Honestly kind of jumbled. I was kind of disappointed as I read and later found out about the author's controversial ideals which made it even worse. It honestly seems like he just wanted to have a story to tell with all of this and kept making his own trouble. ( )

I battled through this novel, at first because I was on a train and had no other options (except not reading, which isn't an option) then out of sheer stubborn I’ve-started-so-I’ll-damn-well-finish. I can’t remember how ‘Journey to the End of the Night’ found itself on my reading list or who recommended it to me. For the most part, I found it to be a baffling tirade, nihilistic, splenetic, revolting, and tending to no definite conclusion. The reader reluctantly trails Ferdinand the narrator through the trenches, to the Belgian Congo, across the Atlantic to New York, to the grim banlieues of Paris, then finally to a mental hospital. The list of locales is as depressing as it sounds. I naively assumed that this novel would be about the First World War, in much the same way as I did with [b:A Farewell to Arms|10799|A Farewell to Arms|Ernest Hemingway|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1313714836s/10799.jpg|4652599]. In both cases, I was mistaken and bitterly disappointed as a result. Nonetheless, although Ferdinand the narrator is absolutely not an appealing figure, he has the edge over Hemingway’s Frederick due to self-awareness. Ferdinand knows that he is a hate-filled, hopeless, misogynistic, racist coward. Obviously that realisation doesn’t make him happy, as he spends the entire novel in an absolutely terrible mood. It’s still less enraging than Frederick’s point of view, though.

Where Hemingway does come out better, though, is in the quality of writing. I am tempted to ascribe this to the translation, as clearly the original French was colloquial and much of it is a stream of consciousness. Obviously that is always going to be difficult to faithfully yet comprehensibly translate. Sometimes it worked and there were phrases that I very much liked. Mostly it veered between pretentious, hilarious, and just plain bizarre. Maybe this was itself fully reflective of the original! I don’t know. Here is a sample paragraph which I think combines the awful and excellent aspects:

This body of ours, this disguise put on by common jumping molecules, is in constant revolt against the abominable farce of having to endure. Our molecules, the dears, want to get lost in the universe as fast as they can! It makes them miserable to be nothing but “us”, the jerks of infinity. We’d burst if we had the courage, day after day we come very close to it. The atomic torture we love so is locked up inside us with our pride.

Within that arbitrarily selected paragraph, I like the first sentence, especially the phrase ‘common jumping molecules’. The second sentence is marred by ‘the dears’ which seems like an odd choice by the translator. The third sentence then coins the phrase ‘jerks of infinity’, which doesn’t sound right to me either. I’d have gone for something stronger like ‘arseholes of infinity’. (Surely more vivid?) The fourth sentence is undistinguished, then the fifth seems like gibberish. Now that I think about it, perhaps the issue is inconsistency. Either the translator should have gone all-out with the profanity, or taken a more poetic, formal tone. The word ‘jerk’ is used so often and it has such a weak sound to it. (I’m curious to know what French word it stands in for; salaud?) This novel is evidently trying to provoke the reader, to repulse and disgust them. Strong words are called for, yet rarely included. The punctuation seems more faithful to the original, in that only French books seem to get away with such incredible overuse of ellipses and exclamation marks.

After finally getting through the last forty pages of the book whilst in the throes of an awful cold, I am in no mood to read either the foreword or the introduction, both of which doubtless opine on how excellent it is. I did read Céline’s own preface, though, in which he says that the book is vicious and should be suppressed. I’d have to agree with him on the former. Given the unpleasant effort required to read it, I cannot imagine it was anything other than torture to write. When finding myself utterly disenchanted with a supposed classic, I always wonder if I’m being stupid and reading it wrong. Still, it would be dishonest to say that I had anything other than very occasional glimmers of appreciation for this book. Angry male nihilism just gets on my nerves. ( )

Uno de esos escritores malditos e indispensables. Un verdadero clásico. ( )

"If someone tells you he's unhappy, don't take it on faith. Just ask him if he can sleep ... If he can, then all's well. That's good enough."

What causes sleep disruption? More OSA and old age than shell shock these days. Hyperarousal managed with sleep hygiene and melatonin; the personal constitution no longer thought to have once been revealed in oneiric pastiche — our unhappiest sleep best. Is Celine's phrase a question of being too deep to sleep, or merely not deep enough to sleep deep.

Of wanting to be Voltaire (Caesar), yet unable to write the resolution of Candide without the plot-resolving-murder-plot. This is the quiet form of Pessoa's despair, but for authors of edgy novels who have written themselves into a corner, "Wanting to go and die in Peking (and not being able to)" (Book of Disquiet.) Vonnegut sure was a piece of work for lapping this guy's coattails, huh? “[One] is as innocent of Horror [Edification] as one is of sex,” ( )

Ferdinand Bardamu has survived the horror of WWI. He then travels to Africa, America and finally back to Paris where he completes his medical studies and becomes an unsuccessful doctor. “I had a crummy past behind me, and already it was coming back at me like the belchings of fate.” In Africa he had met Leon Robinson, whose past is no better. The two continue to cross paths and finally end up working, and living together, in an asylum that Bardamu eventually takes charge of when the owner decides to travel the world.



The story is full of humor, mixed with horror; dark, dark humor. Humor born of hardship, perhaps exaggerated at times. Celine’s descriptions are otherwordly. In Africa: “Alcide under his enormous bell-shaped pith helmet, a chunk of head, the face of a small cheese, and below it the rest of him, floating in his tunic, lost in a strange white-trousered memory.” He has the gift of putting together words in a unique manner.



There’s so much dazzling writing here that it’s almost inhuman. “Nearly all a poor bastard’s desires are punishable by jail.” A New York City streetcar conductor is dressed “in the uniform of a Balkan prisoner of war.” And “Conversation with him could be kind of trying, because he had trouble with his words. He could find them all right, but he couldn’t get them out, they’d stay in his mouth making noises.”



A spectacular book that frowns on the human condition while making the most of it. ( )