“Una sola frase les bastará para el hombre moderno: fornicaba y leía periódicos.”

I finished the novel completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of ideas, symbols, and images, so beautifully expressed, so suggestive, and so fascinating. Given that it's such a short book, I practically underlined the whole thing.

First of all, the form, one of my great weaknesses, a confessional monologue of someone deeply ill both physically and morally. A contradictory being who, directly through his speech and indirectly through his own condition, shows the absurdity of the world. A fictional essay on who we are, how to live, and how not to.

   “¿No nos hallamos siempre frente a las mismas preguntas, aunque sepamos de antemano las respuestas?”

If with these few lines I've managed to interest you, the ideal thing would be for you to leave my comment here, always subjective and possibly flawed, and read the novel. I believe that part of the pleasure of Camus' work is in uncovering the contradictions of the character, the complexity of his problem, and the trap of his solution. But, if you still wish to continue...


Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who once again finds himself in a bar declaiming his life to a stranger, begins his oration by presenting a desolate landscape of the human condition.

   “¿Sabe usted que en mi aldea, en el curso de una acción de represalia, un oficial alemán pidió cortésmente a una anciana mujer que tuviera a bien elegir de entre sus dos hijos al que habría de ser fusilado?”

He himself is not spared from this portrayal. After describing himself in the past as an admirable human being, a lawyer concerned with helping the weak, with fighting injustices, praised and respected by all...

   “…lo importante era que yo estaba en el lado bueno y eso bastaba para lograr la paz de mi conciencia. El sentimiento del derecho, la satisfacción de tener razón, la alegría de poder estimarse uno mismo… Gozaba de mi propia naturaleza y todos sabemos que en eso estriba la felicidad…”

... he confesses that his motivations are much darker and that his conscience, in the form of a ghostly laugh, began to haunt him without respite. An unexpected encounter with a suicidal woman on a bridge over the Seine — The Fall — will unleash a whole emotional cataclysm.

   “Verdad es que me hallaba satisfecho de todo. Pero al mismo tiempo, satisfecho de nada. Cada alegría me hacía desear otra…Y así corría yo, siempre colmado, nunca saciado, sin saber dónde detenerme. Hasta un día, o mejor dicho, hasta una noche en que la música se interrumpió de pronto y las luces se apagaron. La fiesta en la que yo había sido feliz...”

He not only started to deal with guilt and inner shame but also, and above all, he had to face the judgment of others.

   “…me sentía vulnerable y entregado a la acusación pública. A mis ojos, mis semejantes dejaban de constituir el auditorio respetuoso al que estaba acostumbrado. El círculo del que yo era centro se quebraba y ellos se colocaban todos en una sola línea como en el tribunal. A partir del momento que tuve conciencia de que en mí había algo que juzgar, comprendí que en ellos había una vocación irresistible de ejercer el juicio…el universo entero se puso a reír alrededor de mí.”

Jean-Baptiste, who doesn't have this name by chance, will announce the good news, the salvation of man, when in reality he only points out the dangers of his attitude, his pointlessness: a totalitarianism in which to unload all guilt. Jean-Baptiste is a man who renounces freedom because of what it implies in terms of responsibility and, therefore, of pain.

   “Al cabo de toda libertad hay una sentencia. Aquí tiene usted la razón de que la libertad sea una carga demasiado pesada… Lo esencial es que se nos mande cada acto, que el bien y el mal se nos designen de manera arbitraria y por lo tanto evidente… Para quién está solo, sin dios y sin amo, el peso de los días es terrible.”

And, as if that weren't enough, he clings to the cynical option, that is, to extend guilt to everyone, to dilute it in the crowd, also seeking that everyone recognize it and thus counteract the judgments to which he is submitted by acquiring the right to judge in turn.

   “Cada hombre da testimonio del crimen de todos los otros; ésa es mi fe y mi esperanza.”

A laugh started his torment, and another laugh, in this case that of his interlocutor, will continue it.

Well. Well. Well.

