Celine's disgust with human folly, malice, greed and the chaotic state in which man has left society lies behind the bitterness that distinguishes his idiosyncratic, colloquial and visionary writing and gives it its force. Told in the first person by Celine's fictional alter ego Bardamu, the novel is loosely based on the author's own experiences during the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA and, later, as a young doctor in a working-class suburb in Paris.
First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. Celine's disgust with human folly, malice, greed and the chaotic state in which.
It's obscene, rock-bottom laughter, disabused of all idealism, that provides the tonic Céline speaks of.First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. The blackest comedies can baffle readers not trained, or just unwilling, to recognise the comic in human extremis. But, the interest of those he influenced aside, Céline’s novel remains as readable and vital today as it was in the 1930s. But the influences do not stop there: one cannot help but appreciate the palpable influence that the author's anti-war invective and defence of cowardice had on Joseph Heller's Yossarian and Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim respectively. He wasn't the first French writer to use a colloquial style, but he was the first to use it so relentlessly and powerfully, to create a brand, the rant, whether it was delirious, lyrical or raging.Ĭéline’s expletive-laden, first-person narration influenced Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski and Beat poetry. Born in the shadow of entrenched realism and naturalism, Céline ripped up the textbook.
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