kids through high school. . ."
• • • • •
At the time I write, which is the autumn of 1974, it has become apparent even to ordinary people, with their mental dampers operating perfectly, that life is in fact as dangerous and unforgiving and irrational as Céline said it was. There is some question as to whether we have two or three centuries remaining to us in which to prepare civilization for the teaching of Céline in high school.
Until that day, if it comes, I suspect that fellow writers will keep his reputation alive. We are especially shocked and enlightened by what he says. We are filled with a giddy sort of gratitude.
• • • • •
I have heard it suggested that Céline may live on far longer in English than in French—for technical rather than political reasons. The argument goes that Céline's gutter French was so specialized as to time and place that gobs of it are incomprehensible to Frenchmen.
Those who have translated it into English, however, have used more durable crudities, which will be clear enough still in, God willing, one hundred years.
As I say, this is not my idea. I heard it somewhere. I pass it on. If it turns out to be true, it seems that simple literary justice would eventually require that his translators be acknowledged as coauthors of Céline. Translation is that important.
• • • • •
There is at least one significant document by Céline that is out of print in English. And it would be more punctilious of me to say that it was written not by Céline but by Dr. Destouches. It is the doctoral thesis of Destouches, "The Life and Work of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis," for which he received a bronze medal in 1924. It was written at a time when theses in medicine could still be beautifully literary, since ignorance about diseases and the human body still required that medicine be an art.
And young Destouches, in a spirit of hero-worship, told of the futile and scientifically sound battle fought by an Hungarian physician named Semmelweis (1818-1865) to prevent the spread of childbed fever in Viennese hospital maternity wards. The victims were poor people, since persons with decent sorts of dwellings much preferred to give birth at home.
The mortality rate in some wards was sensational—25 percent or more. Semmelweis reasoned that the mothers were being killed by medical students, who often came into the wards immediately after having dissected corpses riddled with the disease. He was able to prove this by having the students wash their hands in soap and water before touching a woman in labor. The mortality rate dropped.
The jealousy and ignorance of Semmelweis's colleagues, however, caused him to be fired, and the mortality rate went up again.
• • • • •
The lesson Destouches learned from this true story, in my opinion, if he hadn't already learned it from an impoverished childhood and a stretch in the army, is that vanity rather than wisdom determines how the world is run.
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Frankly, just between you and me, I'm ending up even worse than I started . . . Yes, my beginnings weren't so hot . . . I was born, I repeat, in Courbevoie, Seine . . . I'm repeating it for the thousandth time . . . after a great many round trips I'm ending very badly . . . old age, you'll say . . . yes, old age, that's a fact . . . at sixty-three and then some, it's hard to break in again . . . to build up a new practice . . . no matter where . . . I forgot to tell you . . . I'm a doctor . . . A medical practice, confidentially, between you and me, isn't just a question of knowing your job and doing it properly . . . what really counts . . . more than anything else . . . is personal charm . . . personal charm after sixty? . . . there might still be a future for you in the wax works, or as an antique vase in a museum . . . a few old fogies in search of enigmas might still take an interest . . . but the ladies? Your dapper
• • • • •
At the time I write, which is the autumn of 1974, it has become apparent even to ordinary people, with their mental dampers operating perfectly, that life is in fact as dangerous and unforgiving and irrational as Céline said it was. There is some question as to whether we have two or three centuries remaining to us in which to prepare civilization for the teaching of Céline in high school.
Until that day, if it comes, I suspect that fellow writers will keep his reputation alive. We are especially shocked and enlightened by what he says. We are filled with a giddy sort of gratitude.
• • • • •
I have heard it suggested that Céline may live on far longer in English than in French—for technical rather than political reasons. The argument goes that Céline's gutter French was so specialized as to time and place that gobs of it are incomprehensible to Frenchmen.
Those who have translated it into English, however, have used more durable crudities, which will be clear enough still in, God willing, one hundred years.
As I say, this is not my idea. I heard it somewhere. I pass it on. If it turns out to be true, it seems that simple literary justice would eventually require that his translators be acknowledged as coauthors of Céline. Translation is that important.
• • • • •
There is at least one significant document by Céline that is out of print in English. And it would be more punctilious of me to say that it was written not by Céline but by Dr. Destouches. It is the doctoral thesis of Destouches, "The Life and Work of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis," for which he received a bronze medal in 1924. It was written at a time when theses in medicine could still be beautifully literary, since ignorance about diseases and the human body still required that medicine be an art.
And young Destouches, in a spirit of hero-worship, told of the futile and scientifically sound battle fought by an Hungarian physician named Semmelweis (1818-1865) to prevent the spread of childbed fever in Viennese hospital maternity wards. The victims were poor people, since persons with decent sorts of dwellings much preferred to give birth at home.
The mortality rate in some wards was sensational—25 percent or more. Semmelweis reasoned that the mothers were being killed by medical students, who often came into the wards immediately after having dissected corpses riddled with the disease. He was able to prove this by having the students wash their hands in soap and water before touching a woman in labor. The mortality rate dropped.
The jealousy and ignorance of Semmelweis's colleagues, however, caused him to be fired, and the mortality rate went up again.
• • • • •
The lesson Destouches learned from this true story, in my opinion, if he hadn't already learned it from an impoverished childhood and a stretch in the army, is that vanity rather than wisdom determines how the world is run.
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Frankly, just between you and me, I'm ending up even worse than I started . . . Yes, my beginnings weren't so hot . . . I was born, I repeat, in Courbevoie, Seine . . . I'm repeating it for the thousandth time . . . after a great many round trips I'm ending very badly . . . old age, you'll say . . . yes, old age, that's a fact . . . at sixty-three and then some, it's hard to break in again . . . to build up a new practice . . . no matter where . . . I forgot to tell you . . . I'm a doctor . . . A medical practice, confidentially, between you and me, isn't just a question of knowing your job and doing it properly . . . what really counts . . . more than anything else . . . is personal charm . . . personal charm after sixty? . . . there might still be a future for you in the wax works, or as an antique vase in a museum . . . a few old fogies in search of enigmas might still take an interest . . . but the ladies? Your dapper
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