Journey to the End of the Night

This writer changed literature. From his writings, Journey and Death on Credit are ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENTS for the canon that is contemporary literature. Without Celine, we would have no basis on which to rest Kerouac, we would be missing, dare I say, Kurt Vonnegut as we know him. This writer influenced them all. You can not help but hate him in his manifest destiny of dismal sadness. Nothing is good enough for him, he is cynical, sees life as ultimately humiliating. He does have moments of joy. Moments of immense pleasure. But he undoubtedly is so honest, in such a breathtaking cacophony of seriously detailed life-description, that he just blew the lid off the whole prim, proper experience that was "literature". Without him, you'd think Bukowski invented it. Bukowski is good, but Celine did it first, and perhaps, better.

"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.

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.

Voyage au bout de la Nuit is a haunting masterpiece. It is impossible to finish this opus without having its images prance through your mind- his first encounter with Robinson during the war, his time in the psychiatric center in Paris to be cured by "patriotism" (of all the cures out there), his amusing boat trip to Africa, his riverboat captain who remitted his earnings in the colony to his sick little niece in France whom he had never met and the spellinding denouement of the journey. The character studies that appear in this work are of the same high quality as Balazac- Celine's brilliant sarcastic sense of humor brings a ray of light to the darkness of the work. He seems to always make just the right observation in every scene. As bizarre a statement as it may be with respect to a work by Celine, there were moments where I could not help myself from laughing aloud. The recurrent themes of the night, travel and Robinson (I am still not sure if Robinson was real or a product of bardamu's delerium), provide a coherent structure that is internally consistent for a book that at first glance seems devoid of any structure. A number of the criticisms of this book on this site missed the mark. One reviewer complained the story lagged after the African part. I would agree that the most entertaining part of the book is the African section and World War I (Celine's descriptions of this war are even better than Remarque's), but the "journey" could not end there because Bardamu had yet to learn anything about life. It is not any single experience, including the finale, that taught him life lesson's, but by observing people and most importantly, following in the steps of Robinson. As for those who point to Celine's cynicism and utter pessimism, I think they read a different novel than I did, because Bardamu, in my estimation, wanted nothing more than to find more meaning in life than he did. I would strongly advise people who read French to read it in its original language, since word choice and style are so important for Celine. Journey to the End of the Night is a book that I will be able to pick up time and time again to reread even just a few pages at a time with a wry smile on my face.

Ah, Celine, Celine, how can anyone read this book and not laugh out loud at this least 10 times a chapter? What lightning fast wit the narration possesses. Leave it to the french to spawn an inspiration that lasts thru the ages like this has. Great things to say about the hollowness of patriotism, everyday mundane existence, and even flea counting! The fact that it's so funny in the midst of all its pessimism is proof that Celine has his moments of true compassion. He understood exactly what was going on. And maybe after you're done reading this, you will, too.
A rare, and all too knowing literary treat.

Twelve years after reading Journey, after being turned onto him by Kurt Vonnegut (see his homage to Celine in a chapter of "Palm Sunday"), I still pick it up and thumb through it and relive the bizarre, twisting/turning ride the main character takes. I thought back then after finishing it, "whoa! where have I just come from?" It definitely takes you where you havn't gone before. Quite a departure from your normal read. I found the underlying theme of destiny similar to Les Miserables, though in this case destined depressingly nowhere. Read this and tell yourself "you think you're having a bad day?"

There is nothing like an amateur critic of literature to 'attempt' to debase one of the most important books of the 20th century. It is obvious that he is incapable of truly understanding what Celine was trying to state in his book. This book was not "revolutionary" in the sense that it wanted to eradicate modern society for a better social ideal, it was only revolutionary in the way it changed language, which by now, after having his ideas pilfeered again and again, seems so standard. He then goes on to state that there are "no commendable sentiments expressed", what exactly does that mean? I could go on and on but I suggest he stick with his prosaic Anne Rice novels.

