The Fall

Rating:
Summary: Cartesian Frenchman
Review: The setting is a bar in Amsterdam. The speaker is Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a lawyer. The name of the bar is Mexico City. Clamence says he is a judge-penitent. In Paris he specialized in representing victims and in being on the right side. He had scorn for judges. His courtesy was famous. He was considered generous. He always wanted to be lofty.

A turning point had been reached when a woman previously unknown to him had committed suicide. He did not know for certain, he did not read the papers after the incident. He had failed to acknowledge her. For a long time he had lived an illusion of shared general agreement. Basic truths are simply truths we discover after all the others.

He never believed human affairs were serious matters. The term justice gave him strange fits of rage. He felt stifled. He wanted to break open the wax figure presented everywhere. He states that for thirty years he was in love only with himself. Truth is a colossal bore. The character finds his vocation at last in public confession.

Rating:
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.