Trifles for a Massacre - Paperback

by Louis Ferdinand Celine (Author)

"There's a book you won't hear a word about on the radio. There's a book the right-thinking newspapers will not speak about, except to refer to it prim and reproachful terms. There's a book about which the tabloids of the left will say nothing, except the most inept of them, which only have words of scorn. There's a book the sale and distribution of which is quite possibly forbidden. There's a book against which there will be more a conspiracy of silence than of attack. Isn't it a crying shame that, before any reservations, we cannot praise boldness, courage, ardor?

There is a rather striking phrase in Céline's book, this book that we will be prevented from discussing. He announces his invectives as a kind of "revolt of the natives." And I think of those Arab towns-always situated next to a Jewish one-which, from time to time, in a fit of popular anger, throw themselves in fury on the Jewish quarter and plunder it.

We do not want any violence. But when one has a Jewish Prime Minister, when one sees, clearly and simply, France dominated by the Jews, it also should be understood how this violence is prepared, and what explains it. I do not even say what legitimates it, I say what explains it. Have any opinion you want. On the Jews and on Céline. We do not agree with him on all points. But I am telling you: this enormous book, this splendid book, is the first sign of the "revolt of the natives." Perhaps this revolt is excessive, more instinctive than reasonable: after all, the natives are us..." Robert Brasillach.