Death on the Installment Plan
9 February 2007
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
There is not much left unexpressed in this work of Céline’s. “Well,” you may argue, “what then is the intention of all those ellipsises? For is not omission their explicit function?” Perhaps it is just this, the blatant contradiction, which envelopes the whole of this novel, giving one the impression of being told too much and nothing at all. Personally, I believe this man to be a genius. His voice is potent and harsh. The ellipsis then may be utilized as a space to inhale a deep and fresh breath of air because Céline, taken in mouthfuls, could very well cause the light-hearted to feel a bit queasy.
It is only appropriate that in the preceding entry I invoked the writings of Roald Dahl. These two men appear more similar on prolonged ingestion then one would immediately be drawn to believe. Death on the Installment Plan is Céline’s fictional memoir of childhood. It is at once brutal and poignantly comical. Ferdidnand, a young boy growing up in an obscure passage in Paris, a child among adults who are consumed with an unrelenting torment of their disadvantages, who are constantly tormenting him as the one true cause of their burdens. An experience akin to Dahl’s, who spent the greater part of his childhood in a private British boarding school. The ferment of both of their young lives over at the onset of World War I, where they both served until injured. An incongruent likeness?
Is it then permitted to say that a dark childhood leads to a perverted sense of humor? I have no authority to respond either with affirmation or in the negative, so I will discard my hypothesis in its conception.
But the visions Ferdinand endures. . .as if an already repulsive world were examined through the lens of a microscope. . .as if all bacteria, microbes and every germ ever manifested were striding along the top-soil with us. . .as if all that was ugly was all that there is. That’s not the point either.
There is comedy within the deeply tragic. Céline skews his monsters until they are more horrific. . .until they are completely distorted. . .until one is not sure where the head has gone. . .I thought I saw a tail? It is just this that I find so funny and it is this that I believe to be the point. Feridnand’s parents, who took themselves so seriously continued on the downward spiral for the complete length of the book (no short time, I will have you know.) His mother, god rest her soul, limped from door to door peddling a fifty pound bag of lace. She returned home to find her legs swelled with boils, the pus draining down them in streams. This pain is to be prolonged, she must make ends meet, she has no choice. It is only Céline who knows, the Céline sitting at his writing desk, looking forward into his childhood. He knows that the ends will never meet, that there is a choice and it does not really matter if it is for the side of the pristine or in collaboration with the devil, for they are both one in the same.
« Fantastical Roald Dahl
Henry Miller and the Life Abundant »