Bottum, whose interest in religious topics and culture is evidenced by his writing for First Things, is probing the religious underpinnings of New England life, as readers see immediately in the poem’s title, with its studied reference to both a New England autumn and the fall of humankind in Adam and Eve. According to the Bible, the fall of Adam brought sin and death into the world, and both are prominent in this short poem. Sin and death are symbolized in the red color of the September leaves, which brings the poet to think of “welcome slaughters” and the “blood of martyrs.” This section culminates in vengeful imagery: The leaves themselves, each a “burning tongue,” accuse us of our “wrongs.” According to Camus, the only valid choice in response to the Absurd is the third choice, to accept and embrace absurdity while continuing to live. According to Camus, life is better with no meaning because it is freeing. You are not obligated to live in a particular way. Major Works Close-up of the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus. Of course you might let someone else take The Fall for you, but from then on you would have to worship him. You would have to worship the guilty. You would have to worship the Judge-Penitent. But in this modern religion, to worship is to laugh at The Fallen. Jean-Baptiste, who fears being judged, is a judge himself both verbally and professionally. He deeply understands the hypocrisy of the situation, and commented cynically on this modern society around him: As the story goes, Meursault commits a crime and is then treated as an outcast. Its almost as if Camus wants the reader to dislike the main character, as he is depicted as being emotionless and detached. Camus writes in a very simple and easy to understand way, which is a trademark of his writing style.

And my personal reaction to Clamence’s monologue? Let me start with a quote from Carl Jung: “I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon.” Camus gives us a searing portrayal of a modern man who is the embodiment of spiritual poverty – morose, alienated, isolated, empty.

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In 1957, at 44 years old, Camus became the second-youngest person ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his “important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” Carroll, David. Albert Camus, the Algerian: Colonialism, Terrorism, Justice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Plays: Révolte dans les Asturies, pb. 1936 (with others); Caligula, pb. 1944 (wr. 1938-1939; English translation, 1948); Le Malentendu, pr., pb. 1944 (The Misunderstanding, 1948); L’État de siège, pr., pb. 1948 (State of Siege, 1958); Les Justes, pr. 1949 (The Just Assassins, 1958); Caligula, and Three Other Plays, 1958; Les Possédés, pr., pb. 1959 (adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevski’s novel Besy; The Possessed, 1960). The heart of the novel is the depiction of the various ways in which individuals react to the fear and isolation imposed by this sudden state of siege, in which the invading army is invisible. To convey the variety of responses to such an extreme and concentrated crisis in human affairs, Camus deliberately eschews the convenient device of the omniscient narrator, making the depiction of every event and scene an eyewitness account in some form: the spoken words of reports or dialogues, the written words of letters or private diaries, and, as the main device, the written record of the daily observations of the novel’s main character, Dr. Rieux. Whereas in The Stranger first-person narration is primarily a device of characterization, used to portray an alien figure’s disconcertingly remote and hollow personality, in The Plague it is a device of narrative realism, used to reduce devastatingly incomprehensible events to a human, hence believable, scale by portraying the way these events are seen by a representative group of ordinary citizens. Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger-- now one of the most widely read novels of this century-- in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.

In what amounts to a confession, Clamence tells of his success as a wealthy Parisian defense lawyer who was highly respected by his colleagues; his crisis, and his ultimate "fall" from grace, was meant to invoke, in secular terms, The Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden.

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The Fall” is divided into three sections, each named for an autumn month. The first section, September, begins with a powerful evocation of fall in New England, “New England comes to flower dying.” It is ironic that New England’s most colorful, attractive season is made not by the budding but the dying of leaves. From the first line, Bottum suggests an analogy to the life of Christian believers who by dying are born to immortal life. The first section continues with images of autumnal New England expressed most vividly in metaphors of fire, as “kindling trees” are set ablaze, each falling leaf “a spit of flame” to make “New England burning.” Set in Amsterdam, The Fall is narrated by Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a former Parisian lawyer. Through a series of conversations and monologues, Clamence recounts his life story and unfolds his deeply introspective and disturbing perspective on human nature.

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Besides his fiction and essays, Camus very actively produced plays in the theater (e.g., Caligula, 1944). Rereading the last novel Albert Camus published in his lifetime, I am left with two thoughts: first, that it’s still excellent, and second, that I’m glad I encountered it when I did, namely during adolescence. This necessary and continuous fall is the theme of the novel. It is one unforgiving, vertiginous descent. It is not a story of gradual discovery and ascent as in Sartre’s Nausea. In Nausea you see the picture that you should be painting of yourself. In The Fall you see the anti-thesis that you should use as your anti-model, as the one point which gives meaning to your picture by not being painted. The Fall is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. The last of Clamence's monologues takes place in his apartment in the (former) Jewish Quarter, and recounts more specifically the events which shaped his current outlook; in this regard his experiences during the Second World War are crucial. With the outbreak of war and the fall of France, Clamence considers joining the French Resistance, but decides that doing so would ultimately be futile. He explains,

The second choice, in Camus's view, is religion. The religious solution offers a source of meaning beyond the Absurd. However, Camus refers to this option as philosophical suicide since it does not involve reason. Camus claims this solution needs to be more convincing and even fraudulent. The Fall is a philosophical novel written by Albert Camus. Published in 1956, it is one of Camus' last major works before his untimely death in 1960. The novel presents a thought-provoking exploration of human existence, morality, and the consequences of our actions. An utterly fascinating book that might with half-truth be called a novel, or a monologue, or a character sketch, but which is largely a philosophical thesis, and inquiry- bristling with wit. "The Fall" is of course the fall of the angels, recorded satanically by Jean-Baptiste Clemence, a former Parts lawyer now following the self-invented vocation of judge- penitent in Amsterdam. He records his change from a most worthy defender of widows and orphans and other "noble" causes, and from a lover of the good things in life, to an associate of thieves, murderers and panderers in the dive where he now makes his headquarters, devoting himself to the conversion of others to his view of life. His progress is both fantastic and quite logical, both full of suspense and paradox. It does not constitute a novel, but rather a metaphysical search in a barely fictional form. It will have a purely intellectual appeal- its implications as well as its references and its analogies are recondite. But if in this case, Camus is the devil- his translator Justin O'Brien is a brilliant advocate. Remember the laughter we spoke of earlier, the one that unsettled him so much? It was laughter that made him think of judgment and those who pass it with sadistic glee. Admitting himself a sinner, he realizes laughter is his own way ‘ of silencing the laughter, of avoiding judgment personally.’ Laughter is his escape, and if we must imagine Sisyphus happy then perhaps we should also imagine him laughing. Maybe making lewd jokes about rolling his balls. No, don’t cheers me for that. ‘ Don’t wait for the Last Judgment,’ he says, ‘ it takes place every day’ and this is a true tragedy. Camus was against judgment as he often saw it as absurd, such as the way he wrote about it in Reflections on the Guillotine:

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By the time Jean-Baptiste’s confession is over, you should realize that in fact the Judge-penitent is you. The story was yours. It is time to begin your own confession. It is time to stop being Kierkegaard’s A, and to be the B. To polarize yourself. Time to take responsibility and stare into the abyss. Camus, Albert. (2004). The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays. Trans. Justin O'Brien. New York: Everyman's Library. ISBN 1-4000-4255-0 I completed my reading of the novel, a slow, careful reading as is deserving of Camus. The Fall is indeed a masterpiece of concision and insight into the plight of modern human experience.