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Féerie pour une autre fois #2
Normance
"Celine's mastery in creating one of the truly cathartic experiences of contemporary literature is indisputable." Saturday Review
370 pages, Paperback
First published May 5, 1954
6 people are currently reading
303 people want to read
About the author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
160 books2,637 followersLouis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name of Dr. Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, is best known for his works Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night), and Mort à crédit (Death on the Installment Plan). His highly innovative writing style using Parisian vernacular, vulgarities, and intentionally peppering ellipses throughout the text was used to evoke the cadence of speech.
Louis-Ferdinand Destouches was raised in Paris, in a flat over the shopping arcade where his mother had a lace store. His parents were poor (father a clerk, mother a seamstress). After an education that included stints in Germany and England, he performed a variety of dead-end jobs before he enlisted in the French cavalry in 1912, two years before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. While serving on the Western Front he was wounded in the head and suffered serious injuries—a crippled arm and headaches that plagued him all his life—but also winning a medal of honour. Released from military service, he studied medicine and emigrated to the USA where he worked as a staff doctor at the newly build Ford plant in Detroit before returning to France and establishing a medical practice among the Parisian poor. Their experiences are featured prominently in his fiction.
Although he is often cited as one of the most influential and greatest writers of the twentieth century, he is certainly viewed as a controversial figure. After embracing fascism, he published three antisemitic pamphlets, and vacillated between support and denunciation of Hitler. He fled to Germany and Denmark in 1945 where he was imprisoned for a year and declared a national disgrace. He then received amnesty and returned to Paris in 1951.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Henry Miller, William Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski have all cited him as an important influence.
Translated Profiles:
Луи-Фердинанд Селин
Louis-Ferdinand Destouches was raised in Paris, in a flat over the shopping arcade where his mother had a lace store. His parents were poor (father a clerk, mother a seamstress). After an education that included stints in Germany and England, he performed a variety of dead-end jobs before he enlisted in the French cavalry in 1912, two years before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. While serving on the Western Front he was wounded in the head and suffered serious injuries—a crippled arm and headaches that plagued him all his life—but also winning a medal of honour. Released from military service, he studied medicine and emigrated to the USA where he worked as a staff doctor at the newly build Ford plant in Detroit before returning to France and establishing a medical practice among the Parisian poor. Their experiences are featured prominently in his fiction.
Although he is often cited as one of the most influential and greatest writers of the twentieth century, he is certainly viewed as a controversial figure. After embracing fascism, he published three antisemitic pamphlets, and vacillated between support and denunciation of Hitler. He fled to Germany and Denmark in 1945 where he was imprisoned for a year and declared a national disgrace. He then received amnesty and returned to Paris in 1951.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Henry Miller, William Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski have all cited him as an important influence.
Translated Profiles:
Луи-Фердинанд Селин
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 23, 2016
Céline is one of my favourite writers. It's his style that does it for me; I feel as if I could just about read anything by the man. The ranting of his later books seem to take on a life of its own and this vitriolic, bilious, hallucinatory prose can be compelling, although I must admit it can get a bit too much. I've had a similar effect reading de Sade or listening to someone like John Lydon ranting on.
I bought the Dalkey Archive translation as soon as it came out but for some reason just never got round to reading it, basically because I was waiting for the perfect time to read it. Well that time never came so I decided I just had to get round to reading it, especially as I hadn't read any Céline in a while.
An extra delay was introduced because I decided to re-read Féerie I before I read Normance (aka Féerie II) as I wasn't sure if they were closely connected. As it turns out, they aren't particularly conected and they can be treated essentially as separate books.
Féerie I is probably one of Céline's least accessible books as he rants and rants through the first 3/4 of the book. Céline typically takes a while to get going as he needs to spit out all the bile that's built up since his last book, but this seems a bit excessive. However, Féerie I suddenly takes off by about page 150 as he starts to concentrate on characters rather than just his own problems. Ok, so that's Féerie I...what about Normance? Well, the great thing about Normance is that it just kicks off right from the start...there's no pissing about, no preliminary waffle, he's straight into the 'action'.
