A Pilgrim’s Digression

The past two or three weeks, I’ve been reading The Fall by Albert Camus. The book is quite short, not even 150 pages, so it makes ideal reading for the half hour or so I spend commuting on the train, weekday mornings. It has also served to remind me what I once appreciated about this author, whose novel The Stranger I read, probably while I was still in high school: brevity, wit, and a pungent ability to speak painful truth.

I do not mean this post to be a critical appraisal of The Fall, however. Such a thing is beyond me, at this stage in life. I merely mean to give an overview of the book and express what I appreciate about it.

The book is, on the surface, about two men who meet in a bar in Amsterdam. The story, such as there is one, is told in first person monologue by one of the men, Clamence.

Whether or not Camus intended it, the name Clamence suggests to me the French American word, “commence,” and indeed I do think we are supposed to view Clamence as a sort of prototypical human. In that regard, Camus portrays us all as pretty vile creatures. But that should come as no surprise, given Camus’ other works.

Clamence is a judge, or “judge penitent” as he calls himself, presumably meaning that he feels some regret about his status as a judge of men. “Judge” does not seem to indicate the same thing it means to Americans, however; the book suggests that in France, it must mean something closer to what we would call a “defense lawyer.”

Yet though his social position is quite high, and he is viewed by other people as the moral arbiter his profession would suggest, in reality his life is despicable. The central event in the novel gives just a taste of the man’s selfishness: while walking along the quais of Paris one evening, he passes a young woman standing on a bridge and looking down at the water. He passes by, and as he does so, he hears a splash and a scream behind him. He turns, considers diving in after her, but decides the water would be too cold. And so he walks on.

The scene reverberates as if the water of the Seine were still rippling outward from the young woman’s suicide, until the very end of the novel. In the final sentences, Clamence remarks that sometimes he wishes for another chance to save her:

A second time, eh, what a risky suggestion! Just suppose…that we should be taken literally? We’d have to go through with it. Brr…! The water’s so cold! But let’s not worry! It’s too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!

Inasmuch as the title both represents the girl falling into the river, and the Fall (of Man), we are all Clamence, choosing selfishness over selflessness, even when selflessness would cost us little (a cold, wet dip in the river), but save another’s life. The odd “fortunately!” with which the novel ends suggests to me, perhaps incorrectly (but certainly ironically), an old idea that sticks in my head from my reading of John Milton long ago: the concept of “the fortunate fall.” The fall of Man was “fortunate” because it brought about the greater good of his salvation.

In the case of Clamence, the concept is turned on its head. What possible greater good could come from Clamence NOT saving the girl’s life? The only possible answer is that he stands as an “exemplar” as he says, a negative portrait of humankind for us to avoid. However, I don’t think Camus is quite so patronizing as to suggest that his character is to be viewed as a counter-instructional model.

But as I said, this is not a critical appraisal of the novel. Suffice it to say that Clamence lives in a state of debauchery, vice, and crime, as do many of his clients, yet he gives the impression of uprightness. He comments that he “never accepted a sou” for the defense of a poor person. It was that sense of being better than, what he calls “being above” people that most defines his character. He was charitable not for charity’s sake, but for the way it increased his virtue in his own eyes and in the opinion of onlookers.

Although he might disclaim it, he clearly feels overwhelming guilt, but not being a believer he has no way to absolve himself of his sins. That lack of hope for salvation is the quintessential existentialist predicament.

The novel is ripe with witty aphorisms and anecdotes. Indeed sometimes it reads almost as a collection of such bright baubles, rather than as a novel with a tightly woven plot. Allow me to share just a few of my favorites.

A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers. [6]

To bring that up to date for modern readers, I’d change it to “he fornicated and read the blogs.” Another quote:

If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent, cher monsieur. [41]

And another, one that I do not believe we are supposed to take as “truth,” but does illustrate the character of Clamence:

Every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air. Commanding is breathing–you agree with me?…The lowest man in the social scale still has his wife or his child. If he’s unmarried, a dog. The essential thing, after all, is being able to get angry with someone who has no right to talk back.

And an example of an anecdote which does have the painful ring of truth about it.

“You’ll pay for this!” a daughter said to her father who had prevented her from marrying a too well groomed suitor. And she killed herself. But the father paid for nothing. He loved fly-casting. Three Sundays later he went back to the river—to forget, as he said. He was right; he forgot.

This compact, pithy little book is filled with examples such as I quoted above. It’s well worth a read, and I daresay someone with the ability to read faster than myself should make short work of it in an hour or two. It begs re-reading, though, which is sort of what I have been doing here, in this blog post. Now, I need to fornicate and read my blogs.