A lit professor of mine had a theory that Celine was doing satire on fascist propaganda when he wrote those pamphlets. I don't agree at all with the theory but it's out there.
Yeah, a lot of people thought that at first. But then he kept on it, never indicated it was satire, and met with Nazis/fascists regularly. He even escaped France with them, fearing for his death.
I think he was (1) crazy (2) anti-semetic (3) a pacifist who was making an argument that it isn’t worth a massive world war over the smaller genocide (I.e. many more people would die in WWII, which is probably correct, but discounts all of the other awful effects of allowing hitler to rage thru Europe)
Agreed. And if you read between the lines in "Journey" and especially "Installment Plan" he was already on a "subhuman" kick only it was about the entire human race at the time. As he grew older, more alcoholic and cantankerous he made the inevitable leap to full on antisemitism of the worst possible kind. I think that lit prof would be fired today for his theory but that was the 90s
Thanks for that Carver exchange which led me here. Journey and Installment plan have been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for my attention since 1980, there because of my thoroughly-Jewish friend’s influence and obsession w Celine. I’m not sure why I’ve held them at bay so long and am not certain I’m now sold, but I THINK I am. At least it seems I know which to start with. Have you read Claire Dederer’s Monster’s, a well-done look at her wrestling match with her morals and the beloved artists who tromp all over them?
Seems to be a real problem these days of publishers/readers not willing to separate a fiction writer from his/her/their protagonists/characters. In the past, this was so much easier…. some of our greatest writers may have been assholes as people but as long as they didn’t kill people—or rape people (like Trump I might add)—we honor their work
Journey is amazing. Listened to it while walking around a sketchy park in East Harlem during COVID. And later read an old, dog-eared paperback copy from some bookstore on the UWS of Manhattan. Unfortunately, the Overton Window was this way back in their time, up until really thinks changed in the tumultuous 1960s. Antisemitism, anti-Black racism, gender-discrimination: All sadly "normal" for a very long time. Too long. Thankfully things have changed. But we must always strive to understand artists within the context of their own time.
Ok, I think you just shifted my order of operations. journey has sat on my bookshelf since 1979, bit now I will take it w me when I head to New York in a little bit.
He didn't merely flee; he left with the last desperate Nazis, and wrote three novels about his collaborationist escape.
I think you should read some Proust in Lydia Davis' translation to see how zinging and musical his writing was. Celine was certainly a stylistic innovator in French, but not per se more modern than Proust.
First of all, its not true to say other writers would not exist without Celine. That is an over the top way to understand literature. The same things he was doing, other writers were also doing at the same time. The idea that one writer created a scene or innovation and that would not exist without that writer isn't real. Most people are not trying to throw Celine away. I sat in a fiction writing class with E.L. Doctorow where he taught Celine and never even mentioned the Jew-Hate. (Hating Jewish people ain't no science so I don't describe it like a science.) I mean, Roth said a lot of things, so I don't love you kinda tagging him to the end of this essay as if he has validated your opinion as opposed to just stating his own opinion in a particular time in a particular context, but fine, he said it. I will say this, Phillip Roth is a better writer than Celine. To me, people underplay his Jew Hate. They underplay the effect Celine has had on the development of Replacement Theory in France and Europe and now the USA, and how much blood he has on his hands. People find his romantic self-pity so compelling! Fine. But I will say every time, he has more blood on his hands than any major creative writer in European history. How great he must be to justify that! Also, I was arguing with others on this very platform about Celine before you even joined the platform, so I don't think he is being forgotten or anything like that. I am not into burning books. Read them, celebrate them, celebrate the authors, but also criticize them, shit on them, shit on the authors. Thats free speech. Read Hanna Arendt on Celine and then get back to me.
I could’ve been more specific here. I mean that Miller doesn’t exist in the way we know him without Céline. He might’ve become a great writer anyway, but the style we love was heavily influenced by the Frenchman. Tropic of Cancer was heavily revised after reading Journey. The same applies to the other writers I listed.
> They underplay the effect Celine has had on the development of Replacement Theory in France and Europe and now the USA, and how much blood he has on his hands.
