People are two-faced. If you haven’t figured that out by now you haven’t made much intellectual progress in life. Albert Camus wrote The Fall to illustrate this point. Not only does he portray the inner and outer life of a modern man but he also wants you to realize that you are two-faced as well. This short novel is a product of its time and seems dated today.
The narrator is Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a lawyer who defends criminals who committed their acts of crime because of unfavorable circumstances. He helps blind people cross the street, picks up objects dropped by frail old ladies, and treats everybody with kindness and respect. His public persona is that of a good-natured saint. He is also a womanizer, a mind-fucker, a manipulator, and he acts with indifference when he walks by a woman on a bridge and realizes she has fallen into the canal after he goes by. In his inner life he thinks of himself as an ubermensch, a man who needs no morality because he is superior to everybody else. Just like Bill Cosby, his public persona and the reality of his inner mind do not match.
The story is told first-person by Clamence. He addresses you, the reader, as if you are physically there in his presence. His life story is a confession in which he tells all his dirty secrets. As a reader you are supposed to be horrified by him and you are also supposed to see yourself in him because, most likely, you have done some of the things he has done and thought some of the same things he has thought.
Well, yes but so what? This was written after Freud’s psychoanalysis and Erving Goffman’s social action theory were introduced to Western intellectuals. This theme of the multi-faceted individual had even been explored in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There was nothing especially ground-breaking or revolutionary about this book. It might have been when it was first published but now it mostly seems like a retelling of an old tale.
I have very little to say about The Fall. The writing is good but I’m too old to appreciate it. If you’ve lived long enough and gone through periods of self-analysis and deep introspection, this book will seem like what it really is: a good book for a young college student starting on their own intellectual or literary journey.
Camus, Albert. The Fall. Vintage Books, New York: 1956.
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