![]() ![]() The documents referenced in Odile Roynette’s book are numerous. We quickly realise, then, that this highly coherent and lively book is an indictment of Destouches, who carefully constructed his own overly flattering legend. As its title suggests, it is deliberately selective in its subject matter, focusing on a basic premise: although the pages devoted to the war in Journey to the End of the Night have been pivotal to his establishment as a leading novelist, the experience that Louis Destouches really had in 1914 was not equal to his reputation as a patriotic, heroic fighter, and indeed quickly and deliberately became part of his self-assertion strategy.Ībove all, the references to his glorious past as a war veteran enabled him to ensure the best possible dissemination of the nauseating ideas contained in his pamphlets between 19, before being presented in defence of the outcast during the purge. ![]() Odile Roynette’s remarkably well-researched book is not, strictly speaking, a new biography of Céline or even a biography of a writer. Louis-Ferdinand Céline entre deux guerres (1914-1945), Paris, Les Belles Lettres, coll. Reviewed: Odile Roynette, Un long tourment. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |