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Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French novelist, essayist, and physician Louis-Ferdinand-Auguste Destouches, who was born on this day in 1894. Céline is one of the giants of 20th-century literature. And, like Ezra Pound and so many other great writers of the last century, he was an open and unapologetic racial nationalist. For more on Céline, see the following works on this website:
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, “Céline on Journey to the End of the Night”
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, “Tempest in a Teapot: Céline on Sartre”
- Robert Brasillach, “Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night”
- Robert Brasillach, “Céline’s Trifles for a Massacre”
- François Gardet, Preface to Céline’s The School for Cadavers
- François Gardet, Introduction to Céline’s Trifles for a Massacre
- Greg Johnson, “Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Trifles for a Massacre”
- Margot Metroland, “The Enduring Reputation of Louis-Ferdinand Céline”
- Tomislav Sunić, “Louis-Ferdinand Céline—An Anarcho-Nationalist”
- Karlheinz Weißman, “Right-Wing Anarchism” (Czech translation here)
- Leo Yankevich, “Céline”
The best online resource about Céline is Le Petit Célinien, http://lepetitcelinien.blogspot.com/
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3 Comments
“Journey to the End of the Night” is one of my favorite novels of all time. There are so many treasures in this book. He presents a very bleak depiction of human nature. But he tells it in such a way that it makes you laugh in the face of it. I would suggest that anyone who likes Celine also check out some of Tom Wolfe’s novels.
My copy of Into the Night arrived yesterday…
Nobody told me how long the novel was. I assumed somebody would remark on that. It seemed like somebody writing with his intensity would have wrote something a little more brief. How can one sustain such a ferocity for so many pages?!
I’m pissed.
Just start reading.