Gloom, Doom and Humour In Celine’s Death on Credit

	From womb to tomb, or so it seems, Celine paints in this novel a dismal, depressing, horrendous picture of suffering. The depicted contents of almost every page spell out one scene of misery after another. Then, between these gloomy tableaus, short periods of relative calm are only treated as mere pauses before another ‘storm’. Throughout the novel the central character, Ferdinand, in reflecting upon this succession of crises insists to himself that there can only be an inevitable, overall atmosphere of unremitting doom. Into this unrelenting bleakness why am I, as a reader, in ‘feeling’ my way through this catalogue of woe, not finding myself being sent towards a deep depression, albeit one only experienced vicariously? Moreover, why do I find no difficulty in wanting to read on and discover even more of this miscellany of misfortune writ with a capital ‘M’? Is there something the matter with me, or, are we all sadistic voyeurs? Then, can the enjoyment of a prominent element of black humour alone explain this desire to subject oneself, repeatedly, to such virtual torture and, therein, still manage to actually salvage a healthy desire and enjoyment for this text from out of this inventory of grief portrayed in this hellish human panorama? I am sure humour by itself would not be able to achieve the discovery of this paradoxical, positive tenor to be found in our reception of this novel? On the other hand, this element of humour could well be a more overt aspect of what must be happening in our ‘deeper’ reading of this text that allows us to find such an enjoyment in the midst of so much agony and anguish, that allows us to find a pleasure in the midst of its plentiful pain and punishment, and, in its all-pervasive nihilistic ambivalence and domestic violence…? (1)

	The contents of this novel, in the form of a parade of characters around the person of Ferdinand, is a continual picture of gloom. This central character’s overall perspective on life and the voicing of his fears for the future bespeak a continual picture of an inevitable doom forever about to descend upon his already disturbed and disrupted existence. In the midst of such misfortune from whence comes the reader’s good fortune to be able to read this richly rewarding text? If such positivity can be found neither on the page nor within the overall book from whence does this seemingly rather callous enjoyment arise for the reader? If, in reply, we invoke the many sequences that possess a well-crafted sense of black humour then surely the point of this question is merely reinforced by default – in the midst of such unremitting suffering how could the reader find so much enjoyment? Does that not also reflect adversely upon them? Let me resolve this philosophical problem and in the process look more closely at this text (focusing on p. 116-216). (2)

	When we read a novel we read the text of that novel. That novel from an overall point of view looks like the genre of a novel and hence there is also this meta-textual perspective. So, we never entertain a mere text! Both text and meta-text must be entertained together. But, this is not the end of the matter, indeed, the relationship between text and meta-text is a bit like a key within a lock – the relationship between the two opens us up to a third dimension which I have previously referred to as the non-textual dimension. Into this literary domain we find ourselves ‘living’ in the dimension of the novel itself so to speak. I like to think of it as the ‘non-textual’ dimension by virtue of the fact that when we become rapt in our reading of a text we ‘forget’ that we are actually reading ‘that text’. In this literary ‘space and time’ we experience the skill or lack of skill of the author… experiencing the text as an existential surplus of value, as an existential excess. Here, we ‘meet’ the author or authors of that text, albeit in the virtuality of this simulated space and time. Moreover (through an overall transcendental suspension in a not-textual experience), we find ourselves engaging this virtual dimension at ‘face value’ and in this regard experience the relative ‘transparency’ of that text. A metaphorical state of affairs that could not be happily accounted for by either modernists (and neo-modernists) or postmodernists. When a text is ‘transparent’ we find it offers us little resistance in our engagement with it. On the other hand, either through a lack of skill by the author and/or a lack of skill on our part in reading that language (or through not possessing an adequate knowledge of the social conventions associated with the meta-textual context of that cultural background) this transparency becomes occluded by moments or passages of partial translucence or near opacity. Hence our enjoyment of Celine’s text is not to be found directly in its literary content nor directly in its presentation of an overall point of view, both aspects being steeped in gloom and doom respectively, but, rather, directly, in the richness of this existential excess crafted through the skill of the author. In this light let me now look at some of the highlights from these one hundred pages of text. (3)

	This existential excess is simulated through this relationship between text and meta-text. ‘Text’ is essentially the introduction of difference, dissonance… while the ‘meta-textual’ aspect is essentially a field of genre-conformity or consonance. In the relationship between these two aspects the author engineers an ongoing process of resolution wherein they harmonize this tension between text and meta-text. Now, style is resident is in the resolution of this tension like a signature, i.e., in the habits an artist carves out for themselves in reconciling these two conflicting facets of nonconformity and conformity. Celine has some delightful habits which he refines through deft repetition; one of which is his performance of a self-ironic climatic anti-climax… (4)

