Fall By Albert Camus

It’s good

Short and a great book for deepening your understanding of Camus

I like this book

Good Packing, good quality paper as this book deserves best.

Camus uses self-pity to try to expunge his devils, his past, his self-pity, by finding a vehicle in Clemence to allow him the space, to disperse them, and a location in Amsterdam. He finds in Amsterdam the concentric streets, which, like rings from a stone dropped in water, near the side of a pond, he can be submerged into his Mexico City, the lewd bar near the Jewish Quarter, and where he mulls on the history of the disappearance of the vast majority of the city’s Jewish population, almost as if he was grieving for them, as if he knew them. In Mexico City he has elevation to comfort him, so that he looks at his audience from above, admonishes them, confesses to them and draws them into his world. He captures the dampness, greyness and smell of the city in Winter realistically. He prefers the smells of Paris and the seine to the dead smell of canals. He is unsure about his feelings for the ladies in the Red Light district, and blames Dutch genever and their guiles for affording him him the means to imagine voluptuous romps, which he admits to not being very good at, unless a baser purpose, other than sex itself, makes his performance a virtuoso one. This very virtuosity itself is questionable and his dominance of a lady, admitting to a streak of near sadism, is really his way of retreating from the ultimate victory, which he does not wish to achieve, in the first place. Like a good actor, using himself as a willing audience, he praises his talent, for charitable acts and make sure that these little acts are performed, where they will be noticed. He admits to having a temper, in the incident with the motorbike and suffers a little because of his weaknesses at losing it, and the chiding from the onlooker. He also saves his life by not rescuing a woman in the Seine, which makes him feel superior, in that he has risen above a mere mortal, just as he wishes to be raised in the bed, to be on a higher plane. He is able to describe his heaven in Amsterdam, by a mere light snowfall, comparing the snow to feathers, borne by doves, which bring peace and forgiveness. His position of a Judge Penitent allows him the perfect theatre to perform his plays being, at the same time, a foil between the client and the judge, neither of whom he has respect fpr, in the greater order of things and, on the other hand, in a position to sympathise with his client, but promise nothing. He knows the tariffs for the crimes and does not hesitate, when he has to inform his client. When he has an audience in Mexico City, it leaves him somewhat drained, in case he has said too much. Somehow, he seems to have written, in much the same way, as those who look at it from the outside, such as Dylan and Cohen, in his opinions on Christianity and its importance, amongst the faithful. He seems slightly puzzled, yet not dismissing the actual ethos. His illness, at the end, is merely the curtain closing on a one-man play, highly melodramatic, befitting an itinerant Judge Penitent.