Well, 'action' might be stretching it a bit as the book takes place in a house in Paris on a single night during an Allied bombing of the city. In fact the bombing goes on for about 240 pages. In this time the occupants of the building collect in a downstairs room and break into a cellar and find some booze...and the bombing continues. There's a lot of squabbling and fighting and pissing and puking...and the bombing continues. There are hallucinatory scenes as Céline describes Jules up on some balcony supposedly orchestrating the Allied bombing, or neighbouring houses are seen flying away into the sky, or huge crevices appear in the building, or the furniture dances round the building in time with the pounding of the bombs...and yes, the bombing continues.
It cycles round and round, the narrative seems to be going nowhere, the themes are repetitive and for any other writer this would be boring. Even though we have Céline narrating I did start to wonder if there was going to be any progression. I would guess that for many readers it may seem a bit too long and a little repetitive, but it's Céline's humour and sheer cussedness that makes it compelling nonetheless. Anyway, the bombing eventually stops and things calm down temporarily, but then things start to get weirder!
I was surprised just how brilliant this book was considering it was the last major work to be translated into English. I was expecting something similar to Féerie I, i.e. one for the purists only. However, with Normance Céline's post-war style was really taking shape and it's a good indicator to the books that will follow. In fact I'd suggest Normance as a brilliant taster for anyone interested in reading Céline.
I bought the Dalkey Archive translation as soon as it came out but for some reason just never got round to reading it, basically because I was waiting for the perfect time to read it. Well that time never came so I decided I just had to get round to reading it, especially as I hadn't read any Céline in a while.
An extra delay was introduced because I decided to re-read Féerie I before I read Normance (aka Féerie II) as I wasn't sure if they were closely connected. As it turns out, they aren't particularly conected and they can be treated essentially as separate books.
Féerie I is probably one of Céline's least accessible books as he rants and rants through the first 3/4 of the book. Céline typically takes a while to get going as he needs to spit out all the bile that's built up since his last book, but this seems a bit excessive. However, Féerie I suddenly takes off by about page 150 as he starts to concentrate on characters rather than just his own problems. Ok, so that's Féerie I...what about Normance? Well, the great thing about Normance is that it just kicks off right from the start...there's no pissing about, no preliminary waffle, he's straight into the 'action'.
Well, 'action' might be stretching it a bit as the book takes place in a house in Paris on a single night during an Allied bombing of the city. In fact the bombing goes on for about 240 pages. In this time the occupants of the building collect in a downstairs room and break into a cellar and find some booze...and the bombing continues. There's a lot of squabbling and fighting and pissing and puking...and the bombing continues. There are hallucinatory scenes as Céline describes Jules up on some balcony supposedly orchestrating the Allied bombing, or neighbouring houses are seen flying away into the sky, or huge crevices appear in the building, or the furniture dances round the building in time with the pounding of the bombs...and yes, the bombing continues.
It cycles round and round, the narrative seems to be going nowhere, the themes are repetitive and for any other writer this would be boring. Even though we have Céline narrating I did start to wonder if there was going to be any progression. I would guess that for many readers it may seem a bit too long and a little repetitive, but it's Céline's humour and sheer cussedness that makes it compelling nonetheless. Anyway, the bombing eventually stops and things calm down temporarily, but then things start to get weirder!
I was surprised just how brilliant this book was considering it was the last major work to be translated into English. I was expecting something similar to Féerie I, i.e. one for the purists only. However, with Normance Céline's post-war style was really taking shape and it's a good indicator to the books that will follow. In fact I'd suggest Normance as a brilliant taster for anyone interested in reading Céline.
September 25, 2012
Fatica premiata
Romanzo di non facile lettura, che porta alle estreme conseguenze le innovazioni stilistiche introdotte dall’autore e il suo distacco decisivo dalla tradizione letteraria.