There is nothing like an amateur critic of literature to 'attempt' to debase one of the most important books of the 20th century. It is obvious that he is incapable of truly understanding what Celine was trying to state in his book. This book was not "revolutionary" in the sense that it wanted to eradicate modern society for a better social ideal, it was only revolutionary in the way it changed language, which by now, after having his ideas pilfeered again and again, seems so standard. He then goes on to state that there are "no commendable sentiments expressed", what exactly does that mean? I could go on and on but I suggest he stick with his prosaic Anne Rice novels.

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.

Four years of college taught me that not only does the ivory tower have no idea what makes good literature, they couldn't care less; they'll erase truly talented writers from the history books if they wander off the plantation. Case in point: the 20th century's most reviled and imitated novelist, Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Ask an English professor about Céline and half of them will have no idea who you're talking about, and the other half will react like you just snapped off a Hitler salute. I still remember how my junior year Early American Lit professor reacted when I told her I was reading Rigadoon: "Wasn't Céline a Nazi?"

I may be biased on this front, but Céline is arguably the finest Western novelist of the past hundred years. With the publication of this, his debut novel, in 1931, Leon Trotsky wrote that Céline "had walked into the pantheon of great literature like a man walks into his living room." But with the rise of Nazi Germany, Céline made the fatal error of becoming a fascist, and like magic, he was suddenly a non-person in the world of books. Of course, he wasn't alone in joining the losing team; Ezra Pound gave anti-Semitic propaganda speeches on Italian radio and was arrested for treason when the war ended. But Pound is still taught in the universities while Céline is a leper.

Don't give me the argument that it's because of Pound's influence on literature, because Céline was just as influential if not more. Numerous writers up to the present day have mimicked or outright ripped off the bad doctor, from the good (Bukowski, Miller, Burroughs, Houellebecq) to the awful (Kesey, Heller, Vonnegut). It's not hard to see why when you pick up Journey to the End of the Night. Like Mark Twain, the first great American novelist, Céline is less of a formal writer than a storyteller: he pulls you into his world as assuredly as your best friend bragging about the crazy adventures he had last night. His prose explodes with energy and life, never shying away from the dirty details, holding you captive in its grotesque grip. So the quality of Céline's writing has nothing to do with his being blacklisted from the curriculum.

Nope, the reason why Pound is still loved and Céline is hated is because the latter was honest. Like all popular hacks, Pound was a better entrepreneur than a writer, a charmer who knew how to say all the right things at all the right times. Like the trendy lefties who lined up to root for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War while they were disemboweling Catholic priests, Pound converted to fascism because he thought they were the winning side, then staged a public repentance to avoid having to face a firing squad. Céline, the poor sincere bastard, never surrendered to the jeering hordes. An open supporter of the Vichy regime and author of anti-Semitic pamphlets, Céline wore his convictions on his sleeve even when public opinion shifted against them. He went to the grave without apologizing for or recanting anything he'd ever written.

But more than that, Céline is persona non grata in the literary world because he alone confronted the nihilism and emptiness of the post-WWI West. Oh sure, Fitzgerald and Hemingway wrote about the aimlessness of the Lost Generation, but they were strictly amateur hour, bedtime stories for the kids. Céline was dead serious. His books were glorified accounts of his own life, with the boring bits taken out and new details added in. In Journey to the End of the Night, he grabs you by the back of the neck, shoves your face in it and doesn't let go.

Journey begins with Céline's protagonist, Ferdinand Bardamu, shooting the breeze with his buddy in 1910′s Paris. Bardamu joins in a passing military parade to mock his patriotic countrymen and ends up being drafted into the war. Deserting the front lines, he flees into the jungles of French colonial Africa to escape punishment. Bardamu's bizarre odyssey takes him all the way to New York City, Detroit to work for Ford and fall in love with a prostitute, and finally back to France where he establishes a medical practice caring for poor Parisians who are always looking for ways to cheat him. Along the way, he is continuously dogged by Robinson, an off-and-on-again friend whose own escapades never end happily.

By Célinean standards, Journey is mild stuff, a gateway drug for his later nihilism. As is the nature of geniuses, however, even his less-exemplary works are miles ahead of everyone else. The translation by Ralph Manheim does a fantastic job of preserving the unpretentiousness and humor of the original French, as shown by the excerpt where Bardamu runs into a communal toilet in New York.

