The Fall (Vintage International) by Albert Camus (EPUB)

Description

NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR • One of the most widely read novels of all time—from one of the best-known writers of all time—about a lawyer from Paris who brilliantly illuminates the human condition. Elegantly styled, Camus’ profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer’s confessions is a searing study of modern amorality.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Everyone is guilty, despite the fact that there is no law and no crime. In this, The Fall resembles Kafka’s The Trial. It is brilliantly written, with a wonderful style. However, it is so dense with ideas and sly metaphors, it needs to be read closely, engaging intimately with his prose. My copy is thoroughly marked up.

⭐This book along with the Wasteland by Eliot and the collected works of Graham Greene shaped my adolescent worldview. I found Camus’s disarming candor admirable and his insight into a world ready to judge more than repent fascinating. This week, I am sharing this novel with my AP Research we consider whether modern literature ever rises above identity. I consider Camus to be Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Dante’s rival in the regard. He captures quintessentially the human condition. Existential ennui is the root of all good storytelling.

⭐As others have stated so far this is an interesting and deep novel, one that drags you into its questionable and illusory narration through the use of the first person monologue. With this in mind, the novel becomes necessarily more complex and demands the reader’s attention at all times. Nothing should be taken for granted – not the speaker’s ideologies, professed history, and certainly not the way in which he is talking to another character. The manner in which the tone and companionship moves throughout the novel is as important as anything else – do not for a second fall into the persistent trap of thinking that Monsieur Clamence is speaking to you, the reader.The novel requires no extensive knowledge of philosophic topics in order to be appreciated, however, having that knowledge will only enrich the experience. Anyone with an interest in ethics, social roles, confession or simple artistic capability will enjoy this short, but dense novel.On a final note, the novel presents a startling insight into the nature and power of confession, which is ultimately what Clamence is performing (reliable or not). Foucault’s the History of Sexuality Part 1 speaks to this matter, one which is every bit as pertinent to the content and experience of *The Fall* as is any other philosophic or artistic reference, and one that is consistently relevant.

⭐Such an amazing work, more to digest than ‘The Stranger’.There are still some facets of the Judge’s character that I am trying to sort out, whether they are personality traits or some facet of existentialism.There are several laugh out loud moments, but maybe it’s just me.

⭐”A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the newspapers.” So pronounces Jean-Baptiste Clamence, narrator of Albert Camus’s short novel during the first evening of a monologue he delivers to a stranger over drinks at a shabby Amsterdam watering hole. Then, during the course of several evenings, the narrator continues his musings uninterrupted; yes, that’s right, completely uninterrupted, since his interlocutor says not a word. At one point Clamence states, “Alcohol and women provided me, I admit, the only solace of which I was worthy.” Clamence, judge-penitent as he calls himself, speaks thusly because he has passed judgment upon himself and his life. His verdict: guilty on all counts.And my personal reaction to Clamence’s monologue? Let me start with a quote from Carl Jung: “I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon.” Camus gives us a searing portrayal of a modern man who is the embodiment of spiritual poverty – morose, alienated, isolated, empty.I would think Greco-Roman philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius would challenge Clamence in his clams to know life: “I never had to learn how to live. In that regard, I already knew everything at birth.”. Likewise, the wisdom masters from the enlightenment tradition — such as Nagarjuna, Bodhidharma and Milarepa — would have little patience listening to a monologue delivered by a smellfungus and know-it-all black bile stinker.I completed my reading of the novel, a slow, careful reading as is deserving of Camus. The Fall is indeed a masterpiece of concision and insight into the plight of modern human experience.Here is a quote from the Wikipedia review: “Clamence, through his confession, sits in permanent judgment of himself and others, spending his time persuading those around him of their own unconditional guilt.”Would you be persuaded?