L’azione è quasi inesistente: sui postumi di una caduta di sei metri in fondo alla gabbia dell’ascensore che lascia Ferdinand delirante e confuso, si innesta la cronaca visionaria e allucinata delle scene di un bombardamento di Parigi del 1944, a cui lo scrittore ha assistito dal proprio appartamento di Montmartre.
Il volo degli aerei, le spaventose esplosioni delle bombe, il crollo degli edifici, le reazioni inconsulte e meschine della gente...sono resi attraverso lo sguardo spiritato del “protagonista-parlante” e percepiti tramite la sua prosa singhiozzante, concitata, perennemente esclamativa e frantumata dall’uso dei punti di sospensione che suggeriscono come un senso di vertigine e di smarrimento di fronte alla distruzione di ogni certezza e di ogni punto fermo.
Si ha come l’impressione che Céline non scriva per conquistare il pubblico, ma piuttosto per scuoterlo, per provocare reazioni forti, non importa se positive o negative.
Una specie di sfida, insomma. E un esercizio di bravura.
Infatti, chi prosegue nella lettura resterà stremato e con l’amaro in bocca, ma nella certezza di trovarsi di fronte a un fenomeno letterario difficilmente uguagliabile.
Romanzo di non facile lettura, che porta alle estreme conseguenze le innovazioni stilistiche introdotte dall’autore e il suo distacco decisivo dalla tradizione letteraria.
L’azione è quasi inesistente: sui postumi di una caduta di sei metri in fondo alla gabbia dell’ascensore che lascia Ferdinand delirante e confuso, si innesta la cronaca visionaria e allucinata delle scene di un bombardamento di Parigi del 1944, a cui lo scrittore ha assistito dal proprio appartamento di Montmartre.
Il volo degli aerei, le spaventose esplosioni delle bombe, il crollo degli edifici, le reazioni inconsulte e meschine della gente...sono resi attraverso lo sguardo spiritato del “protagonista-parlante” e percepiti tramite la sua prosa singhiozzante, concitata, perennemente esclamativa e frantumata dall’uso dei punti di sospensione che suggeriscono come un senso di vertigine e di smarrimento di fronte alla distruzione di ogni certezza e di ogni punto fermo.
Si ha come l’impressione che Céline non scriva per conquistare il pubblico, ma piuttosto per scuoterlo, per provocare reazioni forti, non importa se positive o negative.
Una specie di sfida, insomma. E un esercizio di bravura.
Infatti, chi prosegue nella lettura resterà stremato e con l’amaro in bocca, ma nella certezza di trovarsi di fronte a un fenomeno letterario difficilmente uguagliabile.
August 5, 2012
In Normance, Celine focuses on one day in April 1944, when the Allied forces bombed Paris, and he describes the sights and sounds of the destruction.
* * * * *
you can't call it ugly . . . no! . . . even me, I'm no painter, but the colors are knocking me out! . . . I think to myself: this is an extravagance . . . this doesn't happen every day! . . . I think: what violence! and what a lot of money they've all put into this!
I've seen tropical storms! I've seen bombings in the other wars that churned up the ground, that tore up the landscape, but unleashing this kind of volcanic, magical fury requires real devotion! . . . a real will to abandon everything Good! to summon Evil!
* * * * *
What's incredible is that, as repetitive as it is, the text is infinitely varied. It's also intentionally designed, so that just when you've had about enough, the scene shifts, the "reader" complains, or Celine pauses to philosophize.
* * * * *
I'm blurting all this out . . . just as it was . . . if you wanted someone to imitate all the sounds, it would take a human volcano! . . . I won't erupt on this poor scrap of paper! I'm not Vesuvius!
it's all in my mind! hallucinations and bullshit! what a crook! but I repeat and reassert! shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! with lots of glow-worms mixed in . . . and dancing purple fireflies . . . ah!