One thing that annoys me about this edition of Journey is the glossary. Céline's writing was steeped in the vernacular of interwar France, and he frequently employed wordplay that doesn't accurately translate into English. For example, in an early part of the book where Bardamu is recovering in an army hospital, he shares a room with a Sergeant Branledore, whose name is derived from branler, the French verb "to masturbate." Instead of using footnotes, this edition forces you to flip to the back of the book whenever you come across an asterisked term. But this is a minor ding and won't stop you from enjoying yourself.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, unfortunately unknown to most americans, is a celebrated 20th century French writer.

A radical account and point of view of an honest human being who values life above all else; above nationalism and moral virtues... during WW1. This theme, verily present in Journey, is in some sense why Celine is associated with Nietzsche. Celine's second novel, Death on Credit, is part 2 of the story of Bardamu, the main character and the narrator of this book.

Some readers will no doubt disparage Celine's Journey to the End of the Night for its pessimistic and misanthropic leanings. Nonetheless, I found that beneath the stark, unsettling realism of its prose lies a keen insight to all things human. Celine's brand of compassion (like Nietzsche's, Bukowski's and Vonnegut's) is difficult for many people to stomach: amoral, apolitical, and undeniably, but necessarily, outrageous. It is the outrageousness of Celine's ideas, embodied in the novel's anti-hero, Bardamu, that I find most valuable. His incessant rantings and ravings, his unfaltering nihilism, his petulance, and his self-induced, overall miserableness excel in rocking us out of our boredom and complacency. This extremism forces us to revaluate our own morality, and reminds us of the importance of keeping life, death, and everything else, in perspective.

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.

I first heard about Celine through the many times his name was invoked by Bukowski, which may be true for a lot of American readers. While the two writers are actually very different, they both presented unremittingly bleak looks at humanity that were both lightened by unexpected humor. The pure tragicomic absurdity of life is laid bare in this memoir, and I can only wonder how much (or how little) is fictional. Some readers will probably dislike the heavy use of ellipses but I got used to it and stopped noticing after awhile. It may be some time before I tackle the follow-up to this book, "Death on the Installment Plan" but I'm sure I'll read it at some point.

I forced myself to finish this book just to burnish my coffee house credentials.

I think much of Celine's popularity among French readers is due to his style, his inventiveness with language and his wit. Most of that is lost in an English translation. Also, even today many French people still mistakenly assume he was a leftist, which he certainly was not.

So without the slangy wordplay what's left? An awful lot of negativity. Celine is basically saying, with a certain amount of humor, "Look, everyone is a s***. Look what bastards they are. It's ridiculous." And to a degree, "Poor me."

That point is made very early on in this "novel". 500 pages of complaining in this way was really too much.

Why hasn't everybody on earth read this book? What possible excuse can there be?

Celine is, as Camus would have it, a 'judge-penitent' - passing on his story in apparent innocence, so that you too may share the awful weight of his vision. And what vision! - Celine peels away the cant, the hypocrisy, the lily-livered wishful thinking to expose the wheedling, clacking human confusion beneath ... &, throughout, the vast indifference of man for man in our post-industrial age ...

"Help, help!" cries Bardamu, atop his New York hotel. No one notices.

I always thought that modern French literature began with Jean Paul Sartre or Albert Camus, but as I delved deeper into the understanding of subject, I found "Journey". I started reading it and I was captivated by it's brutal power and energy...I never read anything like it. It ranks with me the most significant piece of literature ever written.

Long live Celine! "Journey to the End of the Night" is as raucous, intimate and disturbingly human as any book written in the last hundred years. Imbued with a biting wit and a matchless diabolical mirth, Celine invites comparison with Nietzsche, H.L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce. Yes, he will--like all artists of the first rank--offend lesser individuals: Weak-minded, right-thinking junior college-educated halfwits who can't wait to sound off on their BORROWED opinions and State-sanctioned Politically Correct ideals. . . . And for this, I can't thanks Celine enough! Vive l'art!

Every lit major in America should read this wholly original and hilariously mad novel from Celine. A certifiably classic piece of literature. And influential to this day to boot. DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN is not as good, but still worth a shot. No wonder Bukowski loved this guy!!

