Gallimard drops Celine reprint plan after outcry

French publisher Gallimard has dropped the idea of reprinting three pamphlets written by the 20th century anti-semitic author Louis-Ferdinand Céline after the plan triggered a huge outcry.  
 
“In this name of my freedom as publisher and my sensitivity to my epoch, I suspend this project, considering that the conditions for the methodology and memory are not in place to consider it with serenity,” Antoine Gallimard, the publisher’s chairman and c.e.o., said in a statement to the news agency Agence France Presse (AFP).
 
The three pamphlets are Bagatelles pour un Massacre (1937), L’Ecole des Cadavres (1938) and Les Beaux Draps (1941).
 
But opinion was divided over whether Gallimard should go ahead with the project. “There are excellent reasons to detest the man, but you cannot ignore the writer nor his central place in French literature,” the daily newspaper Le Figaro quoted prime minister Edouard Philippe as saying.
 
American author Paul Auster said the decision not to reprint was “not a good idea.” Céline was “a great writer, who made errors of judgment, but I believe we should understand everthing about him, (…) even if it is shocking and disgusting,” he said, according to an online report from news magazine Le Point.