The Rise, The Fall and the Rise - Brix Smith-Start (2016)

I started listening to Turned Out a Punk, Damien Abraham's podcast, sometime this fall.  An entire post should be written about the podcast but suffice to say, Brix Smith was one of the first guests that I wanted to hear.  Her episode probably made me want to read this book.  I'm very glad that I did.  While it is not a perfect book and will not make the Best Books list, parts of it are so incredible that make it worthwhile.  I could not agree with Abraham that it was the best book I had read that year.  It was however, extremely entertaining and highly readable, at times.  As a huge fan of the Fall going back about 14 years, it was a totally amazing experience. On both the podcast, and in this book, Brix references being classmates with Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis at Bennington College in the early 80's.  She does not aim for the heights of The Goldfinch, but sometimes lapses into Ellis-styled prose.  That is, her life could be one of his novels, particularly with the ending in the fashion industry.  What she ends up doing is completely her own.  It may not generally be as artful, but I personally found that I could identify with Brix very closely.  We are all Brix Smith, or Brix Smith is all of us.

I re-listened to the episode today, and forgot the two other Bennington classmates she mentioned--Jonathan Lethem and Jill Eisenstadt.  Apart from that there is not much else to mention--you can listen to the podcast yourself.  I will note that Brix has one of most unique accents I have heard--British valley girl.  She was born in L.A. and spent her childhood there, and splitting time between there and Chicago in her teen years.  She now lives in England.

The stuff about Chicago is fantastic.  On the podcast, Brix mentions that her first concert was at this outdoor venue outside of Chicago, where people have picnics, Rav-en-ia, where she saw the Carpenters and Neil Sedaka on a double bill.  Having recently seen Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons with my family at Ravinia, I found it touching.

Most notably, there is the story of where and when she met Mark E. Smith:

"On Saturday 23 April 1983, Lisa and I paid the $6 ticket price and entered through the front doors of Cabaret Metro, 3730 North Clark Street." (144)

This was within a week of my birth, not very far away, so I have one more reason to feel connected to the band and this book.

Brix writes compelling stories through the first 75% of the book.  In truth I lost some interest after she left the Fall, and it was briefly exciting when she rejoined for a couple years in the mid-90's.  The opening of the book confused me--it's an account of her grandmother seemingly losing it behind the wheel and driving from the Disneyland parking lot through the main gates and into the park before plunging into the lagoon at the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride.  I thought it was real, but Brix later reveals it to be a dream.  I wonder how many other people have that reaction.  It seems like it could have happened, because so much of the rest of her life has been crazy that anything seems possible.  Her stories about her father are both hilarious and horrifying.  There are so many things I would excerpt from this book it's not even funny.  On that note, I should perhaps vault it into Best Books territory, but I think it is instructive to compare it to the other recent female rock musician memoirs that I've read.

If pressed, I have to say that it is better than both Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band and Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl.  Both are excellent books.  All three of these books are fantastic and totally worth reading, but Brix's is the heaviest.  To be sure, Kim Gordon's account of the dissolution of her relationship with her husband and bandmate, Thurston Moore, is the most powerful piece of writing in the bunch.  This is not to say that Carrie Brownstein's account of the dissolution of her romantic relationship with bandmate Corin Tucker is weak.  In fact, Brix's account of the dissolution of her relationship with husband and bandmate, Mark E. Smith, is the least evocative, in part due to the inscrutability of the man it involves.  Now I love Mark E. Smith but this book definitely sheds some light on him in an unflattering fashion.  It feels fair, though, because there are also moments of extreme vulnerability, humanity, and cuteness.

