Summary
Louis-Ferdinand Céline: Selected Letters to the N.R.F.
For thirty years Céline corresponded with France's most respected publisher: first as a rising author whose "Journey to the End of the Night" went unrecognized, then as a notorious pamphleteer whom no one wanted in post-war France.
This unusual meeting brings unusual exchanges, in which Céline persistently, until the last breath, defends her work, her literary style and herself as a worker and "inventor". Significant as a historical document, the correspondence illuminates the political climate in France before and after the war, as well as the strong desire to turn over a new leaf after liberation. Among these letters are perhaps the fiercest, most passionate pages ever addressed by a writer to his publisher, which the publisher with infinite patience forgave him only because he was sure that he was dealing with a literary genius - or, in Célin's words, "the golden cock for the next hundred years of literature".
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