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Fable for Another Time (French Modernist Library) Paperback – April 1, 2003

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (Author), Mary Hudson (Author)

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Fable for Another Time is one of the most significant and far-reaching literary texts of postwar France. Composed in the tumultuous aftermath of World War II, largely in the Danish prison cell where the author was awaiting extradition to France on charges of high treason, the book offers a unique perspective on the war, the postwar political purges in France, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s own dissident politics.

The tale of a man imprisoned and reviled by his own countrymen, the Fable follows its character’s decline from virulent hatred to near madness as a result of his violent frustration with the hypocrisy and banality of his fellow human beings. In part because of the story’s clear link to his own case—and because of the legal and political difficulties this presented—Céline was compelled to push his famously elliptical, brilliantly vitriolic language to new and extraordinary extremes in Fable for Another Time. The resulting linguistic and stylistic innovation make this work stand out as one of the most original and revealing literary undertakings of its time.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) was a French writer and physician best known for the novels Journey to the End of the Night (1932) and Death on the Installment Plan (1936). Céline was accused of collaboration during World War II and fled France in 1944 to live first in Germany, then in Denmark, where he was imprisoned for over a year; an amnesty in 1951 allowed him to return to France. Céline remains anathema to a large segment of French society for his antisemitic writings; at the same time his novels are enormously admired by each new generation.

Print length

239 pages
Language

English
Publisher

BISON BOOKS
Publication date

April 1, 2003
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.59 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0803264240
ISBN-13

978-0803264243
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Hudson has a Ph.D. in French and works as a translator and language teacher in New York.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ BISON BOOKS (April 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 239 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0803264240
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0803264243
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.59 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,162,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,389 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books)
- #61,742 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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12 ratings

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reading man

FANTASTIC FABLE?

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2015

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This looks like a good translation of the French original, but I don't get the English title.

FEERIE POUR UNE AUTRE FOIS--okay "for Another Time", but why "Fable"? FEERIE, as Vitoux points out, had a special meaning for Celine, and it seems to me that "Fantasy" or "Fantasmagoria" would be a better rendering.

The titles of Celine's novels in English are mostly off-standard. For example, why does VOYAGE AU BOUT DE LA NUIT become JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT in English. "DE LA NUIT" means "Of Night", omit the definite article. Also, VOYAGE can mean journey, but wouldn't "Voyage" be a better choice (think of "Bon Voyage"--or in Celine's case, "Mal Voyage", I suppose.).

I suppose New Directions didn't want Mannheim to call the book VOYAGE TO THE END OF NIGHT, just as whoever published Kilmartin's Proust didn't want IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, though Enright talked them into it.

As for MORT A CREDIT ... surely the title should be DEATH ON CREDIT? Why not DEATH IN TEN PAYMENTS? INSTALLMENT PLAIN sounds like a title for Agatha Christie.

I'm hoping I won't have objections to the translation of the book under review, especially since it's been given the imprimatur of Patrick McCarthy, the best English biographer of Celine.

3 people found this helpful

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Mark Nadja

So much to hate, so little time

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2007

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Celine is at it again in *Fable for Another Time,* this time spitting and spewing from a Danish prison cell where he's been thrown while the French try to decide what to do with him--pardon him, or execute him for collaborating with the Nazis. For his part, Celine maintains his innocence and shows no remorse for anything--instead he's filled with characteristic disgust and bitterness at the hypocrisy of those who condemn him. The personal vendettas indulged in here in scathing diatribes risk turning *Fable* into a scandalous gossip column about people long dead and who the average reader needs extensive footnotes to even identify. This is always the risk of Celine's later work, especially when he turns his attention from the rottenness of the human race as a whole, and focuses on the rottenness of particular specimens instead.

In *Fable,* Celine attacks his enemies against a refrain of lamentation of the hardships of prison life--the bellowing lunatic in the next cell, chronic constipation ((he hasn't gone in two weeks as he never tires of telling us--so you can only imagine the mood he's in!)), hunger, and constant physical threat, as well as loneliness, hopelessness, and grinding mental and physical collapse. But it's not all gloom and doom from the pit. As Celine himself remarks, he's full of humor--jokes and gags are his specialty, just what the doctor ordered, the way Celine transcends the horror and injustice. He interrupts his pell-mell narrative with periodic sales pitches to an imaginary readership to buy *Fable* --and to buy it often. Three or four copies per reader aren't too many! The general public, though, he sadly acknowledges, reads only mindless garbage. A long soliloquy on a preoccupation with rectal health and a fear of cancer is grimly hilarious, especially poignant if one tends to hypochondria--and tellingly metaphoric: we should all pull our heads out, if you catch my drift. And Celine's antic portrait of an infamously lecherous and legless Montmartre artist who has compromised even Celine's beloved Lili is perhaps the highlight of the entire volume.

Curiously, *Fable* combines what is best in Celine with what is weakest--at least from a contemporary reader's point of view. As a who's who of contemptuous stinkers of a bygone day it's always at the risk of arousing the apathy of old gossip about the largely forgotten. As a comic and picaresque adventure of peculiar characters and outrageous situations it's hugely entertaining. But it's as one man's indignant rant against the crumminess and inhumanity of humanity that it remains both hilarious and relevant. If you look even closer, you also see what is so often missed in Celine: the power of the human will to turn tragedy into comedy and to transmute life, if not into something actually worth living, at least into something a little more bearable. In that, Celine is priceless.

For a novel whose translator takes some pain in all but describing as untranslatable, one wonders what is missed from Celine's original. One suspects a lot--one fears Celine himself. Nonetheless, a text that Celine fans will want to read, *Fable for Another Time* contains enough of what is timeless in Celine to still be rewarding.

12 people found this helpful

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Michael T. Kelly

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2005

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Brilliant ! And very relevent to our day and age.

As the preface says - "for animals, for the sick, for prisoners".

Bebert the cat was the most sympathetic figure I could find in the book.

I couldn't book the book down.

5 people found this helpful

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Yellowdog

egotistical rant that quickly becomes tedious. I tried reading it word for word

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2016

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Nothing but a lengthy self-centered, egotistical rant that quickly becomes tedious. I tried reading it word for word, then found myself skipping many pages as I lost interest. A real waste of time.

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Mr. Bo

Not lost in translation!

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2004

One has to admire the courage of the translator. To tackle Celine's astonishing (poetic) raving and make it come through and together, so that you keep on reading, is quite an accomplishment.
Everything is here, au pair with the best of Celine's book-rants. What madness!
In retrospect, Celine defintely looms like one of the elect few grandmasters of the 20th century writing. Perhaps the greatest 20th centrury French author in the grand tradition going back to Rabelais and over to les poets maudits (Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire).
What raving genius!

12 people found this helpful

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Mark D. Ames

Straight From the Gods

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2003

Celine once wrote that those who don't imitate him are doomed, that he is Literature's favorite child. He's right. Fable for Another Time is proof. I'm in awe of this novel - it's a lot like the brilliant "Castle To Castle," only denser, perhaps too dense for a mass audience. He's at the peak of his literary talent here, but he's also been driven insane by his time in the Danish prison and the death sentence that hung over him in France, and that insanity hasn't yet settled down to the cranky humor of "Castle." A novel to re-read and re-read for the sheer pleasure, bile and beauty of it all.

22 people found this helpful

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Sara

Impressive!

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2003

I really enjoyed Fable For Another Time. If you are a big fan of Celine's work you will too! The book moves rapidly as the main character tells his tale of time spent in a prison. I think out of all of Celine's novels, the one shows the most about him.

9 people found this helpful

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