Why this book: I’d read it before and recall being quite impressed with it.  I’ve also found other books by Camus insightful and provocative  – The Stranger, The Plague.  A friend of mine had a copy of  she was trying to give away, and I accepted this one and was interested in reading it again.

Summary in 3 sentences: This is the story of a man who had achieved all that most men would aspire to in life, as an attorney in Paris: a successful career, a great professional and social reputation, respected within the best societies, toasted as a generous philanthropist, and having had amorous affairs with many beautiful women.  And when he was at the apogee of his success, he walked away, escaping to Amsterdam where he lives alone and spends his evenings as a bar-fly in a seedy bar, sharing his story about how hollow, phony, hypocritical his life had become to any one who would listen.   This book is all in the first person, as he tells his story to another patron he’s met in the bar.

My Impressions: The Fall is a short book – 147 pages of relatively large print in the version I read (not the one pictured here).  It begins with Clamence, an expatriate Frenchman, seemingly bragging about the life he’d lived in Paris, all he’d accomplished and how much success he’d had. “But just imagine, I beg you, a man at the height of his powers, in perfect health, generously gifted, skilled in bodily exercises as in those of the mind, neither rich nor poor, sleeping well, and fundamentally pleased with himself without showing this otherwise than by a felicitous sociability. You will readily see how I can speak, without immodesty, of a successful life p 27 And a bit later he notes:    “I have to admit it humbly, I was always bursting with vanity…I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything i said.” 

Then he gets into how so much of his persona was for show, intended to impress, but not truly authentic.  He shared how he realized that so much of what he was doing was in order to be judged positively by others in his successful  and wealthy social circle  – but he intimates, that those whose admiration he sought and had won, were themselves playing the same game.  When he judged himself, he realized he was not really who he pretended to be, that he was indeed a phony, and eventually couldn’t stand himself any longer.  

His relationships with women, about which he goes on at some length, are exploitative and manipulative.  “Sensuality alone dominated my love life.”  p58 There appears to have been little true intimacy or emotional connection, though he enjoyed the company of his many lovers, as they kept him from being bored – until indeed they did bore him, and then he moved on to a new conquest.  “In as much as I needed to love and be love, I thought I was in love. In other words, I acted the fool.” 99  Given the relatively superficial nature of his relationships, he was able to sometimes keep more than one lover at a time.  “I used to advertise my loyalty and I don’t believe there is a single person I loved who I didn’t eventually betray.” p86

The main themes I took out of this book were that this man Clamence is much more thoughtful and introspective and honest with himself than most men who pursue the lifestyle he had enjoyed in Paris – and that is why he eventually couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of his superficial life and inauthentic values.  As he judged himself, he realized that he feared being judged – because he knew he was such a phony.  He imagined his “friends” – his adoring public – laughing at him.  

He writes: “My friends hadn’t changed. On occasion, they extolled the harmony and security they found in my company. But I was aware only of the dissonances and disorder that filled me.  I felt vulnerable and open to public accusation. In my eyes my fellows ceased to be the respectful public to which I was accustomed…and they lined up in a row as on the judge’s bench.” 78

He even noted that telling his story is an attempt to appear wise and insightful and honest to those to whom he related it.  He does find comfort and absolution in admitting his “guilt.”   He in fact takes pride in it.  ‘The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you.  Even better, I provoke you into judging yourself, and this relieves me of that much of the burden.” p140

He writes that in his current Amsterdam life, “I haven’t changed my way of life; I continue to love myself and make use of others. Only the confession of my crimes allows me to begin again lighter in heart and to taste a double enjoyment, first of my nature, and secondly of a charming repentance….Since finding my solution, I yield to everyone, to women, to pride, to boredom, to resentment….Once more I have found a height to which I am the only one to climb and from which I can judge everybody.” p142 

He talks about how he had come to realize that  freedom is not a prize and a privilege,  but is a burden –  knowing that one indeed does have choices but also much responsibility. “Once upon a time, I was always talking of freedom.  At breakfast I used to spread it on my toast. I used to chew it all day long and in company, my breath was delightfully redolent of freedom.”  But then he later notes that he had finally come to realize that  “freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne, Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops.  Oh no!  It’s a chore, on the contrary, and a long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting…At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that’s why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you’re down with a fever, or distressed, or love nobody.”  p133

He addresses religion’s effort to deal with the problem of guilt – the guilt that comes with living in human society.  “Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish.  Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgment.  Allow me to laugh respectfully.  I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgment of men…..Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day”. p 110,111

He tells a story of having been alone on a bridge many years ago in Paris late at night and having been approached by a young woman.  He turned and walked away, and a moment later,  he heard a splash and a scream in the water below the bridge.  He looked back and the woman was no longer on the bridge. He then continued to walk, and did nothing, notified no one, and didn’t even check the papers the next morning. His sense of guilt and cowardice has remained with him ever since.

The Fall is a disturbing book, but it is impressive in its simple style – as a first person monologue, one side of a conversation, as the narrator is confessing his own cowardice, sense of guilt and inauthenticity, to another man he’s just met, describing feelings and sensibilities that he believes we should all feel to some extent, but are afraid to examine or admit..  The back page of my copy says it well – describing it as a “monologue on the human condition” which “implicates us all.”

(page numbers refer to where the quotes are found in the  First Vintage International Edition 1991, which I read, and are included primarily for my own benefit.)