I’ve hit a good stretch, several breakthroughs on the Chou novel.  So my blogging schedule has been allowed to slide. Find me writing here a lot and this means inevitably I’ve hit a snag. This is called “taking time to process the story”.

Breakthrough implies the journey is filled with any number of pitfalls, traps, obstacles, and (moral) hazards. This is usually what is meant by “bringing the story together.” For me, it is like solving smaller mathematical puzzles embedded in a larger one. I can never see it until I arrive at the end.

I don’t claim this is the proper or best way to write. I think it’s quite possible to have a good sketch of the complete story in mind prior to execution. That’s just not my style. Not right now.

But for me, writing is a journey. And so it happens, I am reading Journey to the End of the Night by that “absolute bastard” and  “despicable human being” Celine. Immintely readable, it’s hard to put down. And hard to look away from the unrelenting critique of human existence. Rarely has misanthropy been so damn enjoyable.

Still, I don’t profess to understand how a great author can turn into a virulent Pro-Nazi anti-Semite. For me, the ends of the world exist at the edge of his novel. Looking beyond into the abyss of an angry soul is pure speculation.

Take, for example, the fact that he was a doctor. Did this shape his unremitting diagnosis of what’s “wrong” with the human condition? Perhaps. It is easily for an obsession about one’s health to devolve into a phobia for germs and diseases, into a pathological need to cleanse the body and rid the soul of infections and contaminations. Did this lead to his support of racist, Anti-Jewish policies? Is this why he was found within Fascism the power of elixir?

Pure speculation. I am not his biographer or psychologist, and would never wish to be.

We can sympathize with the voice of a novel, but must bear in mind that this is not the author, despite what all reason and common sense tells us. I assure you, as a writer you should reject authorship.

Anonymity is vital. We square the novel, by removing all traces of the “authentic” author. We must, for then only famous people could write books that we understand.  Illuminate the history in which a novel is created, fine. But the author is truly a dead weight to the whole enterprise of writing and reading and should be quickly kicked overboard. It gets in the way. Do we need to take a moment outside the creative process to voice once more our disgust at his indefensible politics? Very well. But Celine is a symptom. Keep that in mind lest we think we have advanced the cause of equality and freedom one bit.

Otherwise, we don’t have a story, but pedagogy, moralism, and the tediousness which Celine exploited with great effect.