What are you basing this off of? I didn't come across this in the biography I read of him. There were plenty of others spreading the same ideas, how are you tracking it to him? It seems difficult to do, like how do we know how much Kanye is responsible for anti-Semitism today?
> Read Hanna Arendt on Celine and then get back to me.
I just don’t like the whole idea of someone influencing a writer and then saying they wouldn’t have existed without them. Id prefer a more humble assertion like, he or a particular work was heavily influenced by Celine. But we are talking semantics to some degree at that point, though semantics mean a lot to writers. When you put your fiction out there and they say you wouldn’t exist without me, you’re not going to like that. But your fans won’t mind.
To me, Renaud Camus, was heavily influenced by Celine. A lot of his ideas and the transition of his thinking. My research on him is what led to my disgust for Celine. A writer I had previously thought was not my favorite but fine.
You like Ye? How you end up beefing with me and its becoming clearer and clearer to me that the more you understand me, then more you’re going to love me. SMH. Ye wants to be Jewish. Its pathetic. And if America was actively taken over by a Jew-Hating regime and he supported them, I would connect him to that blood and put it on him. Yes there were lot of other Jew-Hating writers back then, but none of them were Celine. He shamed all working class talented people with his insanity.
If you end the game insane, you can’t win it. To win the game, you gotta take your soul and mind and body to extremes but never over the brink. When Celine took his mind over the brink and it went to Jew-Hate, he lost a lot of his points on the board, to me. Reading Arendt will give you more insight into why I think of him that way.
i just shared my note to get that message out there but I would rather have any back and forth here. I am getting out of the notes engagement thing. Its a time suck for me. Id rather comment on publications since it at least gives you engagement on the post that will get other people to come here based on the algo and its not us debating in public for strangers who haven't read any of our work to look at and think they know something about either of us from the conversation, when they don't.
Why is there no audio to listen to any of your posts? You need at least the AI audio imbed if you aren't going to do the reading yourself.
Thanks, good tip
A lit professor of mine had a theory that Celine was doing satire on fascist propaganda when he wrote those pamphlets. I don't agree at all with the theory but it's out there.
Yeah, a lot of people thought that at first. But then he kept on it, never indicated it was satire, and met with Nazis/fascists regularly. He even escaped France with them, fearing for his death.
I think he was (1) crazy (2) anti-semetic (3) a pacifist who was making an argument that it isn’t worth a massive world war over the smaller genocide (I.e. many more people would die in WWII, which is probably correct, but discounts all of the other awful effects of allowing hitler to rage thru Europe)
Agreed. And if you read between the lines in "Journey" and especially "Installment Plan" he was already on a "subhuman" kick only it was about the entire human race at the time. As he grew older, more alcoholic and cantankerous he made the inevitable leap to full on antisemitism of the worst possible kind. I think that lit prof would be fired today for his theory but that was the 90s
100%. I was actually gonna credit him for saying that just bc it’d be so unacceptable today. But then I assumed it was a little bit ago
Thanks for that Carver exchange which led me here. Journey and Installment plan have been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for my attention since 1980, there because of my thoroughly-Jewish friend’s influence and obsession w Celine. I’m not sure why I’ve held them at bay so long and am not certain I’m now sold, but I THINK I am. At least it seems I know which to start with. Have you read Claire Dederer’s Monster’s, a well-done look at her wrestling match with her morals and the beloved artists who tromp all over them?
Seems to be a real problem these days of publishers/readers not willing to separate a fiction writer from his/her/their protagonists/characters. In the past, this was so much easier…. some of our greatest writers may have been assholes as people but as long as they didn’t kill people—or rape people (like Trump I might add)—we honor their work
Journey is amazing. Listened to it while walking around a sketchy park in East Harlem during COVID. And later read an old, dog-eared paperback copy from some bookstore on the UWS of Manhattan. Unfortunately, the Overton Window was this way back in their time, up until really thinks changed in the tumultuous 1960s. Antisemitism, anti-Black racism, gender-discrimination: All sadly "normal" for a very long time. Too long. Thankfully things have changed. But we must always strive to understand artists within the context of their own time.