⭐This book is, though Camus would deny labeling himself as such were he still alive, existentialist in nature. It is set in Amsterdam, and is a narrative of a man, referred to as Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who refers to himself as a judge-penitent. This position, he says, gives him the right, through his own perfection and egotistical viewpoint of the world, to judge the living. This is what he does. Through his self-absorbed rants, however, Clamence gives the reader an interesting perspective into the mind of a egomaniac, of a “perfect” human, and of a condition which humanity as a whole possesses. The tendency of humanity to view itself as a god is delved into in this psychological study, providing interesting Biblical references as well as artistic references to examine the relationship between man and God.

⭐This book was a great pleasure to read. Though I do have to say it was very different from camus writing. But for me this is what made it a nice read. It was a big brain thinker. You didn’t agree hole heartily with the main character but understood his reasoning. Even reading it again I’m learning something new.

⭐This is an absolutely necessary book to read. It makes its point and drives it home!

⭐A boring drunk in a bar is how The Fall seems to start . But soon the reader feels like the Wedding Guest enthralled with the Tale being told by The Ancient Mariner .Lover of Women + Justice . A successful Lawyer , defender of widows + orphans + the downtrodden . Willing to offer a helping hand to just about anyone . This great generosity of spirit . Then this Fall from Grace . How + Why ??This great generosity of spirit ? Might it be self-serving ?This Love for Women ? Maybe that’s a way of saying : I never Loved any of them .A brilliant portrayal of a man who has lost his innocence and comes to understand himself better .Camus at his best .

⭐I found this painful to read. I had no connection with the narrator who rambles on about himself for the entirety of the book. I couldn’t discern anything particularly eloquent or profound in any of his rants. Every other sentences seems to have ‘old chap’ or ‘my good man’ randomly inserted into it. If you were to edit out the waffle the page count would halve. Having read and enjoyed ‘The Outsider’, I was disappointed. This is one of the worst books I have had the displeasure of reading.

⭐The Fall is a short novel (about 90 pages), although it is not even really a novel in that there is no story. The entire book consists of a drunk man giving a rambling speech on his philosophy of life. In addition to it being boring and painful to read, I did not like the writing style and found the book lacking in redeeming literary or philosophical value. In sum, a disappointing book and not recommended.

⭐Camus was one of a number of post-war French writers who used the novel as a vehicle for their philosophy, using fiction to explore our place in the modern world. The story of ‘The Fall’, such as there is, unfolds not in actions or plot but in speech and the articulation of thoughts and ideas.It consists of a monologue, spread across five days in Amsterdam and its environs, as the garrulous narrator Jean-Baptiste Clamance tells his story (“as soon as I open my mouth, the words pour out”). Clamance is a French exile who describes himself rather oddly as a “judge-penitent”. Quite what he means by this will have to wait. He begins his monologue to an unnamed listener (the reader?) whom he meets in a sailor’s bar he calls ‘Mexico City’ in the red-light district of Amsterdam and accompanies through the rain-soaked streets of the city at night. All the while he expounds his views on humanity, offering a jaded opinion of human freedom and liberty drawn from bitter experience. The monologue becomes a confessional, as though the narrator is overcome by a compulsion to speak, driven by a determination as dogged as that of the Ancient Mariner to tell his tale .Camus wrote ‘The Fall’ in the mid-1950s and his setting is a Europe still recovering from the trauma of World War and preferring to forget the shocking events of that conflict. The world and mankind has descended into a Hell of its own making. The novel considers the question of how an intelligent person might formulate an intellectual response to such horrors, how to take any ethical stance in the face of absolute amorality.’The Fall’ is a short book, almost a novella, and just about sustains the narrative structure of a single character’s monologue, which after a while can get somewhat wearing to read at length. In this edition, translator Robin Buss has captured the elegance of the author’s pen, and Camus’ writing – however bleak and pessimistic – is often poignant and beautiful, full of aphorisms and immensely quotable. The book was Camus’ last finished work of fiction, published just four years before his death in a car accident in Villeblevin, northern France, on 4 January 1960.

⭐Liked the dreamlike quality and the fact there is only one voice in the whole book. It is a monologue about the human condition and human frailty. Read it in the original French previously years ago for A level. Haunting and lyrically beautiful. (dictated by the person who received it as a requested gift.

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