Am I babbling, maybe getting on your nerves? eh? well, say so! you're just watching the show from your armchair! you got it easy! a philosopher, to boot! I'd like to see you philosophize from the top of an erupting volcano! standing on jelly-wobbling floors! I'd congratulate you! crown your head! your severed head!
* * * * *
I added a smiley face by that last passage, which was on page 61. The bombing concludes on page 244.
There are hundreds -- literally hundreds -- of insults in this book, most of which Celine directs at the artist Jules, who rolls in his cart on a windmill platform throughout The Deluge. Occasionally they made reading tiresome, but so many were unexpected, or laugh-aloud funny, that I flipped on.
* * * * *
- Little shit! play Joan of Arc! go broil! take a leap!
or the absinthe in the cellar! there's some really good stuff down there, and you know it! from before 1914! you hoarding, monopolizing bitch! ring your bell, dingaling! and keep quiet! stinking ammoniac piss-sodden tippling snitching thieving spying abominable agitator! . . . ring your bell! and I don't want to hear another sound out of you!
* * * * *
Those breaths I mentioned are often the moments when Celine reveals his thoughts on human nature. He didn't think much of our species.
* * * * *
when it comes to human beings, I'm only interested in the sick . . . the ones who can stand up are nothing but mounds of vice and spite . . . I don't get mixed up in their schemes . . . I mean, just look at this circus they're putting on, absolutely unlivable, intolerable whether you're in the air, on the ground, or in the hallway! then, to top it all off, they talk about love, in verse, prose, or songs, they can't help themselves! the nerve! and always procreating! unloading fresh Hell-spawn on the world! and then speechifying! and their endless promises! . . . constantly swollen with pride! drooling and strutting around! only when they're prostrate, dying, or sick do they lose a little of their human vileness and become poor beasts again, and then you can stand to go near them . . .
Doesn't take much to make someone hate your guts . . . absolute irrelevancies . . . trifles . . . same with love . . . those sneaky little details . . .
I have to point out everything to you! I'm keeping track! later on they'll buy my books, much later, when I'm dead, to study the first seismic tremblings, the first hints of the coming end, to learn about basic human rottenness, to learn about the explosions that come from the depths of the soul . . . they didn't know . . . they will! . . . if a catastrophe goes unobserved then your whole era's been wasted! All for nothing! . . . all of humanity's suffering, and for what? for the maggots! . . . that's the blasphemy, the intolerable thing! Hail to Pliny!
* * * * *
With Normance, I've finished reading every Celine work that has been translated into English, and I'll state that he's one of my favorite writers: the mad French doctor was a master of a style that was all his own. I'll reread Death on the Installment Plan and London Bridge someday, and I'll relish the countless hours I passed with the rest of his books. For now, I'll stick with some nonfiction reading, because there's no other prose I know of that's as shocking and vibrant as that of Celine.
* * * * *
there's something supernatural about Jules, the way he balances, straightens up, floats, and rolls round and round! woaah horsey! pivots! pirouettes! . . . what they admired him for in his studio: abracadabra and voila -- masterpieces . . . I mean, if you ask me . . . all that was nothing compared to this, now!
* * * * *
you can't call it ugly . . . no! . . . even me, I'm no painter, but the colors are knocking me out! . . . I think to myself: this is an extravagance . . . this doesn't happen every day! . . . I think: what violence! and what a lot of money they've all put into this!
I've seen tropical storms! I've seen bombings in the other wars that churned up the ground, that tore up the landscape, but unleashing this kind of volcanic, magical fury requires real devotion! . . . a real will to abandon everything Good! to summon Evil!
* * * * *
What's incredible is that, as repetitive as it is, the text is infinitely varied. It's also intentionally designed, so that just when you've had about enough, the scene shifts, the "reader" complains, or Celine pauses to philosophize.