Ok, I think you just shifted my order of operations. journey has sat on my bookshelf since 1979, bit now I will take it w me when I head to New York in a little bit.
Stopped reading when you decided to rewrite history. Free Palestine.
He didn't merely flee; he left with the last desperate Nazis, and wrote three novels about his collaborationist escape.
I think you should read some Proust in Lydia Davis' translation to see how zinging and musical his writing was. Celine was certainly a stylistic innovator in French, but not per se more modern than Proust.
First of all, its not true to say other writers would not exist without Celine. That is an over the top way to understand literature. The same things he was doing, other writers were also doing at the same time. The idea that one writer created a scene or innovation and that would not exist without that writer isn't real. Most people are not trying to throw Celine away. I sat in a fiction writing class with E.L. Doctorow where he taught Celine and never even mentioned the Jew-Hate. (Hating Jewish people ain't no science so I don't describe it like a science.) I mean, Roth said a lot of things, so I don't love you kinda tagging him to the end of this essay as if he has validated your opinion as opposed to just stating his own opinion in a particular time in a particular context, but fine, he said it. I will say this, Phillip Roth is a better writer than Celine. To me, people underplay his Jew Hate. They underplay the effect Celine has had on the development of Replacement Theory in France and Europe and now the USA, and how much blood he has on his hands. People find his romantic self-pity so compelling! Fine. But I will say every time, he has more blood on his hands than any major creative writer in European history. How great he must be to justify that! Also, I was arguing with others on this very platform about Celine before you even joined the platform, so I don't think he is being forgotten or anything like that. I am not into burning books. Read them, celebrate them, celebrate the authors, but also criticize them, shit on them, shit on the authors. Thats free speech. Read Hanna Arendt on Celine and then get back to me.
> other writers would not exist without Celine.
I could’ve been more specific here. I mean that Miller doesn’t exist in the way we know him without Céline. He might’ve become a great writer anyway, but the style we love was heavily influenced by the Frenchman. Tropic of Cancer was heavily revised after reading Journey. The same applies to the other writers I listed.
> They underplay the effect Celine has had on the development of Replacement Theory in France and Europe and now the USA, and how much blood he has on his hands.
What are you basing this off of? I didn't come across this in the biography I read of him. There were plenty of others spreading the same ideas, how are you tracking it to him? It seems difficult to do, like how do we know how much Kanye is responsible for anti-Semitism today?
> Read Hanna Arendt on Celine and then get back to me.
Will check this out.
I just don’t like the whole idea of someone influencing a writer and then saying they wouldn’t have existed without them. Id prefer a more humble assertion like, he or a particular work was heavily influenced by Celine. But we are talking semantics to some degree at that point, though semantics mean a lot to writers. When you put your fiction out there and they say you wouldn’t exist without me, you’re not going to like that. But your fans won’t mind.
To me, Renaud Camus, was heavily influenced by Celine. A lot of his ideas and the transition of his thinking. My research on him is what led to my disgust for Celine. A writer I had previously thought was not my favorite but fine.
You like Ye? How you end up beefing with me and its becoming clearer and clearer to me that the more you understand me, then more you’re going to love me. SMH. Ye wants to be Jewish. Its pathetic. And if America was actively taken over by a Jew-Hating regime and he supported them, I would connect him to that blood and put it on him. Yes there were lot of other Jew-Hating writers back then, but none of them were Celine. He shamed all working class talented people with his insanity.
If you end the game insane, you can’t win it. To win the game, you gotta take your soul and mind and body to extremes but never over the brink. When Celine took his mind over the brink and it went to Jew-Hate, he lost a lot of his points on the board, to me. Reading Arendt will give you more insight into why I think of him that way.
i just shared my note to get that message out there but I would rather have any back and forth here. I am getting out of the notes engagement thing. Its a time suck for me. Id rather comment on publications since it at least gives you engagement on the post that will get other people to come here based on the algo and its not us debating in public for strangers who haven't read any of our work to look at and think they know something about either of us from the conversation, when they don't.
1000%