This post prompted me to re-read Orwell’s wonderful 1940 essay, “Inside the Whale”, ostensibly a review of “Tropic of Cancer” but mostly a reflection on the political culture of inter-war literary intellectuals (mainly English, but the pre-fascist Celine of “Journey to the End of the Night” is mentioned). With typos, here’s the essay, if anybody’s interested in this kind of contextualization of John’s piece: https://orwell.ru/library/essays/whale/english/e_itw
Just read Celine's late career trilogy (North, Castle to Castle, Rigadoon) and he comes off as less a diehard true believer than a sniveling lackey, a groupie type who'd say or do anything to cozy up to whoever happened to be in power. Though I guess that could be said of most fascists ...
William Burroughs' at times' touting for the total elimination of women comes to mind: he stayed a respected and in some circles worshipped author, and Laurie Anderson seemed to have no problem with him. It is not apparent that he thought anything of the kind before killing his wife or until well after.
If I remember, Deleuze and Guattari, in their Kafka book, hold up Céline and especially the way he uses language as actually a subversive example of "minoritarian" literature, and therefore anti-fascist. I think there might be something to that, regardless of his own actual politics?
For what it's worth, I seem to remember them distinguishing between the early stuff and the less linguistically inventive later stuff. I definitely hear you here, but I do think that argument, tendentious bullshit though it may be, does account at least a little for Celine's successful marketing in America in the 70s as a Genet-like writer pitched somewhere between the Beats and the Existentialists. I don't have my Celine on hand, but weren't those published on City Lights, or New Directions, or Grove or something?
"His passionate expression of hatred can be read as the consequence of matching his aesthetic commitments to brutality and disgust with a powerful current of public sentiment."
This post prompted me to re-read Orwell’s wonderful 1940 essay, “Inside the Whale”, ostensibly a review of “Tropic of Cancer” but mostly a reflection on the political culture of inter-war literary intellectuals (mainly English, but the pre-fascist Celine of “Journey to the End of the Night” is mentioned). With typos, here’s the essay, if anybody’s interested in this kind of contextualization of John’s piece: https://orwell.ru/library/essays/whale/english/e_itw
Just read Celine's late career trilogy (North, Castle to Castle, Rigadoon) and he comes off as less a diehard true believer than a sniveling lackey, a groupie type who'd say or do anything to cozy up to whoever happened to be in power. Though I guess that could be said of most fascists ...
William Burroughs' at times' touting for the total elimination of women comes to mind: he stayed a respected and in some circles worshipped author, and Laurie Anderson seemed to have no problem with him. It is not apparent that he thought anything of the kind before killing his wife or until well after.
If I remember, Deleuze and Guattari, in their Kafka book, hold up Céline and especially the way he uses language as actually a subversive example of "minoritarian" literature, and therefore anti-fascist. I think there might be something to that, regardless of his own actual politics?
im sorry but that's bullshit
For what it's worth, I seem to remember them distinguishing between the early stuff and the less linguistically inventive later stuff. I definitely hear you here, but I do think that argument, tendentious bullshit though it may be, does account at least a little for Celine's successful marketing in America in the 70s as a Genet-like writer pitched somewhere between the Beats and the Existentialists. I don't have my Celine on hand, but weren't those published on City Lights, or New Directions, or Grove or something?
"His passionate expression of hatred can be read as the consequence of matching his aesthetic commitments to brutality and disgust with a powerful current of public sentiment."
A great point! Thank you for this.