I always thought, even though I use it myself, that reviews that starts with "I really wanted to like this book, but..." are odd. Who wouldn't like to enjoy the book he is about to read? There is a grain of truth to it, but I especially wanted to enjoy this book, chiefly because I liked the premise behind it. I admit that I wasn't able to finish this book, but I did read enough (200 pages) to realize that Celine's style and I won't be friends. Since different people enjoy different styles of writing, I won't try to convince anyone not to read this book. Just bear in mind the style is very raw and the author tends to jump from topic to topic. This was definitely not for me.

Intense compression of ideas, events, locale makes this the rare novel without any filler -- by turns harrowing and laugh-out-loud funny. Although I consider it the best case cowardice has ever made for itself, this is paradoxically a book for the brave: those with the courage, confronted with life's endless horror and hypocrisy, not to look the other way. Yes, I know it's best read in French, but don't let that stop you: a partly obscured glimpse of genius is better than no glimpse at all.

The only way one can truly appreciate Celine's work is to read it in French. If you read a translated version of one of his books, you only get a glimpse at the true genius he was (style has always been more important to Celine than the story itself...). For that, I envy those who master English enough to read Joyce: I've tried to read it in English but had to swich to the French translation. I resumed reading with a vague sentiment of frustration, feeling I had missed something... So much for the language barrier!

Celine being translated into English changed everything, if not everyone. I first read Celine on the insistence of Kerouac's ghost and was severely blown away. Vonnegut owes a debt to him. Burroughs owes him as well. It seems that every turn modern literature has taken owes a strange and unspoken debt to all that Celine has done. Despite his political misgivings or failings, his Christ-like gift to prose and the modern novel has been (since Vonnnegut) unparalleled.

[...] In solitude a young woman lies on her bed reading and underlining line after line by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Like the one that begins with "Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination." The electronic letter glides idly by the currents of the Mississippi, until it reminds itself that it is charged with a responsibility and therefore must make its delivery to the other side of the country. And so the email slides pass West Virginia and New Jersey, and twists upward toward Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, passing towns with names that come straight out of an eighth-grade American history survey-book. [...] --from "Passages"

Celine is one of the 20th century's great writers? Hardly. Granted, I read the book in English, but I have to imagine that the translator served his author well. A good part of my dissatisfaction with Celine's wearing and wearying jeremiad against society is due to my age. If I were 20 (the time when one is most susceptible to his sort of French anomie), I probably would have loved it. Now that I'm 43, I think Celine is full of merde. I remember reading in a biography of Allen Ginsberg that he and William Burroughs (I think it was Burroughs) once visited Celine to pay him homage. If I had visited Celine, it would have been to belt him in the mouth. Celine rants incessantly against human cruelty, yet was a notorious Nazi collaborator. That aside, 400-plus pages of the snide whinings of a reprehensible, morally insolvent jerk really taxed my patience. Celine also stretched my credulity; I found it hard to believe his narrator was a doctor (which Celine was, too). Working my way to the end of this book was a chore I never want to repeat. I give the book one star because I thought the scenes in Africa were fairly interesting. Overall, though, Journey to the End of the Night is one of the worst novels I've ever read. Getting through it chapter by chapter was definitely Death on the Installment Plan.

A masterpiece absolutely unique in its style,narrative mode and darkness...

This book doesn't leave you unharmed but what an unbelievable experience if you have a minimum of maturity.This is mere intelligence,humor and of course dreadful ( and unfortunately largely justified) pessimism.

But the biggest paradox of " le voyage" is that such and incredible talent makes you at the end of the day believe in the human nature