There are some parts of this book that are tough to read.  Yet even during the most atrocious moment, Brix offers some levity and resists victimization.  As I said, there are many quotable excerpts in this book, so I have to include one about Mark E. Smith that almost made me want to start crying:

"One night, a few months later, there was a knock at the front door of my apartment.  I opened the door to find Mark E. Smith standing there.  He was drunk and held a half-empty bottle of whiskey.  He begged me to let him in, and was in a state.  He told me he had made a mistake leaving me.  I let him in and tried to calm him down.  He asked if he could sleep over.  He was emotional.  I was torn.  Part of me was happy he'd come to his senses and realised what he'd lost in leaving me.  The other part of me was cold and shut down.  After having experienced the attentions and kindness of other men, I was no longer attracted to him.
But still, I felt connected to him.  That would never go away.  He had been my soulmate.  The songs we wrote together would forever be a testament to that.  I allowed him to sleep over, in my bed.  I made it patently clear he was not to touch me.  As he lay next to me, I felt sad.  The next morning, it would be years before I ever saw him again." (267-268)

The stories of the songs were surprising.  It always seems like the Fall are singing about conspiracies or manifestos but in truth are just slices of life.  For example, Brix writes about her sleeping problems and reliance on pills in "US 80s-90s":

"My mother's pills came in the prescription bottle with her name on it.  When we landed in Boston, immigration singled us out to be searched --this happened often, being in a rock group; when we came through carrying guitars and music gear we set off internal klaxons inside officials' heads; we practically had stickers on our foreheads saying 'Search me' -- and the customs officials were aggressively questioning us about the prescription pills not in our name.  This experience led us to write our version of a hip-hop track, 'US 80s-90s': 'Had a run-in with Boston immigration/to my name they had an aversion/Nervous droplets due to sleeping tablets....'  In the airport the signs would read, 'Welcome to the United States of America', but we would always get tormented by security and feel like we were entering a police state.  In the song Mark proclaims, 'I am the original white (big shot) rapper', and it's not hyperbole." (222)

She writes often about "Hotel Bloedel" and "LA."  She seems to consider these her best songs.  She wrote a lot of great songs with the band and I think most people consider the "Brix era" to be the second-greatest period in the Fall's catalog (behind the Hex Enduction Hour era).  Certainly she brought the band in a more accessible direction.  Other noteworthy song inspirations include "Carry Bag Man" (about how Mark E. Smith likes to carry around his stuff in plastic bags).  Actually, her causal dismissal of The Frenz Experiment (the last album she would record before re-joining the band as his ex-wife) is worth capture:

"'Carry Bag Man' is fine, and chugs along, but is a phoned-in effort from Mark, a song about how he likes to carry plastic bags.  'Get a Hotel' is just annoying.  'The Steak Place' is boring and conjures images of gross food, the kind of restaurant that might have photos of the food on their menu.  The most annoying song I ever had to play on was 'Oswald Defence Lawyer.'  I think it was the worst song we'd done since I'd joined the band.  It was interminable, and when we played it live I watched the audience switch off.  It makes me cringe today, just thinking about it.  I was expected to really belt it out, but it just sounds irritating and grating: 'Oswald Defense Lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain.'  It was cool to name-check Twain, though." (238-239)

Brix writes a fair amount about her post-Fall band, Adult Net, and I was dismayed not to be able to find anything on Spotify or Amazon Music.  I would definitely have listened to The Honey Tangle if I could.  Maybe Brix realizes that streaming services will net her approximately zero and that her fans will seek out old copies of the album.  Or likely it's the record label's fault.

I don't want to give away too many details about the book but can say briefly that Brix's parents divorced when she was young and her mother moved to Chicago and she moved around in fairly fancy places with her father in L.A.  There is more than a fair share of celebrity name-dropping in this book.  It's not always totally necessary, but if I was writing my memoir, I would totally do the same thing.  It's the tangents that usually end up being memorable, such as the story of her professional soccer player friend who soils himself on the field and fakes an injury, or the friend at her bachelorette party with a crazy party trick. 

