Céline is one of those difficult writers. He is indisputably an innovator of French literature, with his writing style, the ellipses, the generous use of argot, and the dark misanthropic tone. The misanthropic tone is probably somehow connected to the antisemitism he expressed in his later writings.
The book is a classic of 20th century literature, and I regret not having come to it earlier. It is the story of a young medical student, Ferdinand Bardamu (carefully calqued from Céline’s own experiences as a med student) who decides to enlist in the army for the great war. He later deserts, as he is rather cowardly than dead. He instead goes to Africa and spends time in the colony of Fort-Gono. After a disappointing séjour he leaves for Detroit, where he works in a car plant making Ford model T’s. The last part of the book sees him return to France and practice medicine among the poor in the French town of Drancy. As such it is a reckoning with large topics like war, colonialism, capitalism, poverty.
I like the division of the book in travels to various places and their respective themes. The book itself has no chapters or real orientation points otherwise, it is all 500 pages of continuous text, which can be nauseating at times. Much has been said about Céline’s importing of street language to literature, and his uneasy connection to antisemitism is also fairly well-treaded ground. He remains a controversial figure, but leading French intellectuals like Alain Finkielkraut and Stéphane Zagdanski are fans of his work nonetheless. There is a youtube channel called “le petit Célinien” with endless materials on Céline and there seems to be a lot of things to say about this singular writer. I will end with a few quotes from the novel, that might give a flavour of the tone of the prose:
“The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.”
“An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That’s the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It’s dream time. ”
“There is something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don’t give a damn whether they’re getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don’t ever try to understand what we’re here for. They just don’t care. Americans or not, they sleep no matter what, they’re bloated mollusks, no sensibility, no trouble with their conscience.
“That is perhaps what we seek throughout life, that and nothing more, the greatest possible sorrow so as to become fully ourselves before dying.”
Kinship of all Species 