Guignol's band - Exemplaire de Pierre Mac Orlan

First edition on ordinary paper.

Half black long-grain morocco binding, smooth spine tooled in palladium with author, title, and date, anthracite-grey paper boards, original wrappers and spine preserved (the latter with two small stains at head and foot), endpapers and pastedowns of anthracite-grey paper, binding signed Thomas Boichot.

Precious and exceptional signed presentation inscription by Louis-Ferdinand Céline: "A Mac Orlan son admirateur et ami fidèle. LFerd"

Twelve years his senior, Louis-Ferdinand Céline regarded Pierre Mac Orlan as one of his principal literary masters. The latter's fantasy novels provided an ideal framework for Céline's distinctive style.

In a 1937 pamphlet, Céline openly expressed his admiration for Mac Orlan's work: "And Mac Orlan! He had foreseen it all, and put it all to music, thirty years ago." Until 1944, the two men would meet in Gen Paul's Montmartre studio on Avenue Junot, Céline as a habitué, Mac Orlan as a more occasional visitor. This friendship, which Céline describes as "faithful" in this inscription, was not one-sided. In 1950, Mac Orlan came to the defense of his "disciple," who had been condemned by the French courts:

"Few writers can escape the rigorous logic of social criticism. The French Republic, ours, the freest the world can know at this moment, must work to ease hatreds."

Céline, 1944-1961: Cavalier de l'Apocalypse, Unpublished letter from Mac Orlan, February 15, 1950.

A superb inscription from Céline to one of his literary mentors, Pierre Mac Orlan, whom he encountered in Gen Paul's studio during the interwar period and the Occupation.