She goes back from her father in L.A. to her mother in Chicago multiple times through her teen years.  She does not have kind things to say about Chicago, but her account of working at Marshall Field's in the Loop was especially charming (sometimes I like to reflect on the significance of being in the same place as another person in recorded history).  She meets Mark E. Smith at Smart Bar after seeing the Fall in concert at the Metro.  What happens is the definition of a whirlwind romance and is completely insane and showcases the true spontaneity of Brix.  She quickly decides to move to England, move in with Mark, and get married.  She becomes a member of the Fall and stays with them for another four years.  This will be the highlight for the majority of readers.  However, Brix's life outside the Fall is arguably more interesting.  For example, her section about being an aspiring-actress-waitress in L.A after being left by Mark and effectively kicked out of the band is especially compelling.  She meets Nigel, a classical violinist, who is apparently quite a sensation, and is led into a different world, seemingly a little more refined but no less debaucherous.  In fact, I'm sorry, but I have to give a snippet of her encounter with Courtney Love, who invites her to audition for Hole:

"....But as I went to sleep, I had a sixth sense that something was wrong.  A bad feeling.  Something was burning.  I got up, out of bed and rushed to Courtney's room and pushed open the door to the master bedroom.  In her room, she had a selection of candles and incense burning.  Two sticks of incense had fallen over and caught fire.  The carpet was aflame and I caught it just in time.  Had I been five minutes later I dread to think what would have happened.  I put out the fire by smothering it with a blanket and stamping on it.  Courtney was in bed, slumped over her computer.  I fleetingly clocked that she had been mid-conversation with Billy Corgan, of The Smashing Pumpkins.
She said, 'Get into bed, sleep on Kurt's side.'  So I did.  It was really weird, but I felt honoured to be asked to sleep there, in her bed, on his side.  Courtney was warm and kind.  I feel she's often misunderstood.  She is a complex person, as we all are.  At times she has been her own worst enemy, but when you get down to it there is kindness and warmth to her, that is not often talked about." (362)

She then proceeds to talk about how Courtney turned her onto Rohypnol, in one of the more outrageous habits detailed in the book.  Later on, she rejoins the Fall briefly, and then meets her current husband, who then opens a fashion store with her in London.  She also co-stars briefly in a reality series, Gok's Fashion Fix, which sounds like it would be amazing to see.  She has an amazing kitchen and is in love with her pugs.

That is pretty much the whole story, but Brix's mysticism is also worth noting.  She seems to have some sort of otherworldly presence.  One could easily write off her ramblings as hippie-ish, vaguely drugged out, but the realities she has known are so insane that I am inclined to believe her if she says she believes in ghosts.  The precognitive powers of Mark E. Smith are also referenced poignantly, in a story I had read before, about the origins of the song, "Disney's Dream Debased."  The story is that she had taken Mark E. Smith with her to Disneyland and they got in line for the Matterhorn and while waiting he said he didn't like the ride, that it was evil, and that he didn't want to go on it.  They rode it anyways and left.  A few minutes later, there was a commotion in the area, and Disneyland employees came out from hidden elevators and Disney characters tried to distract parkgoers' attention from the Matterhorn.  It came out that a woman was killed when she fell out of her car at the unloading zone onto the track, and the next car could not be stopped from dismembering her.  It's a horrifying story and it would be interesting to know what became of the incident legally, whether Disney has publicly acknowledged that it occurred.

There is another truly insane story about Disneyworld (Brix always goes to Disneyland, but goes to Disneyworld for the first time in her late 20's or early 30's) and how Mickey Mouse may or may not be trying to ask her on a date or hook up with her.  This story appears to be in there solely to detail the breakdown of Brix's mind at the time (it is a weirdly hallucinogenic chapter), but she later brings it full circle when she becomes one of the very few to get Mickey Mouse to appear at an event for her fashion store.  Her comment on the usual gender of the person wearing the Mickey Mouse costume is poignant. 

