Céline

I've got a few books by Louis-Ferdinand Céline from the library at the moment. I wanted Journey to the end of the night, but some bastard has nicked it. Instead, I'm reading Death on credit. It's pretty good.

Here's a nice quote from the preface to one of the others I've got:

Here Céline turns upside down what authors of every epoch have done when they seek to reconcile the reader to him, to make him a friend. Céline treats the reader as an adversary, and vice versa. For him, the important thing is that there should be between him and the reader an emotional link. For that, hostility will do just as well as complicity (athletes and soldiers speak of 'seeking contact').

I'd go further. Hostility will not 'do just as well as complicity', it is preferable to.

Hostile!

('Wanker!' comes the call from the cheap seats.)