Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand D. Celine, Ralph Manheim ISBN: 0-8112-0847-8 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: February, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (75 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Work
Comment: In George Steiner's novella, The Portage to San Cristobel of A.H., Nazi hunters discover an aged Adolf Hitler living quietly in the Peruvian jungle. Their plan is to kill Hitler, however they offer him the chance to defend himself instead. He is defiant, reckless and taunts them. "I am an old man...You have made of me some kind of mad devil, the quintessence of evil, hell embodied. When I was, in truth, only a man of my time. Oh, inspired I grant you...with a nose for supreme political possibility. A master of human moods, perhaps, but a man of my time."
Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (Celine was a pseudonym) was, like Steiner's Hitler, certainly an inspired man of his time, perhaps terrifyingly so. Born in 1894 to a lowly Parisian family, he had a brutal childhood. Poor, dysfunctional, but recklessly ambitious, he longed to escape all that constrained him. He eventually found a release of sorts through the study of medicine and, after patriotically enlisting, in the trenches of the western front. He was seriously wounded and later decorated.
Celine's revulsion against his wartime experiences infused his debut, Journey to the End of Night (1934), perhaps the greatest work of nihilism, as well as one of the finest novels, of the century. The first hundred pages or so contain descriptions of the absurd carnage of war that few works, not even Erich Maria Remarque's, All Quiet on the Western Front, have matched. After the war, Celine qualified as a physician and traveled in French and Belgian colonial Africa before returning to work as a doctor among the urban poor of Paris.
Celine draws freely from his bank of experiences in Journey to the End of Night; the adventures of the hero-narrator, Fedinand Bardamu, mimic exactly those of the author himself. He travel from the "fiery furnace" of the western front to the screaming jungles of central Africa, and from New York to the slums of Paris. The engine of Celine's disgust is an irrational misanthropy. It is irrational because it is contradictory: those he scourges, he later pities; those he helps, he comes to despise.
In Ferdinand's despair at what industrialization and incipient democracy have done to the contemporary soul, we are reminded of the anguish of Nietzsche's raging free spirit, Zarathustra. Like Zarathustra, Fedinand rails against the instincts of mass man and of the "herd," then crowns himself with laughter. For without laughter he knows he is nothing. "Death is chasing you, you've always got to hurry, and while you're looking you've got to eat, and keep away from wars. That's a lot of things to do. It's no picnic."
In this astonishing book, Celine immerses the reader in a torrential flow of language--fragmented, coarse, street poetic, blackly comic and full of neologisms and ellipses. For this reason, one can only reap the full impact of Celine when he is read in the original French. He writes of suffering, debased lives and poverty with reckless abandon. His vision of humanity in thrall to its own weakness is utterly cynical. He leads his characters--Robinson, a romantic wanderer, conscripted soldiers, abused prostitutes--to the edge of the abyss, the pushes them over. As they fall we hear only the sad echo of their voices--and Celine's wild and raucous laughter.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Dose of Black Humor, Worthwhile In Every Way
Comment: "Journey" is generally considered to be the father of all black humor fiction. Celine's work flows onto the page not in a smooth and steady fashion, but chunky and uneven. Some of the situations the main character goes through are truly ridiculous (and semi-autobiographical)--and this is exactly what Celine was looking for.
The story itself is interesting. It tells of the journeys of a single man through war and the world it puked up afterwards.
I bought the book because so many authors noted it as one of their influences. This includes Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22" and WWII soldier, as well as many others. Coming from a Jewish background, finding out that Celine was anti-Semitic did not change my views of the book itself. I found no hint of this in this piece of fiction.
In many cases, Celine's words on the page seem as if they're screaming at you with emotion. It's this way of conveying feelings that was so new in his works and copied now so frequently. The less you notice it, the more modern books you've read using these techniques. It's definitely a worthwhile read.
Rating: 5
Summary: I see the light...
Comment: In South America there is a tribe of Indians that designate who is to be a shaman or medicine man upon birth. The child is removed from its parents and taken high up the mountain to live with an old and wise shaman, who will be his teacher and guide. For the first 18 years of the child's life he is not permitted to leave the hut during the day or look upon the daylight. The child only observes the world vieled in darkness and illuminated the the stars and moon. On his 18th birthday, the shaman throws open the door at dawn, as the sun is casting its first glorious rays upon the jungle, and guides the child into the light. He turns to the child and says, "Now you see the world for what it truly is."
For me, reading Celine was like the child's journey to wisdom. I have read a lot of books and authors, including Russian, German, French, American, English, Central American, and South American, but nothing as profound and moving as this work. Other authors I would recommend are Rimbaud, Henry Miller, Bukowski, and Henrich Boll.
 |
Title: Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand D. Celine, Buchanan, Ralph Manheim ISBN: 0811200175 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Paul Auster, Robert Bly ISBN: 0374525285 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 28 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Ask the Dust by John Fante, Charles Bukowski ISBN: 0876854439 Publisher: Black Sparrow Press Pub. Date: June, 1980 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: North by Ralph Manheim, Louis-Ferdinand D. Celine ISBN: 1564781429 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski ISBN: 0876855575 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: September, 1982 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