I could go on a lot longer and pick out more passages, but I think I've said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this.  It's a great book, but it occasionally feels like Brix is going through the motions, telling the story because she has to and not necessarily because she wants to.  The grammar is correct and proper, but the writing is not especially complex and definitely devolves into purple prose at times.  However, I would want any friend of mine to read it, regardless of whether they liked the Fall or not.  I think it would make a great movie--"Scenes from Brix" or something, like Moonlight and three different periods in her life.  Not everyone wants to sell the movie rights to their life, but really, you would do it if you could, wouldn't you?

The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent

Well finally, here we are at the review for the next Fall album. It was "officially released" in the UK on April 29, and nowhere is it being sold in the U.S. Thus, limewire. Will I buy the album when it comes out? Good question.

It's certainly worth the $15, but since I already have the tracks in my I-tunes, unless there's something extra that makes it worth the price, I'm not going to shell out for something I already have. Narnack Records and Castle Records should learn how to deal with MES if they want better record sales. Maybe MES doesn't want to appeal to American audiences (highly doubtful), but keeping the record unavailable in the States, but available via British import (with it usually being an "out of stock" item) or for free via illegal file-sharing, well, makes the question a bit easier. There is a lesson here for the record industry, but it's really irrelevant. The Fall are truly in their own class.

Imperial Wax Solvent, then, is a return to their string of successful albums like 2000's The Unutterable, 2004's The Real New Fall LP, and 2005's Fall Heads Roll. Some may argue with me about the merits of the final mention, and I can understand why production values may turn some off this album, but regardless, "Blindess" is on it, and "Pacifying Joint" continues to be played frequently on Fall sets, to say nothing of "What About Us?" 2007's Reformation Post TLC suffered from lesser production and seemingly half-written songs. Still, "Systematic Abuse" and "Reformation" to a certain extent were very good songs, and I still like "The Wright Stuff" and "Scenario" is an awesome song live. I think Reformation Post TLC could have been as good an album as any of those three if it had been more fully fleshed out. But perhaps "Insult Song," which pokes fun at the backing musicians at the time, three Americans from L.A. County, could symbolize that era--MES had respect for the Americans, they proved themselves worthy, but it was all sort of a joke to begin with (having been incited by the plantain-throwing incident which ended in the Fall Heads Roll lineup abandoning MES, and Narnack Records stepping in to find replacement musicians---INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH an event that a good friend of mine happened to work out administratively, strangely enough, dumb Narnack Records, Brooklyn hipsters, had no clue what to do with the Fall. You don't get the Fall signed to your record label and misunderstand how to market them.): The Darker My Love replacement scheme, however, worked out well in the end because everyone got along, and an album resulted from it--"the tape they were wasting..."

Some have already hailed Imperial Wax Solvent as the best album the Fall have done since 1982's Hex Enduction Hour. I would say that praise is, a bit inflated. For one thing, the Fall in 2008 aren't the same thing as the Fall in 1982. True, there are still really weird songs, but MES is not spewing the kind of verbosity on display in Grotesque, anymore, but his mentality is no less punk. Of course, punk is probably the wrong word for it at this point. How about "no less cantankerous" or "no less alcohol drenched" or "no less hubris-filled?" I feel cruel at that last one. MES is not hubristic. No one can attest to his career. There is no one else like him. Mick Jagger, one can draw comparisons to him. Bob Dylan, one can certainly draw comparisons to. Neil Young, perhaps, one can draw comparisons to. Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop, you could compare. But MES is younger than the bunch, more prolific than the bunch, more underground than the bunch, more lukewarmly-received than the bunch, and, unlike all the others, has maintained a consistent quality output with much shorter "weak" periods. It's fair to say the Fall and Sonic Youth are about equals in terms of prolificacy, quality, cultural importance, and influence. Imperial Wax Solvent is about as good as Rather Ripped, which is to say, it's surprising they got it so right.

IWS does not always get it right, but the first six tracks or so do, and to some minds that is enough to reason the buy the LP. Opener "Alton Towers" continues in the vein of weird opening Fall tracks like "Ride Away" or "Mansion"--songs that don't fit with the rest of the album, or enhance the mood of their surrounding pieces. It goes on for a while, and MES says something about "You look very different," and it ends, and "Wolf Kidult Man" starts and you remember why the Fall are the best band ever.

