Reading in the Time of Monsters 013 - Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Milton Hindus with Drew Flanagan

Reading in the Time of Monsters

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Reading in the Time of Monsters 013 - Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Milton Hindus with Drew Flanagan

Peter Berard

Sep 22, 2023

On this RITTOM we discuss the great and vile Louis-Ferdinand Celine! We here at RITTOM reject the cop-outs criticism deploys to avoid uncomfortable dealing with great artists who have done monstrous things. Celine was one of the greaters writers of his time and still highly readable today- Celine was a scabrous anti-semite, fascist, and self-serving liar. My friend and historian of France Drew Flanagan and I discuss the life and legacy of Celine in part through the lens of one of his most important American interlocutors, Milton Hindus, a man in a position many of us might find familiar when it comes to admire troubling artists.

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Reading in the Time of Monsters

The old world is dying; the new one cannot be born; now is the time of monsters. What better time to read, and read seriously? Every pedant on the internet thinks they're a critic because they have cultural preferences and their various streaming and social media services encourage them to state these preferences in little boxes. But some of us think criticism is something more. We know that criticism implies a way of being- a rejection of complacence, a dedication to searching high, low, and in between for insight and perspective, a constant development of the critical toolkit. Not only does that way of being point towards a better existence, but it also makes for criticism that's more fun to read. That's the gambit of this podcast- that there's an audience for something other than same-same mediocrity and parasocial agreement-clubs.

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