Camus' 'The Fall' And Putting Ideas Into Novels

* Albert Camus' 'The Fall' - how to insert ideas into novels. To be honest, Albert Camus' The Fall probably needs to be read twice. Something so simple turns out to be something quite tricky to grasp on one quick read. It's merely one side of several conversations with a new acquaintance, one voice who, though he occasionally answers an unmentioned comment or a question from this acquaintance, largely proceeds prophet-like to deliver the story of his 'fall' and then his message. The Fall is an archetype of an 'Ideas Novel', and is very very French as they used to be in the 1950s and 1960s. Lovely.

Ideas in novels. There are only a handful of ways you can get them in. Behaviour explained; entries in diaries; words coming out of mouths. Albert Camus' The Fall is this last one - words out of mouths - but done 'minimal'. About as minimalist as you can get. And minimalism in any field of creation carries its advantages and its risks. If it works, the product has a spare beauty about it. If it fails, the thing has the air of something simply bare. Luckily for some people The Fall is the former.

And this protagonist, who could be merely the town bore sitting in the corner of his local pub, is in fact articulate. If 'articulate' means finding the right words and putting them down concise. 'You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.'

* Perhaps The Fall is theatre, a one-man show, a talking-head? A man who sits in the corner and says what is wrong with your society. A man saying that, actively, you are all of you guilty of ugly behaviours, and passively, you are guilty of a neglect of other people's horrific predicaments. That those of you who believe in the by-and-large innocence of yourselves and those around you, are simply and clearly wrong, and he is 'against' you.

And then he offers his solution (perhaps not a very good one, but never mind). This solution is to be a Judge-Penitent, though perhaps Penitent-Judge would be more accurate for the sequence is in fact that way round. To repent, to confess, to as many people as you can find (sitting, as he is doing, in bars in Old Amsterdam perhaps) confessing, for more effect, by choosing features in yourself that you spot are there in the other. And then to gently let the Judge in you appear, to point out that 'this is what we are', to move from 'I' to 'We'. The portrait of your own self that was being held up, changes into a mirror where the other is forced to see himself - and you can then 'tell him off'.

But this solution to the predicament is not necessarily an endearing one. The protagonist has not changed his ways. Rather has he found the high ground first; he knows the gospel and you don't yet. And he's going to tell you all about it.