SOURCE: "Reading Céline," in Understanding Céline, University of South Carolina Press, 1992, pp. 5-15.

In the following essay, Solomon provides an overview of the major themes and characters in Céline's novels.

Céline preferred to think of himself as a stylist, but it would be more appropriate to consider his writings in terms of a particular vision of the human condition. Vision is a crucial concept in Céline's novels. Several of his novels begin with a unique pattern of opening signals. The narrator finds himself in a set of circumstances articulated by a mythologized head wound which results in his having perceptual distortions. These distortions self-consciously announce that the reader is entering the realm of fiction, whatever similarities—and there are many—will emerge between the author, the protagonist-turned-narrator, and the protagonist. In D'un château l'autre (1957, Castle to Castle), the narrator will refer to...