La Chute & honesty

I really enjoyed La Chute, both in the content and the style in which it was written. I liked the focus on one character in depth as opposed to works like L'Etat where it seems like you get a more shallow overview of a character's mindset - by reading everything from Clamence's point of view you can look not only at what he says but how he chooses to say it, as well as Camus's potential influence/autobiographical tone as Gareth mentioned, which I think is quite interesting. I especially liked the sort of issues Camus/Clamence was bringing up (is charity selfish? etc.) which were quite different from some of the more repetitive themes he addresses.

As Catherine was saying, I think I could really relate to the honesty and complexity of the character, the conflicts when Clamence was accepting how he wanted others to see him/to appear, and the rationale behind his actions in actuality, the difficulty in doing this etc. It was also nice to have a character who considered his morality as opposed to many of Camus's other characters who don't seem to do that (e.g. Martha) to the same extent, and where the reader is encouraged to make their own judgements rather than hear the character's. I liked the honesty of Clamence and the blunt tone at times, in lines such as (p55) "Je vivais donc sans autre continuite que celle, au jour le jour, du moi-moi-moi. Au jour le jour les femmes, au jour le jour la vertu ou le vice, au jour le jour, comme les chiens, mais tous les jours, moi-meme, solide au poste." I also thought a lot of the language (as in the above sentence, for example), was beautifully written and quite poetic, as in some of the more sensual passages in Noces (my favourite!). It felt this gave the language a sort of rhythm and pace that made La Chute quite compelling.