Though it lacks a voice-over, Mike McCubbins has created a beautiful and haunting short animation based on Albert Camus’ The Fall.

Camus’ story tells of a so-called “judge-penitent”, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who reflects upon his life to a stranger at a bar the Mexico City, in Amsterdam. As Clamence comments to his nameless companion:

“Have you noticed that Amsterdam’s concentric canals resemble the circles of hell? The middle-class hell, of course, peopled with bad dreams. When one comes from the outside, as one gradually goes through those circles, life — and hence its crimes — becomes denser, darker. Here, we are in the last circle.”

Clamence explains how he has had a fall form grace, is now in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam. He describes himself as a good man, giving to the poor, helping the blind across the street, and that he lived his life for others. This was, until one night, as he crossed over the Pont Royal returning home from his mistress, he noticed a woman close to the edge of the bridge. He walks on and then hears a scream, and a muted splash.

“It repeated several times, downstream; then it abruptly ceased. The silence that followed, as the night suddenly stood still, seemed interminable. I wanted to run and yet didn’t move an inch. I was trembling, I believe from cold and shock. I told myself that I had to be quick and felt an irresistible weakness steal over me. I have forgotten what I thought then. “Too late, too far…” or something of the sort. I was still listening as I stood motionless. Then, slowly, in the rain, I went away. I told no one.”

Haunted by his failure to save the woman, or tell anyone about it, Clamence’s life starts to unravel, until one day a woman’s laugh (or is it his own?) causes him to realize everything he has done has not been for others, but always for himself.

To find out who he is, Clamence decides to act out of character, as “no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures”:

“...jostling the blind on the street; and from the secret, unexpected joy this gave me I recognized how much a part of my soul loathed them; I planned to puncture the tyres of wheelchairs, to go and shout ‘lousy proletarian’ under the scaffoldings on which labourers were working, to smack infants in the subway. ... the very word ‘justice’ gave me strange fits of rage…”

Though Camus never thought of himself as an Existentialist (more of an Absurdist writing against Nihilism), many of his concerns stemmed from the same bourgeois preoccupations that inspired Sartre and Existentialism - guilt, alienation, regret, angst. This is limned at the end of the tale, when Clamence reveals his role as “judge-penitent” - in a world without God, we are all guilty of everything, and Clamence must, therefore, sit in permanent judgement over everyone.
 

 
I wonder if somewhere in Mark E. Smith’s attic there’s a beautiful painting of him as a Salford adonis?

Here is Manchester’s finest talking about music, art, this and that from the 1980s to 2010.
 

 
More from the mighty MES, after the jump…
 

 
This must be on some “100 Things To Do Before You Die” list - have a beer named after you. Something Mark E Smith can tick off, as The Fall’s legendary frontman has just had an Indian Pale Ale named after him.

Produced by Northern Brewing, an artisan brewery in Nantwich, Mark E. Smith IPA is currently only available in one bar in the UK, the Snooty Fox in Islington, London.

It was Snooty Fox’s owners Nicole Gale and Jonathan Tingle, who commissioned MES IPA for their “Hit the North Festival”– (also named after the Fall song – which is celebrating northern beer and music. As Nicole explained to the Manchester Evening News:

“Jonathan is a massive, massive Fall fan so we thought it was only right to name a beer after the great man. It was the most popular beer at the festival.”

The Snooty Fox sold their order of 72 pints in just two hours.

Mike Hill, director of Northern, said: “I had never heard of him to be honest. We prefer Northern Soul, which inspired the names of most of our beers.”

If you want a taste of Manchester’s famous son, then have your local put in an order for Mark E. Smith IPA.
 

 
Previously on DM

Mark E. Smith Fabric Doll

Mark E. Smith’s Guide to Writing

 
Odd Mark E. Smith Special Edition Fabric Doll by Flickr user MAINMIN. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear Mr. Smith is available for purchase.

Below The Fall’s “Dresden Dolls.”

 
(via Fuck Yeah The Fall)

 
It’s time Manchester did the decent thing and honored its most celebrated son. If their Merseyside rivals can honor John Lennon by renaming its international airport after the sarky mop top, then Manchester should do something similar and rename its bus station after Mark E. Smith.  But let’s not stop there - a local holiday should be adopted on his birthday, street parties held, and a statue erected in Broughton. Not much to ask for the man whose band The Fall have been essential listening over the past thirty-odd years.

Thirty odd years indeed, with Smith the only constant in The Fall’s ever-changing line-up through a long, difficult, but productive, and brilliant career. How the great Mancunian has survived the bitter fights, spiked drinks, broken bones and riots is proof of Smith’s creativity, ambition and touched-by-genius talents.

And let us not forget, Smith’s ability to be a thorn in the side of the condescending prissy-mouthed southern soft lad press, who’ve repeatedly written him off as a “piss-head,” failing to see that a piss-head could never produce such quality or quantity of work. Yes, let us rejoice, for we are alive in the days of Mark E. Smith.

This little gem is from 1983, when Smith gave his guide to writing - not the kind of shit you’ll get from those writing-by-numbers courses, but something far more interesting and entertaining.
 

 
Bonus clips of The Fall after the jump…
 

 
Because putting together the Phew/Aunt Sally post made me think of them and because I need a unicorn chaser after that cheesy thing I posted just now (ironically from the same time period as this), Here’s The Fall, live in Leeds, doing one of the best odes to speed that I know of, aside from this one or (duh!) this one. I drunk a jar of coffee and then I took some of these !

 
Alternate version after the jump…

 
While my Fall phase stopped completely with ‘88’s still-excellent I Am Kurious Oranj, Mark E. Smith and his rotating cast of band members have continued pumping out albums with almost Woody Allen-like consistency (28 albums, 33 years). 

In yesterday’s NYT article, Mr. Smith Shows His Staying Power, Ben Ratliff calls the new Fall album, Your Future Our Clutter, one of the band’s best.  He also attempts to zero in on just what it is that makes Smith such a fascinating, and yes, endearing, character.

Um, maybe it’s the crank factor?  The 53-year-old singer claims that Pavement, “didn’t have an original idea in their heads.”  He also thinks that Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore should “have his rock license revoked.” 

And while Smith may have written in his autobiography, Renegade, “The Fall are about the present, and that’s it,” what follows below is a considerable chunk of his past, Part I of the ‘05 BBC documentary, The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith (links to the other parts at the bottom).

 
The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith Part II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX

Bonus: Kurious Oranj, Live In Edinburgh