* * * * *
I'm blurting all this out . . . just as it was . . . if you wanted someone to imitate all the sounds, it would take a human volcano! . . . I won't erupt on this poor scrap of paper! I'm not Vesuvius!
it's all in my mind! hallucinations and bullshit! what a crook! but I repeat and reassert! shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! with lots of glow-worms mixed in . . . and dancing purple fireflies . . . ah!
Am I babbling, maybe getting on your nerves? eh? well, say so! you're just watching the show from your armchair! you got it easy! a philosopher, to boot! I'd like to see you philosophize from the top of an erupting volcano! standing on jelly-wobbling floors! I'd congratulate you! crown your head! your severed head!
* * * * *
I added a smiley face by that last passage, which was on page 61. The bombing concludes on page 244.
There are hundreds -- literally hundreds -- of insults in this book, most of which Celine directs at the artist Jules, who rolls in his cart on a windmill platform throughout The Deluge. Occasionally they made reading tiresome, but so many were unexpected, or laugh-aloud funny, that I flipped on.
* * * * *
- Little shit! play Joan of Arc! go broil! take a leap!
or the absinthe in the cellar! there's some really good stuff down there, and you know it! from before 1914! you hoarding, monopolizing bitch! ring your bell, dingaling! and keep quiet! stinking ammoniac piss-sodden tippling snitching thieving spying abominable agitator! . . . ring your bell! and I don't want to hear another sound out of you!
* * * * *
Those breaths I mentioned are often the moments when Celine reveals his thoughts on human nature. He didn't think much of our species.
* * * * *
when it comes to human beings, I'm only interested in the sick . . . the ones who can stand up are nothing but mounds of vice and spite . . . I don't get mixed up in their schemes . . . I mean, just look at this circus they're putting on, absolutely unlivable, intolerable whether you're in the air, on the ground, or in the hallway! then, to top it all off, they talk about love, in verse, prose, or songs, they can't help themselves! the nerve! and always procreating! unloading fresh Hell-spawn on the world! and then speechifying! and their endless promises! . . . constantly swollen with pride! drooling and strutting around! only when they're prostrate, dying, or sick do they lose a little of their human vileness and become poor beasts again, and then you can stand to go near them . . .
Doesn't take much to make someone hate your guts . . . absolute irrelevancies . . . trifles . . . same with love . . . those sneaky little details . . .
I have to point out everything to you! I'm keeping track! later on they'll buy my books, much later, when I'm dead, to study the first seismic tremblings, the first hints of the coming end, to learn about basic human rottenness, to learn about the explosions that come from the depths of the soul . . . they didn't know . . . they will! . . . if a catastrophe goes unobserved then your whole era's been wasted! All for nothing! . . . all of humanity's suffering, and for what? for the maggots! . . . that's the blasphemy, the intolerable thing! Hail to Pliny!
* * * * *
With Normance, I've finished reading every Celine work that has been translated into English, and I'll state that he's one of my favorite writers: the mad French doctor was a master of a style that was all his own. I'll reread Death on the Installment Plan and London Bridge someday, and I'll relish the countless hours I passed with the rest of his books. For now, I'll stick with some nonfiction reading, because there's no other prose I know of that's as shocking and vibrant as that of Celine.
* * * * *
there's something supernatural about Jules, the way he balances, straightens up, floats, and rolls round and round! woaah horsey! pivots! pirouettes! . . . what they admired him for in his studio: abracadabra and voila -- masterpieces . . . I mean, if you ask me . . . all that was nothing compared to this, now!
August 8, 2010
at first you may be saying, well lyle [that's me :D dinosaur jerk :D], this book is about killing a fat man, so why not give it four stars like the other celine book about killing a fat mans??? and i will tell you: in the other fat mans book celine does not stick his hand under a table where ppl are hiding, feeling poop pee vomit and a underaged girls nether regions there. 5/5
June 29, 2025
«Ayer besaban botas alemanas... hoy ondean banderitas... ¡Mierda!... Bebert tiene más dignidad... él solo quiere su pescado...»
