“The bathers crowd around, all hysterical . . . The raging sea pounds me down to the bottom, then lifts me gasping to the surface . . . In a flashing moment I see that they’re discussing my agony . . . There they are, every imaginable color: green . . . blue, parasols, lavender ones, lemon-yellow ones . . . I whirl about in pieces . . . And then I don’t see a thing . . .”

—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1966.