One of the problems with reading revolutionary books long after their initial publication is that they often don't seem so, well... revolutionary. Such is the case with Céline's semi-autobiographical masterpiece-a 440 page behemoth that despite lively scenes here and there is very often tedious and boring. I gather that much of the controversy around it at the time was with regards to its use of "naturalistic" and "vulgar" language and slang (perhaps akin to the love/hate critical reaction to Scottish authors like James Kelman and Irvine Welsh in the late part of the century). While it may have represented a profound stick in the eye of literary conventions back in 1932, it certainly hasn't retained any capacity to shock or surprise in that regard. If you're a fan of the dark side of 20th century popular literature as represented by those such as Henry Miller, Bukowski, Kerouac, Burroughs, Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, et al (notice that you'll find no women on this list), you find it an interesting read just to see where they got some of their sensibilities, but otherwise it gets old fast.
The problem with the book is not that there aren't commendable sentiments expressed at times. The opening section where the hero Bardamu enlists in WWI provides many ripe target for Céline to skewer. Similarly, the subsequent section on his adventures in colonial Africa are tailor-made to set up long bouts of righteous ranting and farcical satire (Although everything is based on his own experiences, at times one gets the feeling Céline read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" a few too many times). Throughout the adventures, the hero Bardamu rants continuously about how
everyone is engaged in selling themselves and being false in order to prosper-that modern life is a lie, underneath it all, it's disgusting, that people are disgusting. It should be noted that the only two characters who aren't subject to Bardamu's withering scorn are the two truly selfless ones: the prostitute in Detroit who tries desperately to help him, and the guy at the end who does everything to send money to an orphaned niece. Céline acknowledges that these people exist (barely), but seems unable to know what to do with them-other than not sneer at them.
Yes it's a dark, black read that holds nothing sacred. Is it life-changing? Certainly not for me, and I'd be hard pressed to understand how it could be for any reasonably intelligent, critically thinking person today. In the 1930s maybe, but today? In the end the book reminded me of nothing so much as The Catcher in the Rye, another book I find dated and overrated to the extreme.

author wallows in self-imposed spiritual bankruptcy. He made his own Hell on earth. I have not a scintilla of sympathy.. This shows you what becomes of you when you neglect the Christian virtues. and become a self absorbed neurotic. Wish the store would refund my money. what a waste of time and money

I guess like many American readers, I first became interested in Celine by way of Bukowski. It was a mistake to begin the book with expectations of similarity in terms of style or content, but I quickly warmed to this great author's totally unique voice and view of the world. The ability to combine outrageous humor with the grimmest subject matter imaginable is a rare talent, and Celine had it in spades. I'm quite sure this is one book I will be revisiting often in the future.

I first read the journey when serving the army back in Yugoslavia. Everything around me didn't make much sense, even though others seemed to think so. Then I read the journey and felt like I was the one really understanding. I've read the book couple of times since and still adore it. Only Fante, Hamsun, Kafka and sometimes Buk can reach up to Celine.

a great read. heard of him by reading bukowski. You might also like MILFS GILFS and Trailer Park Women by Joe Crunk, MILFS GILFS and Trailer Park Women

This piece of translated French literature is not easy to read. It asks lots of questions of the reader who has to work hard to decipher the text. But this is a reflection of the original. The French text is difficult to read, and requires input from the reader as well. Stick with it, because it is a literary masterpiece, unveiling a world that is not normally available to an English audience.

I am reading "Journey" for the third time, after it spent three years on my shelves. It still explodes with inimitable flames of sardonic humor. I am sending it to a friend who can appreciate the deadly verbal fusillades that Celine so deftly casts at the mediocities and selfishness of modern society.

Celine belongs to the school of such literary dynamitards as Lautremont and Henry Miller. "Journey Into the End of the Night", which has been acclaimed as one of the most subversive and radical books of the twentieth century, however, fails to match either Lautremont or Miller in terms of content or style. Though it's fuelled by the same spirit of discontent and loathing of humanity, Celine's effort is an unmistakably drab and plodding in comparison. His writing fails to exude the aroma of malice so potently diffused by the "Chants du Maldoror"; nor does it measure up to the pyrotechnic displays of imagery that characterise Miller's "Tropic of Cancer". Those who expect the same of Celine will be sorely disappointed. The wearisome plot involves the reflections and tribulations of an insipid hero as he progresses from being a corporal in the First World War, onto his experiences in French colonial Africa and his poverty in Europe and America. All this is told in the driest prose, through 400+ pages that duly tax the reader's attention. Celine's descriptions of war, greed, folly and degradation sound as those of a man of the left, though he was eventually to become a vehement right-winger (like so many men of his generation) and an apologist of Nazism. Not only does his writing not reach the scale and quality of Miller, his descriptions of disease and atrocity in the tropics are even surpassed by the likes of such pro-Establishment birds as Joseph Conrad in his "Heart of Darkness"; similarly, his account of poverty is far inferior to George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London". It is mystifying how such an incorrigibly poor writer could have risen to a position of such importance among lterary critics and connossieurs.

