He expresses a point of view: for him life is scandalous, he is disgusted with it. Yet the author is not a curious exploiter, offering scandal merely. All critics must emphasize the vulgarity, the coarseness, the horror of the work. (.) But the book artistically seems important and it will be studied by those seriously interested in how the modern novel develops. Céline's strange book, though it was most eagerly received in France, will probably not stir up the same enthusiasm here. It increased the French language to a greater degree than anything since the works of Rabelais, and stands with Joyce's Ulysses as the most important novel of wordplay in modern times." - Andrew Sinclair, The Times "The classic Journey to the End of the Night has been unavailable in a hardbound edition for too long.Manheim, however, is racier and verbally more enterprising than the inhibited Marks, and has also tried to liven up the punctuation, to take his version closer to a spoken English." - John Sturrock, London Review of Books It doesn't have the urgency or virtuosity of the French, but then no translation of Céline ever will. (.) Manheim's is only the second translation of the novel to have been made, so the question is simple: does it improve on the John Marks version of 1934 ? Unquestionably it does.
Céline re-created spoken French as a written form, and he did so because he so loathed respectability: he is a wonderful exponent of slang, of bawdy and of popular syntax, all of them as a corrective to the hypocrisy of received usage, that bland embellishment of a vile world. And the hardest to resist for this is a novel to do with persuasion, written in an aggressive yet insidiously rhythmic spoken French, able both to scandalise and charm its first, genteel readers. " Journey to the end of the night is a novel in the first person, and in what a first person: that of Bardamu, the most blackly humorous and disenchanted voice in all of French literature.It's a cynical and angry spit at the world, related in prose that spikes and jabs all the way through." - Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday "If Parade's End is a chronicle of the First World War by a Tory modernist, then this is an account of the same subject by a cross between Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac.It is also witty and once the reader has started on the headlong journey, it is very difficult to jump off the train." - Antony Rouse, Daily Telegraph (.) Journey to the End of the Night is immensely powerful. It convinces the reader absolutely that the author has lived life at the bottom of the heap. "It is anti- more or less everything you like to mention.Also translated by Ralph Manheim (1983).French title: Voyage au bout de la nuit.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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