Castle to Castle (French Literature)
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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Book Summary Information
Author: Louis-Ferdinand CélineTranslator: Ralph Manheim
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-04-01
ISBN: 156478150X
Number of pages: 362
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr
Book Reviews of Castle to Castle (French Literature)
Book Review: "a portrait of existence as rotten and mad"
Summary: 5 Stars
Anatole Broyard wrote a wonderful review of Castle to Castle for "The New York Times", January 5, 1969; it begins:
"In 1932, with Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline snatched French literature from the manicured hands of Gide, Proust and Valery and gave it a gusto, a savage bite, it had hardly known since Rabelais and Villon. Four years later, with Death on the Installment Plan he had already snarled and elbowed his way into the pantheon."
I had an enormous problem reading Céline's "Journey" when it was assigned in college because his trio of anti-Semitic pamphlets so offended me: Bagatelles pour un massacre (Trifles for a Massacre) (1937), L'École des cadavres (School of Corpses) (1938) and Les Beaux draps (The Fine Mess) (1941).
My roommate, a Jewish candidate for a Masters in English, told me I was a sheltered Waspish farm boy, to grow up and expose myself to every important writer I could find and to try to keep an open mind. (He impressed me greatly as a scholar, once spending 48 hours straight reading and re-reading "The Merchant of Venice", before concluding: "This is an anti-Semitic play.")
In the event, I followed my instructor's and my roomate's advice, and re-read both "Journey" and "Death", finally concluding that Céline was not only anti-Semitic but also anti-human. It was with trepidation I read "Castle" when "The New York Times" chose it as one of the best of 1969, and although there were moments of unpleasantness, ten years of life experience made the book come alive for me. In a certain sense, I even found a certain sympathy for Céline and his troubles.
40 years later, as I re-read the extracts and reflect on all three of Céline's masterpieces, I believe Céline has expressed a dark but very true part of what makes us human. Read these extracts and see what you think:
From the Introduction:
A life of poverty . . . worse than poverty, because when you're just poor you can let yourself go, get drunk, lie in the gutter. This was the kind of poverty that keeps up a front, dignified poverty, and that's awful. For instance . . . all my life I've eaten noodles. Noodles, because you see, my mother used to mend old lace. And one thing that everybody knows about old lace is that odors stick to it forever. And the customers, well, you can't bring your customers smelly lace. So what didn't make any odors? Noodles. I ate whole washtubs full of noodles, my mother made them by the washtubful . . . I ate boiled noodles, oh yes, oh yes, my whole childhood, noodles and bread soup. These things were odorless.
I've got to admit, some stubborn bastard manages to discover me in the sub-basement of some storehouse under a pyramid of returns . . . oh, I could easily get used to the idea of being the scribbler that nobody reads any more . . . rejected by pure, purified Vrance! . . . oh, I could be perfectly happy about it ... but there's the question of noodles...
Brottin is a horse of a different color . . . Achille Brottin is your sordid grocer, an implacable idiot ... the only thing he can think about is his dough! more dough! still more! the complete millionaire! More and more flunkeys around him . . . with their tongues hanging out and their pants down...
I'd shut them up once and for all! I was quick to regret it! I still regret it! I seldom let myself go ... but I'd been listening to them too long! . . . "Here," I said. "Take a look at this!" I put my cyanide down on the table in front of them ... on Laval's desk . . . my little phial . . . out of my pocket! ... as long as they're talking about rare metals! . . . I've always got my cyanide on me! . . . ever since Sartrouville . . . here, they can see it ... and the red label . . . they both look..
Google Books offers a very generous selection of pages from this book; these are from "Popular Passages".
2008 Addendum:
For my money, Jack Keroauc has it exactly right as he is quoted in the biography Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac by Ellis Amburn (St. Martin's Press, 1998; p. 301). Kerouac described Celine's work as "a portrait of existence as rotten and mad." If you can bear to see such a portrait whole, read any or all three of Céline's masterpieces.
Robert C. Ross 1970 2008
Note: This is one of twelve NY Times "Editors' Choice" books for 1969; see first Comment.
Summary of Castle to Castle (French Literature)
It is Germany near the end of World War II, the Allies have landed and members of the Vichy France government have been sequestered in a labyrinthine castle, replete with secret passages and subterranean hideaways. The group of 1,400 terrified officials, their wives, mistresses, flunkies, and Nazi protectors?including Céline, his wife, their cat, and an actor friend?attempt to postpone the postwar reckoning under the constant threat of air raids and starvation. With an undercurrent of sensual excitement, Céline paints an almost unbearably vivid picture of human society and the human condition.,br>Called by Atlantic Monthly "the blackest of the black" of Céline's novels and hailed by the Washington Post Book World for its "intense sympathy with individual human beings," Castle to Castle is brilliantly rendered in Ralph Manheim's translation, for which he won the National Book Award.
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