Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the Attraction of the Void

The terror and tenderness of Céline’s masterpiece, “Death on the Installment Plan”

The French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline has consumed much of my attention so far this year—I haven’t read novels much at all for years, but something about his life (he was, to put it mildly, very controversial and despised), his perspective, and his style, made me dive into his first novel, Journey to the End of the Night (1932). Almost immediately, I realized I had to read everything he ever wrote—this has happened with only a few writers for me: Nietzsche (of course), Schopenhauer (of course), and Cioran. Journey was Céline’s first book, but it has a fully realized style—darkly comic but deeply poetic, totally despairing but passionate—that couldn’t be more right for the times we live in.

Céline instantly became famous for this book, and followed it up four years later with Death on the Installment Plan in 1936. This book is much longer than Journey, and he allows his style to range much more freely—Journey is quite tightly controlled, and very focused on place, plot, and character, like a first novel would be. Death on the Installment Plan is a style that creates a world, a total immersion in a sensibility—the perspective itself is the novel’s only theme, more than plot (although there is one character who gets extensive development and focus: the narrator’s mentor, a doomed, insane inventor named Courtial).

The narrator is a stand-in for Céline himself, focusing on his adolescence. He is constantly told what a horrible boy he is, how he’ll never amount to anything, how he needs to find a job immediately or risk being a bum forever—even though he’s just a young boy. His parents never give him a chance—they treat him like a receptacle for all their guilt and their failure; everything is his fault, he is the reason they are so desperate and exhausted. His father works at an insurance company but they also run a small store, selling odds and ends, and they never eat well or have enough sleep. Céline is blamed for everything—if it wasn’t for him, his parents would be comfortable and happy! In their eyes, he should apologize for his existence at every moment, become successful right away, and repay their hard sacrifices!

Céline does his best—he gets a job with a treacherous small business that sells various garments, and he shows up on time and does what he’s told. But here too he is treated as a receptacle for blame, as the reason everything goes wrong. The store owner’s wife—a fat hypersexual woman who is having an affair with the top assistant of the shop, which is described in the most intricate detail (there are more sexual encounters in this book than can be counted, all described with a detail that could only be drawn from real experiences)—ends up seducing Céline, who is around 13 and decades younger than she is. Céline, for his part, doesn’t put up too much of a resistance, since he is mostly devoid of interests or traits other than being horny, and again and again various women are drawn to him because they can sense, correctly, that his quiet, aloof nature conceals an infinite sexual appetite. The seduction by the store owner’s wife is a distraction, in which she steals a valuable jewel he was entrusted with, which becomes the pretense for firing him.

When this comes to light, his parents are furious, and treat him like absolute dirt—even though he was essentially raped and robbed. They send him to a reformatory school in England, hoping that a change of scenery will straighten him out—and so he can learn English, which will make him more employable. His parents feel that he has doomed his professional prospects already, even though he’s just a boy, and this is their last gasp effort to save him.

This experience goes about the same as his doomed apprenticeship at the clothing shop—as soon as he gets to England, a woman who hangs around the port where foreigners comes in is all over him. “She really likes foreigners!” he says. That sets the tone for everything that happens in England. The school is, like everything in the world of the novel, an absurd joke, barely hanging on by a thread, a serious front for a desperate emptiness. Céline is one of the only students there, since it is a failing school, on its last legs.

The Headmaster is a pathetic worm of a man, but he somehow has a wife who is hypnotically beautiful—Céline has more sexual fantasies about her than any other woman in the book. He never makes any attempts to have sex with her, but sure enough after a few months at the school, they find themselves alone together, and it happens—described in relentless detail, culminating with Céline saying he “came like a horse.” It’s almost like the women can sense that the inner void that constitutes his essence is filled with nothing but sex. The women in the book all come to him, he never pursues them, or even says anything charming—he has no special good looks or talents, it’s as if his void is the most attractive thing there is.

Sex is everywhere at the school, and Céline is right in the middle of it, though more through inertia than intention. The big dormitory where the students—all boys—sleep, is a raging masturbation fest, where the boys jerk themselves to sleep every night, in front of everyone else. There’s one boy who goes around giving blowjobs to whoever wants one—and Céline always does, even though he says “homosexuality is not my line.” One night in particular Céline is especially horny, and after coming in his mouth he says “he got his fill that night!” He isn’t all that different from the other boys in the room, he just is always at the center of it, and never backs away from it. He isn’t really even looking for it either. He doesn’t want to be bad—but he makes no effort not to be bad, so the negativity of his essence just grows and grows.