Céline has understood everything about writing novels. He built his own style, inimitable, a revolution in world literature. His first novel shows his works at its beginning until he reaches the summit with "North".

This is a great book. Recommended by Kurt Vonnegut in Palm Sunday and by me. It is one catastrophe after another, so that the reader is disgusted or appalled or disheartened but can't wait to see what adventure happens next.

I first read this book during my freshman year in college. That was in 1990 - I have read it at least once a year since. I am a voracious reader, ingesting well over a hundred books each year and have not yet found another book that resonates with so much energy, grit, and beauty.

ok... yeah... celine's writing has influenced me... and maybe I'm ashamed... of my admission... he's really not that great... but he's entertaining... his pamphlets, however are probably not entertaining (My French poor at best/translations never fair)... I think LF knows where I'm coming from...don't let political idealism get to your heart (nor head nor soul)... and don't let yourself be used by politicians nor try too hard at rock stardom... racism...anti this anti that pro hate CAN NEVER EVER BE TOLERATED ---- seriously...I GUESS I'M NOT REALLY THAT FUNNY... BLOWN MY COVER... oops

Celine is often lumped together with Henry Miller (who admired him), but Celine is the better writer, at least in Journey to the End of the Night. (And in Ralph Manheim's translation.) Like Miller, Celine writes about Paris and his relations with women. However Celine was a soldier and a doctor and saw much more of life and Paris than Miller ever did. This is a funny and sad novel that was very influential and, in fact, inspired Joseph Heller to write Catch 22.

Celine has a knack for making esoteric pseudo-philosophical observations about his own life and trying to apply them to everyone's life. The topics of these observations can be quite banal and only serve to distract, quite purposefully I assume, from the hollow plot. The introduction of the deus ex machina, Robinson, halfway through the book is when the descent to atrocity is reached. It's as if Celine ran out of ideas and was forced to contrive the last half of the book.

This is in response to all the people who bashed "Journey". Celine is the greatest writer of the past 2000 years and if you can't appreciate him you obviously have no taste or feeling for great writing. If you want something safe and predictable (ie "uplifting") then go read John Updike or Toni Morrison. "Journey" deserves its reputation and for anyone to rehash Celine's "collaboration" is incredibly lame. You've got to know something about the Celine's politics and Europe at the time before you start parroting some PC tripe. Here's to Celine, a true poet of the 20th century.

BEEING A DOCTOR LIKE CELINE, AND AN OCCUPATIONAL DOCTOR, I CONSIDER THIS BOOK THE FIRST ANLYSIS AND DESCRIPTION OF THE ONSET OF BURNOUT SYNDROME IN A DOCTOR (CONSIDER THAT THE TERM BURNOUT APPEARED IN 1974)AND IS EXPLICATIVE OF THE NIHILISM AND THE SELFDESTROYING NARCISISM THAT LEADED A MAN VOTED TO HUMANITY TOWARD ODIOUS BEHAVIOUR

Celine seems like the attempt here was to write 'the' great coming of age/teen angst novel, but instead, published the stuff from his wastebasket. This is as poor of a storyline as this 'book' ever develops. It's impulsive and boring at the same time, timid and defiant against only the reader. Unless you are buying this for the sheer challenge of completing a miserably confused and malleable author's diary, I recommend ANY OTHER BOOK.

OH BUT HIS WRITING! HOW BRILLIANT! PERCHANCE EXCEPT L.F. CELINE IS TEDIOUSLY LONG-WINDED, A ANTI-SEMITIC WW 2 FRENCH ACTIVE COLLABORATIONATIST AND PROUD OF IT. I THINK - I TRIED - I SHALL CONTINUE TO PASS. READ THIS ONE BOOK OF HIS IF YOU MUST.