For as dark as The Fall is, I also think it is Camus’s funniest book. (And I think Camus is a funnier writer than most credit.)

Clamance is both a deadly serious character and something of a comic figure—as is the Underground Man. These books work because of that underlying comedy. Perhaps comedy in the Dantean sense.

The more I read The Fall, the more I am left with the feeling that Camus gestures at the great collapse of meaning, the shattering of the edifice of religious ontology, and shrugs. Meaning was never there in the great cathedrals, anyway.

It was always at the bridge. It is always at the small moments that present themselves again and again. That’s the kicker of the last line. It may be too late to rescue that woman, but we will always have another moment to choose.

Heureusement!