Well. Well. Well. This is how I start, much like a review opening by a dear friend on this site. But then, a thought crossed my mind. Why not translate it into French, perhaps in honor of Camus? So, I gave it a try. And what did I end up with? Bien. Bien. Bien. No, that's not at all what I meant. By "well," I intended to convey a sense of resignation, or maybe a feeling of ennui.

Mon cher compatriote - may I call you that without causing offense? But why would I assume we are fellow citizens, dear or otherwise? And why would the author assume that in his first-person monologue that reminded me of the identical voice in The Reluctant Fundamentalist?

Perhaps I got off on the wrong foot here. I did find the narrative voice interesting, at least initially. It was ironic, evasive, and far from straightforward. Our unnamed narrator - you say his name is Clamence? I must have missed that - is he being serious? Or is he playing games with us? Is this a game of cat and mouse, and we readers are the mice?

But really, after a while, I found it all becoming so tedious. You might think I'm joking, but look at that bookshelf. Abandoned! You might say it's just the reviewer's way of poking fun, a ruse perhaps. And maybe it is, mon ami. It very well could be. And if I had access to emoticons, which one would I choose to use here? You may ask. Oh, you didn't ask? You don't care? Well, then you do understand my meaning.

After all, the story, if we can even call it that, is so short, less than 150 pages with large type and remarkably few words on each page. But I ask you, is it not true that despite all the text I underlined, there was really so little substance? When all is said and done, or rather, when all is read and done, what do we have? What are we to make of this?

Fortunately, I have a couple of critique books to flip through. Monsieur Hanna's, for example. What does he have to say? Quite a bit, actually. Here, in chapter IX "The literature of revolt," on page 213, it begins "The Fall - a confessional narrative." I skimmed through it. I could quote it for you, mon ami, but I won't subject you to all those words of our critic. He seems serious, I'm sure... or is he also being ironic, playful, leading us on? Just to pick a short passage that catches the eye, he says, "... surely none of his pages conceal so much playful irony as do those of The Fall. And the net result is that this, the most personal of Camus' works, is the least revealing." Indeed. But enough of that.

And from another collection, Roger Quilliot writes, "The Fall is an act of purification." Sartre has the audacity to state, in "A Tribute to Albert Camus," "We lived with or against his thought as it was revealed to us in his books – especially The Fall, perhaps the finest and least understood...". Ah well. Such erudition.

As my head droops to my chest and my eyes close, the last thought that crosses my mind is... tired... so very tired.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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The painting "The Just Judges" is one of the paintings in a religious art collection and was located in the choir of the Ghent Altarpiece in Belgium.

This work of art, along with other parts of the collection, was stolen in 1934.

The thief, through several letters, demanded a large sum of money for the return of the painting, but the request was rejected by the archbishop of the Ghent Cathedral. The police were never able to find the thief.

Years later, a person named "Arsène Goedertier" on his deathbed told his lawyer that he was the only one who knew where "The Just Judges" was and would take this secret to the grave.

In one of his attics, copies of the letters that had been sent to the archbishop were found, as well as a note stating that the painting was hidden in a place where it could not be brought out without attracting public attention.

A group suspected that the painting must be in the cathedral itself, and they searched the entire cathedral with an X-ray scanner. Other hypotheses were also put forward, but none led to a result.

All this while, this painting was hanging above the heads of the guests in a mansion in the Netherlands.

It should be noted that a part of the book claims that this painting was actually in his possession and he had someone hang it in a mansion, but it does not provide much explanation about the story of the theft of the painting. This is what I retrieved from the English Wikipedia about the story of the theft.

Μ•Ο•Ν•Α•Δ•Ι•Κ•Ο

Electrical wires in the heart. Electrical shock literal, every time your narrator addresses you. It shows you. It characterizes you.

IT SPEAKS ABOUT YOU... ABOUT ME..

TERRIFYING.

You identify and when it ends you look at the ceiling. You look at the floor. You look at the ceiling again, wherever higher than your basement or attic bathroom.

You open the closed windows and let it be night...

You go out somewhere to look up, as high as you can, just to avoid the

FALL.

A sledgehammer scrapes this book that ends in a pool full of alcohol. Can you bear it?

