Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

The Fall by Albert Camus is our New School Classic group read for October 2021.

This is the SPOILER thread.

Because of when my hold came in, I've actually already listened to this. I loved it and I've already added other Camus works to my list. My library only had an audiobook available online but I wish I'd just bought it on my Kindle so I could mark it all up. I'll definitely have to read it again.

This was a true classic, a marvellous statement of a point of view I don’t share but is entirely credible, particularly in the post WW2 era.

You can read this free online. You can only check it out one hour at a time. There was no way I could finish it in one hour, but it is short enough that the interruptions didn't ruin it.

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12308...

John Dishwasher - Thanks for pointing that out. Open Library is a great resource. I’ve used it for several hard to find books.

I was really struck by how condemnatory the book is of human behavior throughout, but then how at the end Camus really turns on a dime and gives us an affirmation, saying it’s okay for us to forgive ourselves for our loathsomeness, and encouraging us to do so. I give this idea much fuller treatment in my review, but this is basically how I read the book. There is so much insightful commentary here on human behavior, however, that there are a lot of different angles from which to approach this text.

I loved your review, John! You summed it up very beautifully.

It's amazing how much insight Camus was able to pack into such a short book.

I just started and enjoying the soliloquy style of writing.

I read this book in the Summer of 2018. I wanted to read something by Camus, because I had not read him yet. I gave it 3 stars. I remember being somewhat shocked by the "fallen" character's life as an attorney at his Zenith so to speak. That casual disregard for others while putting on a caring facade was scary. Still something about that rang true. I imagine there are rich and powerful people like that. What I thought was interesting was that he walked away from that life of power.

I gave it three stars because it was so very dense. I think I found myself wishing it were over about midway through. Camus is brilliant and a wonderful writer. He is very deep. His symbolism is beautiful. Perhaps I am not that deep, LOL.

John_Dishwasher wrote: "I was really struck by how condemnatory the book is of human behavior throughout, but then how at the end Camus really turns on a dime and gives us an affirmation, saying it’s okay for us to forgiv..."

I also appreciate what you said. I do remember being dragged down emotionally while reading this book, but what can we expect from a book with the title The Fall? I love that you found hope at the end. I think I was too exhausted to respond to the ending.

Thank you, Natalie and Lynn. :)

I finished reading this a couple of days ago. It was one of the most thought-provoking books I've read. I was at a loss for words after reading it and had to wait few days to gather up my thoughts for the review. That was the effect it had on me.

I am reading Chapter 1. The passages that stand out are passages that often remind me of the 2003 movie Chicago about the rhetoric-satire of lady murderers and their fancy smancy lawyer with rhetoric-satire written up and submitted by flamboyant newspaper journalist. Two lady murderers highlighted are played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zelweeger, the lawyer by Richard Gere, the journalist by Christine Brananski.

Why?

Much of the same song and dance about self-importance by another set of murderers and their lawyer.

Just finished this one today. I had a hard time getting into this one. The narrator is too distant and alienates the reader in my opinion. I get that there is quite a bit more going on under the surface so to speak and a deep, philosophical quality, but I was reading Hunger alongside this one and enjoyed it much more. This was, admittedly, my first Camus and maybe if I read this one again I would pick up on more elements within the narration. But, I think Camus is best handled in very small doses, so it would be awhile before I pick up again.

I just wanted to thank the person that nominated this. I had read this years ago and appreciated it not one bit, being too young for the experience. This has been one of my favorite reads with the group and a marvelous selection for helping to understand Camus and the more serious aspects of absurdity. I think it is one of the better examples of fiction designed as an expression or illustration of philosophy and it was just so well written.

Like that Sam: the more serious aspects of absurdity.

I waited a while--2 or 3 weeks--to write my review, but now I want to rewrite it now that Sam has pointed out, reminded me, that there are different levels of absurdity.

When reading with another classics group earlier this year, we read The Stranger from which I quickly picked out the serious aspects of absurdity. I remembered that the writer, the narrator, and all the adults in that text had lived with the absurdity of President Pétain who led France and then led France into the arms of the Nazis.

Maybe that serious absurdity felt less connected to this story, yet surely the literary absurdity mirrors the political and the literary mirrors the political.

I've now finished it and I do believe I'm a bit disappointed. My very favourite book is "The Stranger". I've read it twice and it's about time to read it a third time. I was so overwhelmed by it when I read it the first time almost thirty years ago.
I've read "The Plague" and I like that very much but not as much as "The Stranger".
I had high expectations when it came to this one. But I feel so disgusted by the man talking, and of course we are meant to be, that I can't appreciate the book. So the question is why I love "The Stranger" so much, he is not a sympathetic person either? I have to reread it soon so I can compare them to myself and discover why they affect me with such conflicting feelings.

For my money this is one of the great books of the 20th century, as thin as it is. Maybe because it is as thin as it is. To me this book is much more readable then his essays like Myth of Sisyphus, and the characters are more accessible than, for instance, the Stranger. To me, it’s his best work… Even though he got to Nobel for the Plague.

It alternates between chatting in a bar and little epigrams that you would expect from a narrator who is a lawyer. Can you imagine hearing this in conversation? “A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.” Or how about this praise for Nazi Germans: “When one has no character one has to apply a method.” …A method which did wonders to vacuum clean 75,000 Jews from Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter.

The gin assisted conversation carries on at such a shallow level that you don’t notice you are led to judge not just the crimes of mid century Europe (so fresh then) but also the lack of character in each of us - now as then - that permits us to go about our business In the midst of a single suicide… or the suicide of an entire culture

I’ve been wondering for years if Clemence Has any connection to the ancient mariner encourages poem? Does he sit in that bar waiting for the next thoughtless “wedding guest” in need of the lessons of the mariner’s / lawyer’thiughtles past sins?bar waiting for the next thought was wedding guest

Sorry that last para got trashed on my phone… just ignore it since I don’t see how to delete it yet. Bottom line, I am crazy about this book!

Good comments all.

I also thought this was a top choice and was very happy that it prompted me to read a work I had neglected until now.

I thought it was a brilliant exposition of an absurdist and nihilistic position and well-reflected the world of postwar France and the shame of collaboration.

What is lacking is any sense of a way out. Are all communities, ideologies, ways of life corrupt and false? Are all relationships dishonest and exploitative?

Just started reading it... 20 pages in...

Loving it , so far...
So insightful and observational.. and I am also liking the tone of it .. mildly self mocking or self mocking by the lawyer narrating it..

Like his The Stranger and The Plague .. so many things going on.. layers ...

The tone feels a little distant... detached maybe..
Like observing from above or afar.. or narrating the story of same but different person...