{"id":442,"date":"2020-05-31T08:46:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T07:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/?p=442"},"modified":"2023-10-23T05:56:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T04:56:13","slug":"kerouac-celine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/en\/2020\/05\/31\/kerouac-celine\/","title":{"rendered":"Kerouac talks about C\u00e9line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this 1959 Radio Canada interview with Pierre Nadeau, Jack Kerouac talks about his favorite writers and specifically Louis-Ferdinand C\u00e9line. Please find below our tentative English transcript of this beautiful document.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jack Kerouac parle de C\u00e9line\" width=\"1333\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/q4BPacAbK4c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><i>I personally consider that the greatest writer in the world is Louis-Ferdinand C\u00e9line \u2013 his real name is Destouches\u2026 he is a doctor, Dr Destouches \u2013 because he wrote great epics (\u201c\u00e9pop\u00e9es\u201d) on modern life better than anyone else.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>When he was on a boat to Africa as a passenger, people didn\u2019t like him. Women would say: \u201cThis man here, this doctor, he is mad!\u201d. But one evening, when men were ready to hit poor Dr Destouches, to punch him in the face, he shook the hand of the first lad and said \u201cVive la France!\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Then he went down to the side of the boat with some Negros\u2026 on a boat, a small boat, boom\u2026 Africa! The \u201cJourney to the End of the Night\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Also he wrote \u201cMort \u00e0 Cr\u00e9dit\u201d (Death on Credit), which we call here \u201cDeath on the Installment Plan\u201d. It\u2019s beautiful. So this is the greatest.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>After that I say that Genet is a great writer. There are only two great writers today. Oh! But there\u2019s another, there\u2019s a great satirist, William Seward Burroughs from the fortune of the Burroughs adding machine. You know the Burroughs adding machine? He is a descendent of\u2026 his grandfather invented it. And also Allen Ginsberg. And Gregory Corso, an Italian, well an Italian, anyway&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>There are interesting poets too, like Peter Orlovsky, Philip Lamantia, also in Canada, what\u2019s his name, Dub\u00e9, in Montr\u00e9al, what\u2019s his first name? Marcel, Marcel Dub\u00e9. Great Men! Blaise Cendrars\u2026 But Sartre, Camus, Michaux and Malraux and Mauriac and Maurois and Gide, they\u2019re all\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>I say that good writers never win any grand prize, that they will never give the Grand Prize to C\u00e9line or to Genet or to Burroughs&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Or to Kerouac?<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>Oh yes&#8230; I am popular! I can win prizes\u2026 but if they give me the Nobel Prize when I am fifty years old, if they haven\u2019t yet given it to Louis-Ferdinand C\u00e9line, if C\u00e9line is still alive, I will say: \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want it. Give it to my master!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Featured Image: &#8220;Jack Kerouac #2&#8221;, a Jack Kerouac look-alike walking in the streets of Istanbul (Devin Smith, 2011, License CC BY 2.0)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this 1959 Radio Canada interview with Pierre Nadeau, Jack Kerouac talks about his favorite writers and specifically Louis-Ferdinand C\u00e9line. Please find below our tentative English transcript of this beautiful document. I personally consider that the greatest writer in the world is Louis-Ferdinand C\u00e9line \u2013 his real name is Destouches\u2026<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/en\/2020\/05\/31\/kerouac-celine\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"http:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/?p=442","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,6],"tags":[67,61,68,62,66,64,65,60,63],"class_list":["entry","author-pete","post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-impressions","category-litterature","category-on-the-road","tag-blaise-cendrars","tag-jack-kerouac","tag-jean-genet","tag-louis-ferdinand-celine","tag-marcel-dube","tag-peter-orlovsky","tag-philip-lamantia","tag-radio-canada","tag-william-s-burroughs","en-US"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secretfires.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}