The Fall concerns you. Surely you were once indifferent to someone's Fall. So you can bear it. The truth.

You can see the itinerary of vanity and the lack of phenomenality that leads with mathematical precision to the Fall.

The repentance and confession of a man. Of a judge-repentant. My confession. The confession of all of us.

Of all the more or less comfortable. With an arranged life, with problems, with opinions, with a critical spirit in the condemnation of society and with liberal and informed ideas.

Of all the troubled people who have nice opinions, a worldly life, friends, acquaintances, family, education, work and little or great power.

Of all those who have "accessories".

Of those who are selfish, philanthropic, zoophilous, narcissistic, individualistic.

Of those who love only for their own benefit and are unable to understand it, who always tell the false truth to be liked and accepted.

Who admit values and ideals only to not be condemned by other blameless liars.

Who are supported by hypocritical superiority not by empathy.

Who look lower to feel higher. Cowards. Helpless. Withdrawn. Hopeless. Sinners. Quiet. Simple. Dreamers. Good. Bad.

In a word, people or categories of people and people.

For all of these, for all of us, there comes a moment that shows us the mirror of our true form and essence.

If you don't belong to any of the above categories, it's a pity.

You don't need to read this book.

It is unforgiving, toxic and dull.

Maybe it's better not to read it. It's a trap.

If anyone is caught, no one will be able to get you out. You have to get out alone, if you can.

Kamý philosophizes synchronistically and terrifyingly.

He grabs modern man by the hair who is attuned by the new order of things, religion, culture, the various systems of development and the lack of freedom.

He grabs him from the servile "appearance" and drags him to the Golgotha of "being".

He tries to guess what it would be like if the thread of a global chain of indifference and artificial happiness that binds us all and leads to the Fall was broken.

What it would be like if we realized that we belong to a society that judges-condemns and criticizes shamefully and those who组成 it are even worse or equally shameful hypocrites.

Now we know.

We are warned.

Good reading.

Many greetings!

You enter with the necessary conscious consent to the upcoming Fall.

I humbly bow. I start to look up... with my own responsibility!

I have read many very good reviews here, especially the review by Mr. Hossein Sharifi. Reading Kafka is one thing, understanding him is another. For this, a series of prerequisites are necessary. I liked Shurangiz Farh's translation, with its good introduction. I have liked this book Kafka more than anything I have read from him so far; among The Trial, Misunderstanding, The Stranger, and Caligula. In my opinion, Kafka has reached perfection here. I mean his thought. It can't be named a story, it was more of a fictional event with its own interpretations. That is, an event occurred and then everything that happened was outside of that event but related to it. However, Kafka has shown an extraordinary subtlety; as if he knows that hitting a word in his work will not be very interesting for the reader. Therefore, he has taken the help of a narrator who creates the reader. Not only has a narrator been created, but the reader has also been created. The story apparently proceeds in a monologue, but we completely know our place as the reader and it is predetermined.

I also liked its name. I also liked the final result, although it wanted to convey a kind of self-importance and naivety that couldn't be faulted. You should read The Fall when you can accompany the narrator and let his words attract your attention. I read it at a time when I myself needed to hear these words. :)) Therefore, it stuck to me a lot, otherwise, maybe at another time I would read it and say well, what. It's okay. :D

It is no easy task to review a book by Albert Camus. His works are deeply philosophical and often thought-provoking.

You need to summon all your intellectual faculties to fully understand his ideas. Otherwise, you risk missing important points that are subtly spread throughout the text.

The Fall is, quite frankly, the most thought-provoking book of Camus that I have read so far. His voice is so powerful, and his words are so imposing that I was completely immersed in them, losing my own voice and words.

I'm still not sure if I've fully regained my voice and words, or if I can express my thoughts coherently. But something inside me tells me that I should dare to pour them out before awe overpowers me and silences my thoughts.

Written in a series of monologues, The Fall is a confession of a self-proclaimed "judge-penitent", John Baptiste Clamence. He confesses his sins to a nameless stranger and describes his life before and after "the fall".