"Wolf Kidult Man" could easily be a single on the radio, but it is hard to say how close the Fall come to approximating the perfect 3 minute pop song. Their version of it is so twisted, I wonder if it really could be played on the radio today. "Blindess" was used in the Mitsubishi Outlander commercial to stupefying effect. Henry Rollins commented on it on his show on IFC, saying it was okay for bands to license their music, because it meant more people liking it (massive paraphrase). Well, I don't see the Fall's audience expanding rapidly because of a commercial now do I? I just feel like a dork when I listen to it. But that's not true--it's an awesome song anyways.

Regardless of whether or not "Wolf Kidult Man" could be a radio hit, "50 Year Old Man," the third track, is 12 minutes long, and that really says it all. It is, in a way, a bit of a sequel to "Hip Priest"--incredibly long, MES ostensibly talking about himself, talking about "imitating" in both--but also much more catchy than "Hip Priest," much louder, and much more structurally complex, with four separate "movements" or whatever you want to call them. It's an amazing song, with MES saying "I've got 3/4 Rock Hard On, but I'm too busy, to use it," "I go in a hotel, I go through a towel, I throw it down, and I piss in it," "I'm a 50 year old man, and I like it," "I'm inferior product man, at 2/3 the cost, and I'm proud of it." Inscrutable, or incredibly telling?

"I've Been Duped" keeps the energy going by having MES's wife take the vocals, and it is about as good a song as "The Wright Stuff," (except there's no line about "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!") and indeed is probably more catchy and radio-friendly than most other tracks remaining.

The Groundhogs' "Strangetown" is the requisite MES cover song, after the Move's "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" and Merle Haggard's "White Line Fever." Each of the three is awesome. "Strangetown," honestly, is probably the weakest of them. However, it's strangely optimistic/realistic delivery keeps it interesting enough until "Taurig."

"Taurig" is the requisite experimental MES track, along the lines of "Das Boot" or "Paintwork" or "Unutterable." But this is a really good experimental track. It's extremely repetitive (duh) and it almost sounds as if MES has been influenced in his own way from working with Mouse on Mars in Von Sudenfed. In general, this is a very good thing. The Fall would be relevant if anybody cared, or if they wanted anybody to care.

I can't really dismiss the rest of the album. "Can Can Summer," "Tommy Shooter," "Latch Key Kid," "Is This New," "Senior Twilight Stock Replacer" and "Exploding Chimney" are no worse than the first six tracks. They are just not as interesting. They're all basically pop songs, or the closest "generic" sound to what the Fall offer in the studio at the present moment.

So, this album may have some "filler" on it, but eh, it will still probably make my top 10 of 2008. Then again those spots are filling up quickly.

The Fall (La Chute) - Albert Camus

La Chute by Albert Camus was published in 1957. That is the same year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is eleven years after L'Etranger, nine years after La Peste, trois annees apres L'homme Revolte, et deux annees apres Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Camus est un ecrivain super. Mais, ma francais, c'est fou. Vocabulary is much easier to summon in English.

We must situate Camus in a context. He was 44 when he won the Nobel. He died three years later in a car crash, and I remember reading somewhere that a "lost" manuscript was discovered amongst the wreckage of the vehicle. Is there an element to absurd reasoning we can cull from his end? It is not worth it. His literature should suffice for clues. One tends to consider The Stranger, the first and most popular book by him, a very influential text in terms of its literary style, (while in fact Camus had been influenced by early 20th century American "noir" writers, e.g. James Cain, which is where Meursault's style of speaking comes from) when seeking the heart of Camus's famous perspective. However, this is not about that inarguably classic text, nor is it about the rather difficult to follow Rebel or Sisyphus, one of which I've read and the other of which I always give up after three pages after I tell myself that this time, I am going to get it.

