And I'm very glad I did, in case that wasn't obvious. I've read books of varying lengths and qualities and genres this month, as I attempt to clear my owned to-read list, but few will stay with me like this will. As the story goes, Meursault commits a crime and is then treated as an outcast. Its almost as if Camus wants the reader to dislike the main character, as he is depicted as being emotionless and detached. Camus writes in a very simple and easy to understand way, which is a trademark of his writing style. In 1960, the year Camus passed away, a collection of articles titled “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death” were published. The writings focus on conflict, particularly as it relates to Algeria and the Algerian War of Independence. He discusses the death sentence in “Reflections on the Guillotine.” The Fall” is divided into three sections, each named for an autumn month. The first section, September, begins with a powerful evocation of fall in New England, “New England comes to flower dying.” It is ironic that New England’s most colorful, attractive season is made not by the budding but the dying of leaves. From the first line, Bottum suggests an analogy to the life of Christian believers who by dying are born to immortal life. The first section continues with images of autumnal New England expressed most vividly in metaphors of fire, as “kindling trees” are set ablaze, each falling leaf “a spit of flame” to make “New England burning.” The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) and October’s pall follows September’s fire. Here the tree roots entangle sin and death. November is the last pause before winter renders final judgment on human activity. However, in this image of desolation is the seed of hope. The trees are a “thousand leafless crosses” that suggest a new intervention of God. The “lovely, silent, finished, clean” embrace of snow will quench the fire of the Fall. Spring will bring God’s compassion and “what mercy after such forgiveness?” Sources for Further Study

The last of Clamence's monologues takes place in his apartment in the (former) Jewish Quarter, and recounts more specifically the events which shaped his current outlook; in this regard his experiences during the Second World War are crucial. With the outbreak of war and the fall of France, Clamence considers joining the French Resistance, but decides that doing so would ultimately be futile. He explains, The Fall was the last novel Camus published before he died. The novel follows Jean-Baptiste Clemence as he retells his life story to strangers over five days. Camus' previous ideas of the Absurd inspired The Fall. Camus wrote the book after the atrocities of the Second World War. There was a distance from theorizing academics and the people who experienced the real horrors of the war. This alienation of the world in the aftermath of World War 2 is a prevalent theme throughout the book. Writer Over Philosopher Plaque on the sidewalk of an Albert Camus quote. 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: A philosophical novel described by fellow existentialist Sartre as 'perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood' of his novels, Albert Camus' The Fall is translated by Robin Buss in Penguin Modern Classics.I loved the line where he said we should forgive the pope. It was a refreshing take on a topic that is usually too feel good for literary circles and that we expect to be broadcast on the “O” network, which kind of blunts it’s existential value, because it makes a market for it and blunts it’s truly existential scope. In a world where we’re always judging, being judged, the one solid defense is for one to humbly, awkwardly, soberly, forgive oneself, the more private and quiet, the better. It’s interesting to think about. This book was such a rewarding read. During World War 2, Camus lived in Occupied France, where he became active in the Resistance. From 1944 to 1947, he joined the team at the newspaper Combat as editor-in-chief. Not long after, Camus received international attention for his three novels: The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall, as well as two book-length philosophical essays, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. In these works, Camus introduced concepts such as the Absurd and the notion of Revolt. In 1957, when Camus was only 44, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Less than three years later, Camus unfortunately died in a car crash. However, years after his death, conspiracies developed that the Soviet Union had killed Camus. However, the theories were just that, as nothing has ever been confirmed. The Absurd

In the essay, Camus argues that humans act the way that we do because we are constantly searching for the meaning of life, even though there isn’t one. According to Camus, we rebel because of this ultimate frustration. I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said.’’ Camus is the accused, his own prosecutor and advocate. The Fall might have been called "The Last Judgement" ' After the occupation of France by the Germans in 1941, Camus became one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance movement. He edited and contributed to the underground newspaper Combat, which he had helped to found. After the war he devoted himself to writing and established an international reputation with such books as La Peste ( The Plague 1947), Les Justes ( The Just 1949) and La Chute ( The Fall; 1956). During the late 1950s Camus renewed his active interest in the theatre, writing and directing stage adaptations of William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun and Dostoyevsky's The Possessed. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was killed in a road accident in 1960.

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The Plague differs from its predecessor not only technically but also thematically. Camus’s inspiration for The Plague was no philosophical abstraction but a specific event of his own life: the frustration and despair he experienced during the war, when the aftermath of the Allied invasion of North Africa trapped his wife in Oran (while he was in the Resistance organization in the Massif Central) and cut off all communication between them. That experience started the fictional idea germinating in his mind, and a literary model—Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)—gave the idea more concrete form. Camus majored in philosophy at the University of Algiers and his interest in philosophy shines through in some of his writing (more on that later!). He also lived a very tumultuous personal life, as most writers do. He was a famous womanizer and was involved with several different women over the course of his life. He was only married twice but had multiple affairs.

The Fall is set in Amsterdam, whose concentric canals remind the cultivated, loquacious, 40-year-old narrator, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, of the circles of hell. In a seedy sailors’ bar, he recounts his story to an unseen listener: how he attained a pinnacle of worldly success as a well-known lawyer in Paris, admiring his reflection in the gratitude of downtrodden clients who he served pro bono, not to mention in the submissive bodies and adoring smiles of the women he collected like medals. After a sinister confrontation with his own cowardice on the banks of the Seine, however, Clamence’s glowing self-appraisal begins to crumble: a strange disembodied laughter pursues him through the Paris streets. And so it is that he winds up in a dim Amsterdam bar, recasting himself as a “judge-penitent” who seduces unsuspecting listeners with his self-damning monologue, but only to force an equally nasty self-confrontation in the other, thereby affirming his own dominance.

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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.” He died tragically and unexpectedly in a car accident with his publisher, the well known Michel Gallimard. Gallimard still reigns as a publishing house in France!

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.Bronner, Stephen Eric. Camus: Portrait of a Moralist. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Camus, Albert. (2004). The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays. Trans. Justin O'Brien. New York: Everyman's Library. ISBN 1-4000-4255-0 Clamence proceeds to "destroy that flattering reputation" (Camus 326) primarily by making public comments that he knows will be received as objectionable: telling beggars that they are "embarrassing people," declaring his regret at not being able to hold serfs and beat them at his whim, and announcing the publication of a "manifesto exposing the oppression that the oppressed inflict on decent people." In fact, Clamence even goes so far as to consider 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.