlier statements about how he ‘never felt comfortable except in lofty surroundings. Even in the details of daily life, I need to feel above.’ Perhaps this isn’t just building height, though a high apartment is a status symbol, and more an indication of his need to feel superior. ‘That's the way man is, cher monsieur,’ he says, ‘he has two faces: he can't love without self-love.’

‘I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said.’’

So now we are getting to it, the pristine veneer he presents of his life begins to show cracks, slowly spidering like a windshield once a stone has struck it. Clamence notices it as well, and several events in his life make him pause and reflect on himself. Hearing a distant laughter unsettles him, and not just from a sense of FOMO. His confessional monologue details a fight with a motorcyclist and a bridge suicide where he regrettably did not act and the weight of these memories are like a stone around his ankle that precipitates his plunge through the personal circles of existential hell. The bridge incident will haunt him, even in leisurely moments upon a cruise, and is the moment that all the book revolves around, caught up in its gravitational pull not unlike the way the beach murder is the center to his earlier novel, The Stranger.

‘I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.’

Now some critics have derived this to be, in part, a criticism of Jean-Paul Sartre and the Paris leftists. Oliver Gloag writes in his Albert Camus: A Short Introduction —an excellent and succinct work of criticism I shall lend you if you like after our drinks—that Camus saw that they ‘spoke of helping others but did not concretely help them.’ Many others have seen this book on the whole as Camus’ own self-criticism as well. Have you seen a photo of Camus, mon cher? Surely Clamence’s athletic description of himself could produce a striking portrait of the author in the mind's eye. Rumor has it the bridge scene mimics the suicide of his own wife, Francine, which he alluded to in a letter to his lover, the actress María Casares. Yes, my friend, Camus had many lovers under Francine’s nose, in fact the car accident that took his life was on a trip to where his three mistresses had all received letters from him announcing three different dates of arrival to ensure he had time with them all. Camus’s less than flattering thoughts on women as expressed in his diaries, Gloag tells us, are shared by Clamence himself who finds women a bore aside from intercourse and admits he lies to them to get them into bed.

‘We have no need of God to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men are enough, with our help.’

Not awesome I know, nor is him blithely using his wife’s own suicide attempt, but thats The Fall for you. We are all guilty in some way, but who are we to judge? ‘Today we are always as ready to judge as we are to fornicate,’ Clamence says, something that still strikes a chord in our day where online outrage offers swift and widespread condemnation and a snarky judgment is a sure-fire way to increased clicks to boost social media metrics. I’m a social media person myself by trade, studied it and all, and outrage marketing is a powerful persuasionary route. I told you our narrator was a lawyer but can you guess what he is now? No, he’s not an art thief, good guess though as the dubious possession of the van Eyck painting (it is a true story that this painting was stolen) does work to double his connection with John the Baptist featured in the painting with his finger pointed towards God, a great juxtaposition with the depiction of the narrator pointing towards a chaotic empty sky devoid of God:

‘When all is said and done, that’s really what I am, having taken refuge in a desert of stones, fogs, and stagnant waters – an empty prophet for shabby times, Elijah without a messiah, choked with fever and alcohol, my back up against this moldy door, my finger raised toward a threatening sky, showering imprecations on lawless men who cannot endure any judgment.’

More on the existential absence of God in a book on judgment in a moment, but our narrator here describes himself as a judge-penitent. What is that? Well, its ambiguous, and linguistic ambiguity is much of the way this novel thrives and is Clamence’s charm: ‘You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.’ David R. Ellison asserts in his essay on the novel that it can be read as a ‘textually complex reading’ on The Rebel, so there is an interesting juxtaposition from his statement that ‘only clear language, the simple word, can save us from this death,’ with Clamence’s labyrinthian monologues here full of ambiguous language and inauthentic self-indulgence. Sorry? Yes, the judge-penitent. Well, essentially, he is a penitent because he is confessing his sins (quite literally in the monologue) but also a judge because, well, he wants to judge you. And he’s going to, he’s going to implicate the whole of humanity. The judge-penitent gets a sense of power from judging others, and is something Camus accused Sartre of being, feeling people like this were dangerous as they could quickly rationalize themselves into committing the same atrocities as Stalin.

‘People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.’

Remember the laughter we spoke of earlier, the one that unsettled him so much? It was laughter that made him think of judgment and those who pass it with sadistic glee. Admitting himself a sinner, he realizes laughter is his own way ‘of silencing the laughter, of avoiding judgment personally.’ Laughter is his escape, and if we must imagine Sisyphus happy then perhaps we should also imagine him laughing. Maybe making lewd jokes about rolling his balls. No, don’t cheers me for that. ‘Don’t wait for the Last Judgment,’ he says, ‘it takes place every day’ and this is a true tragedy. Camus was against judgment as he often saw it as absurd, such as the way he wrote about it in Reflections on the Guillotine:

‘To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.’

What does Clamence say about god you ask? Well, for starters, he tells us ‘God’s sole usefulness would be to guarantee innocence,’ but he also believes there is no innocence in this world so thereby no need for a god. And with no god, it is humanity that must do the judging. ‘But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others,’ he says of his solution to be happy and feel superior, ‘consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.’ This is why the penitent part is also important though, because by confessing he is absolved, though this reminds me of when people talk about saying sorry isn’t enough and need to see it reflected in our actions. We must act, not just judge or engage in self-flagellation to avoid actual action. Follow? Here, I’ll order one last round.

‘We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.’

I’m sure I’ve exhausted you, but I must reiterate that The Fall is a marvelous novel. Elusive and complex, it is an excellent look in the mirror at our own guilt and the ways we flail about trying to understand what to do with it. It is a novel that uses much religious symbolism (you see the dove fly about the novel, for instance) and language to construct this very existential discourse. Laughter may be the best medicine, they say, but here it is a strategic plan to obtain power and superiority, laughing and judging all the way. An absolutely outstanding novel, all intricately woven in under 150pgs. Thank you for you time, I’ll pay our tab, and no I won’t judge you. Or will I…

5/5

‘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.’