The Fall certainly needs to be situated in a context. I read it about three years ago in Hilton Head, SC to celebrate my graduation my college and because I had just started listening to the band the Fall, who I heard had gotten their name from the novel. Not to mention the fact that they named one album Bend Sinister after a Vladimir Nabokov novel. They are a very literary band. Their singer is more of a writer than a musician. But when I read The Fall the first time, I didn't really understand it. I got it out of the public library in SC and it was packaged in a stark, black volume without any explanatory comments beyond the text itself. I read it, and was totally mystified by it. I had no idea what was going on. I just remember that the ending was really good. It's short. It's only 140 pages. It's comparable length to The Stranger, but there is nothing of that novel's story in it. Whatever story is contained in The Fall, I think, is largely incidental.

This time I saw it and it was the regular Vintage International edition and I decided to give it another try because I've listened to significantly higher amounts of the Fall since then, and I am in a more solid position in life (though that statement is something of a joke as well!), able to take things slowly and consider the author's purpose more clearly. There was a lot of help this time.

First of all, there is the epigraph from Lermontov, in which Camus more or less defines the entire novel. I will quote the epigraph for your synopsis pleasures:

"Some were dreadfully insulted, and quite seriously, to have held up as a model such an immoral character as A Hero of Our Time; others shrewdly noticed that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances....A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest expression."

One could say one dodges some individual bullets when they take up the task of taking humanity to task on their inexpiable guilt. However it is not fair to claim that, as Camus's method leaves some ambiguities up to the reader. There were many moments when I thought maybe Camus was seriously just talking about himself, because the main character (I will get to this in a moment) may be a little bit shady, but it is such a clear picture of a person's judgmental faculties that I do not think it can help but be somewhat personal for Camus. I don't think he ever saw the woman on the quay in Paris, or heard the laughter behind him, or even set up shop in Amsterdam, but I do think his pronouncements about the whole of humanity, about the instincts in every human being, ring true enough to be an individual opinion, and not some survey of past institutional transgressions. Yes, there are great parts, as when he describes the spitting chamber as being an invention of man, not God, or when he nonchalantly makes a reference to the Holocaust, "I was interned near Tripoli in a camp where we suffered from thirst and destitution more than from brutality. I'll not describe it to you. We children of the mid-century don't need a diagram to imagine such places. A hundred and fifty years ago, people became sentimental about lakes and forests. Today we have the lyricism of the prison cell." (123-124)

We must be very conscious of Camus's first words in the novel, so famous are the first words in The Stranger (need I repeat them or do I run the risk of talking down to my audience? As yourselves: Do you prefer the colloquial or the formal--Maman, ou ma mere?). In La Chute, it is "May I, monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?" (3) Given the context of the situation, this is one of the best opening lines in all of literature, too. I long to go to a bar alone and walk up to someone and say, "May I, M. or Mme., offer my services without running the risk of intruding?" It is much better than saying, "Do you mind if I sit here?" Of course, any normal person in 2008 would be like, "What?" They wouldn't be able to hear over the din of the music blasted for what purpose I know not, maybe to hide the fact that nobody in bars is capable of serious conversation beyond, eye contact, drink-buying, being impressive, and all those other things I hate to think about in connection with "going out to the bars." No, I'd much rather go to Mexico City, the bar where most of The Fall takes place.

Mexico City is in Amsterdam, one confusing instance of nomenclature that I am unable to deconstruct (and my old adviser used to always tell me, "Deconstructionism is dead," so maybe I won't try). And the man who utters the opening line, is the man who will utter every line in the book. Jean-Baptiste Clamence is his name, and he talks to some unknown character, which in the end the reader can only take to be himself, despite the fact that we are not generally in a bar in Amsterdam when we are reading The Fall. Thus, the structure of this novel is one of its most significant elements. It is delivered in one fell swoop monologue, but unlike any other first-person novel before it. The "you" being addressed sometimes says things that are not printed, and Clamence will respond to that action so you can fill in the blank yourself with what happened, but it retains the air of mystery as most all of the action of the novel is enshrouded by Clamence's duplicity.