	On pages 132-134 we have the final school exam. Such a difficult milestone to overcome… what with nervous kids and the pressure of parents even more nervous than their children. The examiner poses difficult questions and then sets out to answer these same questions when the examined pupil is unable to answer them. The joke, or anti-climax, is that all pupils pass. So the ordeal is really a non-event even though portrayed in a climatic fashion. Self-ironic because the punch line is reflected upon by Ferdinand in the following manner when the pupils are told that they have all passed:

	He told us that if we conducted ourselves as valiantly in later life we had nothing to fear, we’d be rewarded. I’d wet my pants and shat in them something awful too, I could hardly move. (5)

	Another instance of this complex device can be found in the storm sequence. A hilarious account of passengers being sick in a storm and the travails of a family on holiday to England wet to the bone with no luggage since the latter had been misplaced. In this account Celine piles the incidences of passengers vomiting over each other, an altercation, their arrival with the storm then passing (almost as if nothing had happened). (6)

	In the aftermath of the trip the father recounts the saga of the storm to his neighbours with many embelishments when, essentially, its was a ruined trip, a loss of luggage and Father’s continual worries about “mother’s constipation”. Then, one of their neighbours becomes even more resentful of the fact that he is now even more the centre of attention and ends up directing fireworks into his home only to set herself on fire and then her own house to go on to end her days in the ‘bughouse in Clareton’ after a petition is signed by neighbours to the effect that she was both “insane and impossible.” (7)

	The text is obviously enlivened with liberal amounts of black humour more often than not at the expense of the central character and those other characters that come into contact with him through family and work, etc. All the characters crave excitement in their bland lives (whether upper class from boredom or lower class from the sheer drudgery of their labours). Conditions of labour for the workers are abysmal; made worse by the fact that they are coming to realize how they are being exploited. As the text tells us:

	Nobody talked about hardship… the suspicion was just dawning. (8)

	We have Ferdinand work very hard and for no pay whatsoever. One of his bosses telling his family that he is not a very good worker, which is untrue, in order to keep him continuing to work without pay. Still, other ‘apprentices’, indeed, paid good money in order to work and therein obtain the requisite experience of that type of job. (9)

	The author has us fascinated by his text. Laced throughout it are frequent references of a sexual nature. We get a taste of the forbidden from time to time with this type of reference reaching a climatic anti-climax in Ferdinand’s first seduction scene (and robbery of the Golden Buddha figure) and the second seduction scene on route to his new school in England. Both scenes are a tragi-comedy of exquisite, almost melodramatic, proportions… 

	What a little pig… oh, sweet little pig…nasty little pig… you big thug… (10)

	In the anxiety over the loss of the 18 carat golden Buddha figure Ferdinand’s father rhetorically asks him “are you in love?” when la patronne and the other workers have stolen this ornament while Ferdinand was being seduced; another deftly delivered punch-line to illustrate this tendency to orchestrate his text around sequences of self-ironic climatic anti-climaxes. Ferdinand is certainly not in love, indeed, far from it… being thrown once again into a period of even more intense personal turmoil! The various scenes before and after this seduction sequence accentuating the comic delivery. (11)

	In the second seduction we get once again a hilarious, sorry saga of events that is almost vaudeville in flavour. Gwendoline, his new ‘girl’ gets his fortune read and Ferdinand feels his fate in the cards is as furrowed as in the groves on his palm… nothing more than one pathway to “pure grief.” (12)

	Even though the nature of this text is forever ‘depressing’ in the overt ugliness of its depictions, both in its detail and in its totality of apparent intent, in unrelieved waves of gloom and doom respectively, yet I do not experience this tale to be at all depressing. On the contrary, the text fascinates me with its close psychological attention to cultural detail and social comment, its carefully crafted patterns of tragi-comedy writ large on a grand scale, its tendency to contrive climatic anti-climaxes with wonderful self-ironic cadences…. All in all it has the hallmarks of a rich text whose textual power is able to profoundly invest it with a ‘positive spirit of being’ which is quite the opposite from that which would be obtained from a more literal reading (although I would not advise reading it if one were too depressed and potentially suicidal)! But, then, no text can be a mere text! When we come upon a rich text that we can appreciate (through the intuitive imposition of a properly conducted overall transcendental suspension of all facets of its textuality) then we find ourselves meeting with the re-simulation of a distinctive existential surplus whose positivity of power will be found circulating within its virtual ambit. The distinctive nature and intensity of this power is able to override any negative features, be they in part or in whole, and therein overcome the otherwise mere depiction of the unseemly, the unsavory or the unspeakable… and, thereafter, this relatively superficial ‘literal reality’ can only pale into a state of relative insignificance…if only for the reader… although it could be argued that this excess can also spill over to ‘inform the life’ of the heroic or anti-heroic characters in this text… but that is another issue to be dealt with at some other time! (13)
							        Noël Tointon, Sydney, 18.7.04.