Shortly after he has sex with the Headmaster’s wife he leaves the school, and he only learned a few words of English the whole time he was there. When he gets home and his father realizes that he failed to learn English, he freaks out on him, and starts hitting him, and screaming at him, so Céline fights back viciously. He claws chunks out of his father’s skin, strangles him, and beats him almost to death. There are lots of things in this book that are hard to read, but this encounter is right at the top—the way Céline writes it, you can hear and smell the chunks being ripped out of his father’s flesh. After this he goes to live with his uncle, because if he was in the same room with his father again they would certainly kill each other. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite so dangerous as this scene.

His uncle Edouard understands that Céline does not do well in school settings, and does not like constantly having to look for a job, so he tells him just to walk around the city and try to enjoy himself. He tells him to eat because he’s so skinny, but he doesn’t really want to eat. He doesn’t want to do anything. The only character in the book who shows him any kindness is his uncle Edouard. Edouard understands him, because he actually takes a few moments to see him for who he is, for what he might like, for his interests—“you like stories, right?” Everyone else just uses him or blames him, even though he really never does anything too terrible. Edouard’s scenes with Céline are so tender and sweet because everything else in the book is just meaningless impersonal sex, graphic violence, and the drudgery of work. The few kind words Edouard says really stand out in the 700 pages of relentless hellishness.

After a few weeks, his uncle tells him that he can get him an apprenticeship with a famous scientist and inventor named Courtial. When he goes to meet with him he quickly realizes they are kindred spirits, only suited to exist on the fringes of society. Céline helps the master inventor with his various publications and subscriptions, and the master shows glimpses of true genius, but for the most part is an absurd empty fraud who scams people out of their money.

Every once in a while Courtial can be roused to moments of true inspiration and discovery, but mainly they are two malcontents just lounging around, which suits Céline just fine. He does well there, and after some months go by, his mother comes to visit him. She’s proud that her son, for the first time in his life, seems to be doing something he’s good at, and to be staying out of trouble.

Eventually things take a disastrous turn, as one of Courtial’s science scams gets him in huge trouble, and their apartment (where the office is), is torn down by an angry mob. They then flee to the countryside, along with Courtial’s wife, a woman that Céline respects like no other woman in the book, calling her “our cutie,” as a sign of affection. He has no impure thoughts about her at all—rare!

In the countryside they become strange figures whom the hicks distrust immediately, and their situation gets increasingly desperate. Céline starts hanging out at the local bar, and begins an affair with a maid there, whose ass is described in intimate detail. Soon he gets in trouble for “debauching” her, and the hicks begin to want these weird people out of their nice little town.

Courtial has one last scheme to save them from poverty—an electrified potato growing method. It shows promise, but the execution is a failure—all it does is produce monstrous, deformed food. Realizing that he is out of ideas and out of time, Courtial kills himself with a shotgun. Céline describes Courtial’s corpse in painful, hideous detail. He has to drag it back to their house by himself. He cries while he does it, since Courtial is the closest thing he’s had to a father (other than his kind Uncle Edouard), and the only man who believed in him, or saw any good in him. He weeps too for his cutie, Courtial’s wife, who he knows he will never see again, and who he knows will live a miserable, desperate life without her husband.

He goes back to Paris, and ends the novel living with his Uncle. He can’t stop crying—he’s seen too much, and he’s still just a boy. His life has just been meaningless sex, and horrific violence. Now he needs to go around Paris looking for jobs, working in little shops. But this idea makes him cry too, because he already knows how empty and miserable that is. His Uncle tells him, “okay angel child, okay, so you don’t like to go around looking for jobs all the time, it’s not your thing, it’s okay, you can just enjoy yourself for a bit, go on walks, eat some real meals, sweet boy.” After his time in the countryside with Courtial, he wasted away—just skin and bones. He says “oh uncle, I want to go away, I want to join the military, I just want to go away.” His Uncle tells him he’s too skinny for the army—he needs to gain at least 20 pounds. He tells Céline to stay with him, that he can join the army once he gains weight. The novel ends with Céline at his Uncle’s little apartment like that—despite his life being filled with empty sex, horrible death, and meaningless work, he has one person who loves him. But even this isn’t much—all his Uncle can do for him is give him a place to sleep and some food, for only a short time, since he is poor too, and can’t afford to keep feeding him forever. But in this awful world, that’s all you can hope for—and you’re lucky to have it.