[Paris, February 1956].
1 p. on 1 leaf (135 x 210 mm) on NRF letterhead paper, written in blue ink.
As La Chute was about to appear, Camus asked his friends the Blochs to take on “the chore” of reading “these 120 pages.”
“I hesitate and shrink back a little from them, you will see why. (…) There may be mistakes, but that is not what matters. It is the very principle of this portrait of the contemporary man that is at stake. In any case, I am glad to have done it. I truly believed for a year that I would no longer be capable of anything.”
This letter would be followed by another, dated 31 March 1959, in which Camus again returned to the question of the forthcoming title. At this point, he suggests “Un héros de notre temps (already taken). Le Jugement dernier? Le bon apôtre?” before proposing Le Cri, at the end of March, ultimately settling on La Chute.
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