You cannot be sure if he is telling the truth, and you cannot be sure if he is lying, and this is why The Fall is one of the more hidden gems in the recent history of Western Literature: the conceit mimics reality. Do you trust your friends? What about someone you meet in a bar and hangs on you for the next four days---but it even appears that you enjoy Clamence's company! Indeed, at the end of the novel, you even go to Clamence's house and have your final discussion with him while he is in bed! You go out of your way for him! But the mystery of Clamence, and why he says what he does, and why he feels the need to say all this, this is the closest thing you can find to "plot" in the novel. It may not even be called a novel! It might be more accurately described as a philosophical essay. I believe at heart it is interested in the question of whether or not a person can admit their own guilt in a situation. When do people talk about the bad things they've done in their past? Never! No one does that, except me. Perhaps that is why I like this novel. And Clamence does not so much talk about the bad things he's done in his past as he makes excuses for all of his bad behavior, most especially his attitude towards women. But then, you can never be sure if he is just saying something for effect, or if he is actually telling the truth. His story about being named the "pope" of the prison camp seems a tad absurd in the context of the story he tells about it, but the story of the woman jumping into the Seine to her death does ring true, as does the mysterious laughter that unnerved him. But the duplicity in the novel, while it is not far from authentic experience, also lends an element of frustration to it. Clamence sums it up himself near the end when he says, "You see, a person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer having nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden. I'll let you choose the pigeonhole that suits me." (119)

So you can never be sure, or rather, the novel can be read two different ways, but will inevitably read the third, and probably the only way. Regardless, the text is a treasure. Camus could barely have tried to write a more "punk rock" novel than The Fall while receiving the Nobel the same year. And it is not lacking in the profundity of his other work. Finally, before I wrap things up, it is worth noting Clamence's profession, which also serves as the "plot" of the novel. He is a judge-penitent. The second chapter opens up with, "What is a judge-penitent? Ah, I intrigued you with that business." So the reader anticipates finding out what a judge-penitent actually does and the answer may be less surprising than they realize. However, Clamence used to be a lawyer, and he mostly talks about his life outside that profession throughout the work. One other thing I want to do in bars after reading this: when people ask me, "what do you do?", I want to tell them, "I'm a judge-penitent." And when they say, "What's a judge-penitent?" I will try to explain myself appropriately.

Finally, why would the Fall name their group after this work? This is the question I sought to answer the first time reading it, when I was a Fall amateur and only had Bend Sinister, A World Bewitched (collection of 90's material) and This Nation's Saving Grace. Now I have like fifteen or twenty more albums than that and am a Fall fanatic.

It is not a coincidence that this book is reviewed on the day that Imperial Wax Solvent is released. This review is a dedication to that band and their singer. But really, why would MES name his group after the book? Well, for one thing I didn't realize, it was published the same year he was born. (Thus I should name my group The Language Perverts, but it doesn't quite have the same ring to it now does it?) The conceit of the book though is not far off from the conceit of their music. Their music is not necessarily accessible, but still catchy most of the time. Same goes for the book--it's really weird, but it's written in relatively simple language, betraying the complexity of its total meaning. Does MES mimic Clamence, in that the book is one long first person screed and the Fall's music sometimes looks like one person's long 30 year screed? Yes, MES is interested in taking the piss out of hypocrites, and The Fall can more or less be seen as a treastise on human hypocrisy. MES obviously has a far wider range of subject matter, but the foundations of his early artistic r'aison d'etre (on display through, say, Hex Enduction Hour) may have their seeds in this work by Camus. Regardless of whether you like that band, or Camus, The Fall is an interesting book to check out, but a difficult one to write about, and probably a hard one to talk about, but you cannot deny that it is perfect company for a barfly. And if you ever find yourself at a bar in Amsterdam by yourself, this is inevitably the situation you want to imagine yourself in.