Clamence was a successful and highly respected defense lawyer in Paris until a chance witnessing of a suicide marked a crisis in his life. The guilt of not taking any action to prevent it or immediately alerting anyone weighs on his mind for years, eventually crushing him and leading to his fall.

He flees Paris and ends up in Amsterdam, where he tells his story to a stranger in a bar.

Clamence's confession is not just about his own sins, but the sins of mankind in general. His life is a mirror for us to see the truth about ourselves. And it's not a pretty picture.

Clamence describes himself as a "double face, a charming Janus" who is nothing but a "play actor". But he believes that all men are the same, just play actors in a tragic social drama.

"If everyone told all, displayed his true profession and identity, we shouldn't know which way to turn." So everyone is a hypocrite, hiding their true selves and showing only a disguised version.

No one truly cares or is generous or loyal to their neighbor. Everything is just a pretense to satisfy man's supreme need for self-satisfaction. Self-love is what matters.

Man "has two faces: he can't love without self-love". And this makes all our outward actions turn inward, pointing only to self-love.

"The feeling of law, the satisfaction of being right, the joy of self-esteem, are powerful incentives for keeping us upright or keeping us moving forward." The self-importance blinds us and impairs our charity.

We cannot appreciate or admire others, always finding faults and being judgmental. But at death, the previously restricted tongues start wagging and praise pours out in torrents. Why? Because they are no longer here and "with them, there is no obligation."

This is the "fall", the fall of mankind. Full of self-love and self-esteem, we have forgotten to love our neighbors and have disobeyed the laws of humanity.

To hide our own fall from grace, we exercise a power that is reserved for God. We "judge in order not to be judged ourselves."

Man is envious of another's happiness and persecutes the happy. On the other hand, he relishes in another's misery and sympathizes thoroughly. This is human nature.

"Happy and judged or absolved and wretched." But what right do we have to judge others, when we are all sinners? And can we exercise such a power justly, when it is clearly beyond our capacity?

Clamence says to the stranger, "You were speaking of the Last Judgment. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgment of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime."

By exercising a power beyond us, we have made a serious error.

Camus's thoughts and words are powerful. As an advocate of the absurdity of life, he shows the folly of these "play actors" who, in a meaningless life, live as if they know the truth.

I don't share Camus's views, and my life philosophy is different. But one cannot ignore his argument. There is a lot of truth in what he says.

My reading experience of The Fall is unique. It had such a profound impact on me with its thought-provoking content.

I've been emotional about books before, but I've never had goosebumps. That reaction was usually reserved for music. But Camus, with his powerful words, managed to penetrate what I had sacredly reserved for that other form of enjoyment.

So, I'll say this to him. Dear Camus, thank you very much. You and I may not see eye to eye on everything. But you've managed to touch me deeply with this beautiful work.

I used to be, as they say, a person of some consequence. I held a position in an American organization that specialized in providing experts for hire at significantly elevated rates. Our business model was based on the understanding that reliable expertise carried a high market value.

Let me share with you one particular job I undertook. A Spanish government agency wanted to discontinue funding a software project for reasons unknown to me, perhaps due to an internal feud. They required an unimpeachable opinion, so I was brought in as an external evaluator. I was politely informed in advance that my evaluation was expected to be negative. My contact assured me that he would keep the meeting as short as possible, considering the interests of everyone involved.

I entered the meeting and shook hands with the representative of the project. It was evident that he had been up all night attempting to enhance the system's performance. I allowed him to展示 the app for a few minutes. The contact man looked at me. In a neutral tone, and in English, I explained that the project was not utilizing the currently fashionable architecture or evaluation methodology, which inevitably raised serious doubts. The contact man translated. "But he doesn't even know Spanish," the victim said helplessly. The contact man replied, and a minute later, we were shaking hands again and leaving. The next day, my boss informed me that the client had been pleased with my performance.

