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Ron Peters's Reviews > Journey to the End of the Night
Journey to the End of the Night
by
by
“That is perhaps what we seek throughout life, that and nothing more, the greatest possible sorrow so as to become fully ourselves before dying.” ― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
For me, though it is very good in random spots, Céline’s style was engaging for 150 pages, not 450. By the final 25% of this book, I was bored.
This is the first in a largely autobiographical two-novel set; it was followed in 1936 by Death on the Installment Plan (Mort à credit). Le Monde ranked this 6th on its list of 100 novels of the 20th century, and The Guardian included it in its list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, but it has always had a mixed critical reception.
Wikipedia has it right: “Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) reflects a pessimistic view of the human condition in which suffering, old age, and death are the only eternal truths. Life is miserable for the poor, futile for the rich, and hopes for human progress and happiness are illusory.”
Modernist writers often had a nihilistic view of the world, strong anti-war tendencies, and a revulsion for inequity and the hypocrisy and superficiality of social mores. In terms of the social underworld, the Twenties and Thirties had Modernists and Mobsters, the Forties and Fifties had Hipsters and Hell’s Angels, then the Sixties believed it had invented everything by itself.
Like John Dos Passos in the USA Trilogy and Alfred Döblin in Berlin Alexanderplatz, Céline makes extensive use of dialect, underworld slang, and casual obscenity. His descriptions of World War One reminded me of Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. At times he falls into a kind of manic, chanting style that also made me think of Kurt Vonnegut. The description of the Chicago Ford factory reminded me of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.
For me, though it is very good in random spots, Céline’s style was engaging for 150 pages, not 450. By the final 25% of this book, I was bored.
This is the first in a largely autobiographical two-novel set; it was followed in 1936 by Death on the Installment Plan (Mort à credit). Le Monde ranked this 6th on its list of 100 novels of the 20th century, and The Guardian included it in its list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, but it has always had a mixed critical reception.
Wikipedia has it right: “Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) reflects a pessimistic view of the human condition in which suffering, old age, and death are the only eternal truths. Life is miserable for the poor, futile for the rich, and hopes for human progress and happiness are illusory.”
Modernist writers often had a nihilistic view of the world, strong anti-war tendencies, and a revulsion for inequity and the hypocrisy and superficiality of social mores. In terms of the social underworld, the Twenties and Thirties had Modernists and Mobsters, the Forties and Fifties had Hipsters and Hell’s Angels, then the Sixties believed it had invented everything by itself.
Like John Dos Passos in the USA Trilogy and Alfred Döblin in Berlin Alexanderplatz, Céline makes extensive use of dialect, underworld slang, and casual obscenity. His descriptions of World War One reminded me of Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. At times he falls into a kind of manic, chanting style that also made me think of Kurt Vonnegut. The description of the Chicago Ford factory reminded me of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.
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