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Summary: Camus Describes Agnonizing World of Unlimited Freedom
Review: Through his character, Jean Baptiste Clamence, Camus exlpores what it means to be free in a world where men create virture out of will and whim. Clamence believes himself to be a good man, but when his virtue is tested by a call to sacrifice, he retreats to comfort, and realizes he is selfish and "fallen". He then recognizes that he is guilty and we are all guilty of pretension and ego-driven "altrusim". Clamence states that the "weight of days" without the judgment and forgiveness of God is "dreadful". An excellent existential exploration of Christian symbols and psychology. A "must read" for Camus fans.
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Summary: Jean-Baptiste Clamence's post-WWII Europe
Review: Camus introduces to the reader, in a rare second-person point of view, to Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Camus' novel is almost interactive, with Clamence answering the reader's questions and taking the reader's hand. At points in the novel, the reader is actually telling Clamence what to do, and he is responding back. It is slightly eerie, but ingenious. The novel, however, is about Clamence's experiences in WWII, and how he has survived to become a deranged, off-kilter person. The last chapter is where Clamence exposes it all, in a confessional mode, and tells with his brutal candor what happened in WWII to make him become the way that he is. It is a fascinating novel, though depressing, as usual for Camus!!
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Summary: Get a life, old Albert!
Review: The point is: what are you expecting from a book? I actually love books that can go deep inside ourselves, that give you great emotions or even chances to think and reason about something. This book necessarily makes you think and reason, but what I'm looking for is simplicity. When you can talk about something interesting, moving, deep, and at the same time be simple in the way you do it, be "light", then you're a really good writer, a good artist. This book complicates things that don't need to be complicated, it often serves you thoughts that pretend to be much "cooler" then they really are. Just like most of philosophers and thinkers. I don't like that. Let's get deep, reflective, but SIMPLE, keeping our feet on the ground.
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Summary: No turning back once you enter this revelation of doom!
Review: Even if you are not into Camus, be ready for the lifestyle his character leads: naivety without goals, preconceived intentions nor insights. Reading "The Fall" is just that: falling through the putrifying, self-serving babble that drags you doggedly to the slimey bottom until you gasp! There's a message in here as cold as the icy river that spawned it. Take deep breaths and let yourself go. Camus, as always, will clearly lead you through the muck
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Summary: A work which questions the nature of judgement
Review: Camus' work asks on what grounds we judge others and ourselves. A pinnacle of existentialist thought fits the world into the perception of one rather bent individual. Though rather pompous (I'm enlightened and therfore can see the stars) it calls forth a forcefully disengaged view of the social mores which we hold to be commonplace. A must read for lovers of "The Catcher in the Rye" or Demian
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Summary: Duality and Reconciliation
Review: do you love?
and why?
because you love yourself.
do you judge?
and why?
because you have sinned.
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Summary: Not a novel more than non-fiction description
Review: Its too hard to describe this though it is a novel, set under a guise of a fauex monologue by someone named Clamence. Basicly the French expatriate saddles up a simliar minded Frenchman (You the reader) yet naive confidant at a dive bar in Amsterdam. Sounding more like a swindler or shuckster Clamence entices the reader into acting as a witness to his confessional. Chronicaling his rise to prominace both socialaly and financialy and descent into murky paranoia, the monologue ropes you in with hints of common experience, abeit in a social cynasism sort of slant. In the end Clamence shares the secret of life with the unasuming reader though it could take one, as did me, multiple readings to interprut. This should be the quintesential piece to describe Camus' philosophy even though as literature it is hard boiled and seriously lacking plot. Ive read it at least 6 times.
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Summary: Entertaining, Insightful
Review: Camus' last novel, The Fall, is incisive and intriguing, a monologue giving the unconventional background of the eccentric narrator. The background is by no means boring, as many stories of personal history can be.
The narrator (Clamence) begins his story when he was a young lawyer, succeeding at everything he attempted and basking in his own virtue/pre-eminence. Never bothered by guilt of any kind, a series of events precipitate a metaphysical struggle in which Clamence completely overhauls his own life in an attempt to come to terms with the realization of his own complex nature, which is not as compassionate or pure as he had previously imagined.
This novel is written by one of the most intelligent writers of fiction in the twentieth century, with wit and clarity many highly regarded contemporary writers will never achieve in their lifetime. The insight possessed by Albert Camus is reason enough to read this book, along with all his other works.
"Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds."
- Camus, The Fall
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Summary: Far from the best of Camus
Review: This is the Camus novel I least like. It has a bleakness about it. The judge- penitent Jean- Baptiste Clamence who tells of his own fall from a position of moral superiority to one of what seems to be nihilistic lostness speaks it seems to himself for himself. Unlike Camus greatest work ' The Plague' there is no sense of other live and interesting characters, no sense of a social world. All is enclosed in upon the narrator himself who has lost his way in a world which seems devoid of grace and joy and love.
This was for me the most discouraging of all the works of Camus I have read. For even Sisyphus with the rock rolling down time and time again has the decision of whether to begin rolling it up again. Here the narrator seems to surrender completely to the void of his own fallen world.
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Summary: A bit slow, but overall a good read.
Review: I was assigned this book to read for school, and being a fan of existentialism, I was excited to start reading it. Unfortunately, that excitement died down rather quickly as I proceeded through this book...
The one thing that makes this book different and appealing, is the same thing that makes it painstaking to read at times. There is only one character throughout the entire book. His rhetoric seems stale at times, and is very random in its approach. This book is an interesting monologue, but that's all it is.
Overall I am a big fan of Camus; 'The Stranger' was amazing. Unfortunately, I would say that 'The Fall' isn't his best work. I agree with one of my fellow reviewers in saying, "This book is more of a study of character than a novel" If you're looking for intriguing dialogues, read some of Sartre's plays.
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