Editing Louis-Ferdinand Céline (section)

===Writer, physician and polemicist (1932–1939)===
''Voyage au bout de la nuit'' was published in October 1932 to widespread critical attention. Although Destouches sought anonymity under the pen name Céline, his identity was soon revealed by the press. The novel attracted admirers and detractors across the political spectrum, with some praising its anarchist, anticolonialist and antimilitarist themes, while one critic condemned it as "the cynical, jeering confessions of a man without courage or nobility." A critic for ''[[Les Nouvelles littéraires]]'' praised the author's use of spoken colloquial French as an "extraordinary language, the height of the natural and the artificial" while the critic for ''Le'' ''Populaire de Paris'' condemned it as mere vulgarity and obscenity.<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=213-215}}</ref> The novel was the favourite for the ''[[Prix Goncourt]]'' of 1932. When the prize was awarded to [[Guy Mazeline|Mazeline]]'s ''Les Loups'', the resulting scandal increased publicity for Céline's novel, which sold 50,000 copies in the following two months.<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=215-222}}</ref>

Despite the success of ''Voyage'', Céline saw his vocation as medicine and continued his work at the Clichy clinic and private pharmaceutical laboratories. He also began working on a novel about his childhood and youth which was to become ''[[Death on Credit|Mort à credit]]'' (1936, ''Death on the Installment Plan''). In June 1933 Elizabeth Craig returned permanently to America. Céline visited her in Los Angeles the following year but failed to persuade her to return.<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=223-228, 240-242, 266-267}}</ref>

Céline initially refused to take a public stance on the rise of Nazism and the increasing extreme-right political agitation in France, explaining to a friend in 1933: "I am and have always been an anarchist, I have never voted...I will never vote for anything or anybody...I don't believe in men...The Nazis loathe me as much as the socialists and the commies too."<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=232, 261}}</ref> Nevertheless, in 1935, British critic [[William Empson]] had written that Céline appeared to be "a man ripe for fascism".<ref>{{Harvp|Empson|1935|pp=16-17}}</ref>

''Mort à credit'' was published in May 1936, with numerous blank spaces where passages had been removed by the publisher for fear of prosecution for obscenity. The critical response was sharply divided, with the majority of reviewers criticising it for gutter language, pessimism and contempt for humanity. The novel sold 35,000 copies by late 1938.<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=287-292}}</ref>

In August Céline visited Leningrad for a month and on his return quickly wrote and had published an essay, ''Mea Culpa'', in which he denounced communism and the Soviet Union.<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=296-303}}</ref>

In December the following year ''Bagatelles pour un massacre'' (''Trifles for a Massacre'') was published, a book-length racist and antisemitic polemic in which Céline advocated a military alliance with Hitler's Germany in order to save France from war and Jewish hegemony. The book won qualified support from some sections of the French far-Right and sold 75,000 copies up to the end of the war. Céline followed ''Bagatelles'' with ''Ecole des cadavres'' (''School for Corpses'') (November 1938) in which he developed the themes of antisemitism and a Franco-German alliance.<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=327-329}}</ref>

Céline was now living with [[Lucette Destouches|Lucette Almansor]], a French dancer whom he had met in 1935. They were to marry in 1943 and remain together until Céline's death. On the publication of ''Bagatelles'', Céline quit his jobs at the Clichy clinic and the pharmaceutical laboratory and devoted himself to his writing.<ref>{{Harvp|Vitoux|1992|pp=309-310}}</ref>