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Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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5,987821,639 (4.18)176
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America, where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.… (more)
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» See also 176 mentions

English (46)  French (10)  Dutch (8)  Italian (7)  Spanish (2)  Catalan (2)  Hebrew (2)  Polish (1)  Finnish (1)  Swedish (1)  Danish (1)  All languages (81)
Showing 1-5 of 46 (next | show all)
Uno de esos escritores malditos e indispensables. Un verdadero clásico. ( )
  arturovictoriano | Mar 14, 2024 |
"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,( )
  Joe.Olipo | Jan 1, 2024 |
Στη Ριρή από Ειρήνη 2009
  Nikolas50 | Feb 2, 2023 |
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. ( )
  Hagelstein | Dec 12, 2022 |
3814. Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (read 18 Oct 2003) This is on the Guardian's list of the 100 greatest novels of all time put out on Oct 12, 2003--and I enjoy such lists and anything thereon not read by me is a temptation. I had read 66 of the works on the list and so read this, a 1932 novel telling of a cynical Frenchman who fights in World War I, gets out of the Army after being wounded, goes to Africa, New York, Detroit, and then returns to France and becomes a doctor. In the history of the novel it is an important work, its author having been described as "the strongest subterranean force in the novel today" and being credited with influencing Sartre, Henry Miller, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and the like. I am glad I read it so I know it, but that it was very enjoyable I will not claim. ( )
  Schmerguls | Oct 16, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 46 (next | show all)

» Add other authors (48 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Céline, Louis-Ferdinandprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Dubuffet, JeanCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kummer, E.Y.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Manheim, RalphTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mannerkorpi, JukkaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Marks, John H. P.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Schmidt-Henkel, HinrichTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tardi, JacquesIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vidal-Folch, EstanislauTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vollmann, William T.Afterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Our life is a journey through winter and night we look for our way in a sky without light. (Song of the Swiss Guards 1793)

Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.

It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so, and he's never wrong.

And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes.

It's on the other side of life.
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À Elisabeth Craig
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Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America, where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.

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