La segunda parte de la primera entrega titulada «Fantasias para otra ocasión» nos sumerge en un París devastado por los bombardeos aliados durante los últimos días de la ocupación alemana. Céline, con su prosa convulsiva y barroca, captura el caos de una ciudad al borde del colapso, donde cada frase parece estallar como las bombas que llueven sobre la capital francesa. En medio de este escenario dantesco, la paranoia del autor-narrador - reflejo de su propio colaboracionismo - alcanza cotas febriles, plasmando en páginas desgarradoras el terror constante a ser linchado por sus vecinos, a ser golpeado hasta la muerte por una turba sedienta de venganza.
Un capítulo aparte merece la figura de Bebert, el gato que acompaña al protagonista en su huida. Este felino, testigo impasible de la barbarie humana, emerge como contrapunto lírico a la violencia circundante. Su presencia serena, y la peculiar relación que establece con el narrador, ofrece breves momentos de ternura en medio de la oscuridad, como si en el vínculo con este animal se filtrara un último destello de humanidad en un mundo que ha perdido toda compasión. Las digresiones sobre Bebert, cargadas de una ironía melancólica, se convierten en los pasajes más conmovedores de la obra, donde la prosa desquiciada de Céline encuentra inesperados momentos de fragilidad y poesía.
La segunda parte de la primera entrega titulada «Fantasias para otra ocasión» nos sumerge en un París devastado por los bombardeos aliados durante los últimos días de la ocupación alemana. Céline, con su prosa convulsiva y barroca, captura el caos de una ciudad al borde del colapso, donde cada frase parece estallar como las bombas que llueven sobre la capital francesa. En medio de este escenario dantesco, la paranoia del autor-narrador - reflejo de su propio colaboracionismo - alcanza cotas febriles, plasmando en páginas desgarradoras el terror constante a ser linchado por sus vecinos, a ser golpeado hasta la muerte por una turba sedienta de venganza.
Un capítulo aparte merece la figura de Bebert, el gato que acompaña al protagonista en su huida. Este felino, testigo impasible de la barbarie humana, emerge como contrapunto lírico a la violencia circundante. Su presencia serena, y la peculiar relación que establece con el narrador, ofrece breves momentos de ternura en medio de la oscuridad, como si en el vínculo con este animal se filtrara un último destello de humanidad en un mundo que ha perdido toda compasión. Las digresiones sobre Bebert, cargadas de una ironía melancólica, se convierten en los pasajes más conmovedores de la obra, donde la prosa desquiciada de Céline encuentra inesperados momentos de fragilidad y poesía.
January 19, 2025
I wasn't able to finish Normance, Celine's final book translated into English, which is rough reading. Taking place in Paris during the allied bombing of the city, this lengthy, repetitive tome follows Ferdinand, the doctor, as he, the cast of characters in the building he lives in and their furniture is tossed about by the bombing. He mentions early in the book that he is a collaborator who is scared to seek out a shelter because he could be lynched. This perspective, from a Nazi sympathizer who is also a literary figure, should be of interest. But the book is an endless loop, never moving forward in the narrative even slightly in the first 150 pages and though it's well written, doesn't succeed as an experimental work either, which I don't believe it was intended to be.
July 17, 2025
Toujours le culte pour les grands fans . Très long comme délire poétique où Céline affiche son goût du langage décousu, grossier et narcissique. Un génie à la recherche d’inspiration, paranoïaque. Avait il tout de même une certaine culpabilité par rapport à ses positions pendant les années 38/45 ?
September 15, 2023
Most people would hate this...
