Castle to Castle Read Free Page B

good deal of discretion. Too much publicity in the way people talk about these things. We're objects of publicity. It's revolting. It's high time people took a cure of modesty. In literature as in everything else we're befouled by publicity. It's disgraceful. I say: do your job and shut up, that's the only way. People will read it or they won't read it, that's their business. The only thing for the author to do is to make himself scarce.
    Interviewer: Do you write for the pleasure of writing?
    Céline: No. Certainly not. If I had money, I wouldn't write a word. That's my first principle.
    Interviewer: You don't write out of love or hatred?
    Céline: Of course not! It's my business if I experience those sentiments, it doesn't concern the public.
    Interviewer: But you take an interest in your contemporaries?
    Céline: Oh no, none whatsoever. I took an interest in them once, I tried to prevent them from making war. As it happened, they didn't make war, but they came back laden with glory. And then they threw me into the clink. I should have concentrated on myself.
    Interviewer: still, certain feelings come through in your most recent novels?
    Céline: A writer can make anything come through. There's nothing to it.
    Interviewer: Are you trying to persuade us that your latest books reveal nothing of your inner life?
    Céline: Inner life? No, absolutely nothing. Maybe one thing, and only one, the fact that I don't know how to enjoy life. I don't live. I don't exist. That gives me a certain superiority over other people who stink, you can't deny it, because they're' always enjoying life. To enjoy life is to eat, drink, belch, fuck, all those things that make hash out of a man or a woman. I don't go in for dissipation and that's lucky for me. I know how to choose. I'm capable of savoring things, but as some Roman said, debauchery isn't going into a whorehouse, it's not coming out. All my life I've gone into whorehouses, but I've come right out. I don't drink, I don't care about eating. Those things bore me. It's my right, isn't it? I have only one desire. To sleep and be left alone, which isn't the case.
    Interviewer: In what writers do you recognize real talent?
    Céline: My feeling is that there were three writers in the great period. Morand, Ramuz and Barbusse were writers. They had a feeling for it. They were made for writing. The rest of them aren't made for it. Hell, they're impostors, the whole lot of them, and the impostors are on top. If the critics don't watch out, literature will be devoured by charlatanism. But that's already happened, the critics are up shit's creek.
    Interviewer: You seem to dissociate yourself from those things. And yet you were one of the most passionate men of the century.
    Céline: Yes, but no longer. They've bugged me too much. I'm fed up. I used to be pitiful, but not any more. Now I'm indifferent. They bore me.
    Interviewer: Would you say you were embittered? Philosophical? Contemptuous?
    Céline: No, no. Not at all. That's a lot of words, my encyclopedia is full of them. Pure shit. I know how to turn tables. Other people don't
    Interviewer: Do you still regard yourself as one of the greatest living writers?
    Céline: No, not at all. Great writers . . . What do I want with adjectives. First you've got to croak and when you've croaked they classify. First you've got to be dead.
    Interviewer: Are you convinced that posterity will do you justice?
    Céline: Hell no, of course I'm not convinced. Hell no! Who knows if there'll even be a France? Maybe Chinamen or Berbers will be digging out the archives, and they won't give a good goddam about my dopey literature, my fancy style and my three dots . . . It doesn't take a genius. While we're on the subject of literature," I was through a long time ago. After Death on the Installment Plan I'd said everything I had to say, which wasn't much.
    Interviewer: You hate life.
    Céline: Well, I can't say I love it. No. I put up with it because I'm alive and I have