After I discovered Goodreads, I began to feel that software projects were no longer challenging enough. Instead of providing bland opinions on code, I could now use my own words to judge the accumulated output of the world's writers, from Homer to the present day. The response was also more engaging. A curt and eloquent dismissal of Joyce or Dostoyevsky would elicit satisfying howls of protest from the soi-disant intellectuals, and a comment thread that could provide a whole morning of amusement. However, after a while, this too lost its charm. I found that there were only a limited number of ways to disrupt a highbrow reader's sense of literary appropriateness. I began to shift my reading downward, towards vulgar and poorly executed novels that readers actually seemed to care about.

Soon, I reached the bottom and discovered the rich stratum of authors with accounts on the site. People claim, without much conviction, that they care deeply about To the Lighthouse; they may truly believe that they care about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But there is no doubt at all that they care about their own books. It was incredibly easy to manipulate these authors' vanity, first by raising their hopes with an appreciative comment and then hitting them with a bluntly insulting one-star review. If they dared to object - and I was surprised to see how many did - it was then a matter of an hour to assemble dozens or even hundreds of other reviewers who would mock and scorn them as "badly behaved authors," adding their own insulting reviews. I know, my career may not be considered glorious, but no doubt you have similar misdeeds on your conscience.

Every author, I have learned, longs to find the ideal reader who will understand their work as they intended, who will perceive all the things they wished to convey but could not express. They search for this ideal reader, but all they encounter are critics. I believe there has only been one ideal reader, two thousand years ago. He looked beyond the surface of the book and saw the true essence within, a book so deeply hidden that even the author could not see it. Naturally, the critics found him unbearable and put him to death. Later, people felt compelled to write a book about this ideal reader. It is a confused and poorly structured book, full of inconsistencies and non-sequiturs. Nevertheless, it remains the best book ever written.

I could continue, but it is nearly midnight. I do not think I will disclose any more about my life. Instead, I suggest we take a walk across the bridge into the Vieille Ville, past the art galleries and antiquarian bookshops. Another one closed down just last week. I want to see them before it is too late.

The follow-up to Christos Tsiolkas’s bestseller The Slap is here. In The Fall, we are once again plunged into a world of interpersonal drama. This time, a boozy Australian, whether by accident or perhaps intentionally, elbows a child onto the grass. The result? The child falls and hurts his pelvis, sparking outrage on the streets of Canberra.

It makes one wonder: are our children ever truly safe from inebriated individuals with pointy elbows? Why can't drunks be required to wear elbow guards when in the presence of those under ten?

This book is not only a literary exploration but is also likely to be adapted into a TV series. It features music by Mark E. Smith and fourteen dole claimants, with songs like ‘Veggie Burger Boogaloo’, ‘Aussie Trip-Whip Redux’, and ‘Man Fax Joist Answer King’. Directed by McG, it also includes the ravings of a despairing shagger whose semi-fascist dogma allegedly speaks to the universal truths about the fragility of mankind.

It is sure to appeal to nerdy students and existentialist punk bands with names like Fist of Human or The Seabed Drown Club. Get ready to be captivated by this soon-to-be bestseller.

To The Fall is not a simple story.

It is a philosophical exploration into the path towards truth. Written in the second person, the story consists of a series of separate monologues told by Jean-Baptiste Clamence to a stranger - that is, us. Here he relates to us the story of his fall from "Eden" or Paris and his exile to the "urban hell" of Amsterdam. Clamence is a former judge who constantly reminds us how much he loves himself while at the same time struggling to find the meaning of life. His greatest fear is that he will be judged for all that he has done in his life. To combat this, he uses humor and laughter.

“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”

The story begins in a seedy bar in Amsterdam where you say "Mexico CITY". At first, Clamence is the perfect character, a respected Parisian, with courteous manners and goals. However, as the story progresses, various flaws of his come to the surface. By the end of the story, Clamence will have gone through many stages and we will see a very different person, someone who admits his mistakes and imperfections.

Clamence, although he is a person who loves himself and has been judged by those around him, what weighs him down is that he knows that he will never stop judging himself. And this is exactly what "The Fall" wants to show us, that at some point as humans we will realize that we were not perfect, we have thousands of imperfections and at some point we must forgive our sins because the energies of life have not managed to make us as perfect as we would ultimately like to be.

“Yes we’ve lost the light, the mornings, the holy innocence of the man who forgives himself.”

"The Fall" is an extremely philosophical story that does not aim to describe a sequence of events but to explore a specific idea. In this case, the story explores the themes of innocence, truth, and existentialism.

The greatest perhaps advantage is how Albert Camus has structured the writing of the book. Although the story is written from the perspective of the second person, it uses the first person present tense, resulting in the reader becoming one with the story and directly speaking with Jean Baptiste Clamence. The reader is thus not detached but finds himself engaging deeply and personally in every topic that concerns him.

"The Fall" teaches us that in an era when Social Media has flooded our lives and everyone knows better than anything to judge and control those around them. Ultimately, we will always be the ones who will not let ourselves move forward, we will reach the fall and in the end, we will judge ourselves...

Best Quotes:

--> "At the end of every freedom, there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you have a temperature, or you are grieving, or you love nobody."

--> Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when LIFE is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends!

--> We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

Unfortunately, when bad times come to you, everyone recognizes you.

We all come from the same fabric. But among all of us, I have an advantage over them: awareness, which gives me the right to speak.

Oh, dear friend, we are strange and wonderful beings. If we look a little into our past lives, there are numerous situations that make us amazed and excited.

Oh, these talented actors, these post-natal players, these distant people, and with all this, they have a profound impact.

I liked the stranger more. He had the courage to enter the depth of his being, to his thoughts, to his actions, to his moments, to his fall, to his moral fall, and what a beautiful book that fell.

We are all extraordinary cases.

The fifth star to conclude the novel.

*The fifteenth reading with IGRs.

We are all unique individuals with our own set of circumstances and experiences that make us extraordinary. In this novel, the fifth star serves as a significant conclusion, perhaps tying up loose ends and providing a sense of closure. The mention of the fifteenth reading with IGRs adds an interesting layer, suggesting that there is some sort of interaction or analysis taking place. It makes one wonder what insights or interpretations are being gained from these readings. Maybe IGRs stands for a particular group or method of literary analysis. Overall, this short passage leaves us with many questions and a sense of curiosity about the story and the role that these elements play within it.

You find yourself in a bustling subterranean bar in Amsterdam. The air is thick with the sounds of chatter and the clinking of glasses. You're attempting, yet without success, to catch the barman's eye. That's when a stranger approaches and offers his help.

Confident and friendly, he introduces himself as Jean-Baptiste Clamence. And then, he embarks on telling you his life story. You are the 'you' addressed throughout The Fall, a silent observer of Clamence's confession. He reveals how he was once a prosperous Parisian defence lawyer, a defender of the poor and oppressed, a good liberal, and a happy man with numerous friends and admirers. But that was before 'the fall'. Now, he lives among criminals, in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam with its concentric canals that resemble 'the circles of hell'. As a self-proclaimed 'judge-penitent', he spends his days confessing his sins to the strangers he meets in the seedy bars he frequents.

The Fall is a work that combines philosophical meditation, dramatic monologue, and authorial confession, all disguised as a novel. It's truly a technical masterpiece, and Clamence's monologue is maintained with great skill. Camus' breakdown of the fourth wall creates an initial sense of intimacy that eventually becomes uncomfortably claustrophobic. 'You' are involuntarily drawn into the novel and left hopelessly involved in the narrator's testimony. Clamence is the most alluring stranger 'you' have ever met in a sleazy bar: elegantly epigrammatic, sardonically witty, and beguilingly lyrical. He is not so much a man who has lost his innocence as one who has made the shocking discovery that he was guilty all along. He is both the confessor of his own sins and the accuser of all humanity. Is he unusually honest or utterly manipulative? A truth-teller or a sophist? 'You' be the judge.

Clamence 'is the talking voice that runs on' (as Stevie Smith said of her alter-ego Pompey Casmilus in Novel on Yellow Paper). He rattles around in your brain for ninety-odd pages, raising countless questions about our old acquaintance, the human condition. Are altruism and egotism the same? Do we like to judge others to avoid being judged ourselves? Are we all guilty? Camus leaves any possible answers up to 'you', the reader.