July 24, 2018
I belong to what I imagine to be a teeming legion of creeps and losers who were brought to Céline circuitously by way of Charles Bukowski (and his unparalleled reverence for the French misanthrope) as angry teenagers mangled by puberty. Journey to the End of the Night was, indeed, better than Bukowski (as the Angelino himself so often conceded). It was a lightning strike. Kapow! I carried that book through the hallways of my highschool like a shield (a shield of offense). I responded to the bile, the nastiness, the unbelievable visceral resplendence of the pulsing prose, and the honesty. Honesty: what I like about Céline (and Thomas Bernhard, the other great literary misanthrope) is that he is honest about his own cowardice and weakness. Indeed he is the great Nietzschean writer of the symptomatologies of reactive consciousness; the consciousness of the inflated man who is unable to act his forces. In Lacanian terms, Céline might be the great writer of metaphoric castration. The rage of a powerless coward who would be king. No wonder a socially ostracized young man with delusions of grandeur can find himself so resolutely seduced by this stuff. Céline was a monster. Totally. It's true. He was a virulent antisemite. A full-on Nazi (make no bones, friend). No way around it. But he speaks for part of me. Not a part I wear w/ pride necessarily; or not any longer. But I know this voice. This voice has been and can still be my own. We all get a little angry at the world as we traverse it day to day, and none of us can voice it with the delicious runaway genius of Céline, and especially not with his fantastic and bizarre glossary of invective. A lot of people write Céline off after the first two novels (many, in fact, after the first, as did one university professor to whom I spoke about my cherished master as a teenager). This is insane by any reasonable standard. Céline continued to write magnificent novels until his death. My favourite work of his remains North. Normance was the last Céline to appear in English translation, and did so only recently. Only a truly monstrous piece of shit human being would have to wait this long to have so magnificent a literary work translated into English. This is a remarkable tour de force. This is a novel about a situation. This is not a story. This is not a coherent tableau. It is Inferno. Inferno in situ. Indeed, powerlessness and symbolic castration are the meat of the matter. This is a voice laying waste (to nothing) while its surroundings are being laid waster (by a very real something). This is a magnificent raging against the overpowering squall of capital-H History (rather than the dying of the light). Never has Céline's angry ranting interiority come so close to sounding like an outward-reaching cry of anguish. This is a man born to write from a hell on earth.
October 11, 2016
Sad to say, due to time and writing projects, I couldn't finish this novel by Céline. If only it was shorter! I had a hard time after the first hundred or so pages. The great thing is I never read text like this with the sensory overload of a bombing. I have read narratives before and after a bombing, but I really feel like I'm in that house with the crazed writer and his fellow crazed fellow-citizens. The reputation is a bit much for me, and I often don't feel that way with his other novels.
January 27, 2010
Not his most approachable work, and in Celine's case that's saying something. If you like his stuff, then forge ahead and take the plunge. It doesn't let up for a second, and is a bit bewildering at the beginning but once you get your bearings it's absurdly, excruciatingly fucking hilarious as he brings you along, moment to moment surviving through an RAF bombing of occupied Paris in WW2.
If you haven't read anything of his before, then this ain't the one to start with.
If you haven't read anything of his before, then this ain't the one to start with.
August 10, 2009
With an enticing introduction, I was hopeful that this would be another great find in translated literature. I couldn't get into it though. After 50 pages of circular reading about the bombing of Paris combined with the tiresome yelling of jealous obscenities at one's neighbor, I had to put it down. Too bad, I had high hopes.
November 25, 2014
I don't know why my favourite authors are such horrible people, but there it is. This is one of Celine's best. I really love how his story telling just gets caught in a storm and is delivered in a raging torrent. He's funny too.
June 20, 2013
I had read nearly all of Celine's novels, so I was very much looking forward to this one. Sadly, I found it terribly repetitive and rather boring most of the time. The good news is that you can read it very quickly as it is primarily a sensory experience, not a thought experience.
May 28, 2009
In English finally!
"...time's nothing... memory's what matters..."- Celine.
"...time's nothing... memory's what matters..."- Celine.
May 4, 2020
"the world's just a ball of mirages, wobbling on a base of hypocrisy like an egg in a carnival shooting gallery . . ."
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