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Guignol's Band #2
London Bridge
One of the last major untranslated works by France's most controversial author, London Bridge is a riotous novel about the London underworld during World War I. Picking up where Guignol's Band (1944; English translation 1954) left off, Céline's autobiographical narrator recounts his disastrous partnership with a mystical Frenchman (intent on financing a trip to Tibet by winning a gas-mask competition); his uneasy relationship with London's pimps and whores and their common nemesis, Inspector Matthew of Scotland Yard; and, most scandalously, his affair with a baronet's 14-year-old daughter, an English angel whose descent into vice is suspiciously smooth. He dreams of escaping with her to America to start a new life, but he, his mystical partner, and his under-aged mistress finally awake to reality crossing windswept London Bridge.
Written in his trademark style—a headlong rush of slang, brusque observation, and quirky lyricism, delivered in machine-gun bursts of prose and ellipses—Céline re-creates the darkest days during the Great War with sordid verisimilitude and desperate hilarity, expertly captured in Dominic Di Bernardi's racy translation.
Written in his trademark style—a headlong rush of slang, brusque observation, and quirky lyricism, delivered in machine-gun bursts of prose and ellipses—Céline re-creates the darkest days during the Great War with sordid verisimilitude and desperate hilarity, expertly captured in Dominic Di Bernardi's racy translation.
390 pages, Paperback
First published March 20, 1964
23 people are currently reading
644 people want to read
About the author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
181 books2,627 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 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 20, 2013
Folks, the only way to read Celine is to understand: you're reading a sleazy, sexy novelization of Looney Tunes. This guy is kinetic energy
September 5, 2017
London Bridge is a continuation of what you got in Guignol's Band. I thought this one was better, or maybe after reading them both, they make more sense as a whole. I mean, it's really a buy the ticket take the ride situation . . . as in, 'this one scene with these two characters screaming and beating and pissing on one another has been going on for, what, 30 pages now?' But if you're a writer yourself, or just the type of reader who appreciates words being pounded into shapes never seen before, Céline is your man. You will come across lines in his work that will make you put the book down and find someone rant to, because you can't believe what you just read. He's like a strong drug; you fight through all the nauseating shit, because you know he has the power to put you on cloud nine.
Despite a couple scenes that really require a tight grip and stamina, a great, loony-as hell story develops in this one. And by the end you start to feel a little for the characters. Empathy develops. Insight even. But don't cheat! Read Guignol's Band first and then London Bridge. It's worth it.
Despite a couple scenes that really require a tight grip and stamina, a great, loony-as hell story develops in this one. And by the end you start to feel a little for the characters. Empathy develops. Insight even. But don't cheat! Read Guignol's Band first and then London Bridge. It's worth it.
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September 24, 2007best book i've ever read, at this point in my life. everyone rips off celine, and no one gives him any credit.
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April 10, 2020
"Mocha is life!"
April 10, 2016
Not so very long ago, in a galaxy not at all far away, life was very, very different.
February 27, 2019
This is a hard one to rate. There really isn't anything to it. No story. No payoff. It's bitching and moaning without the sharp edge of journey to the end of the night. Sure it's amusing and weird in places but it drags alot, no way should it of been the best part of 500 pages.
March 21, 2025
Voyage au Bout d’un Pédéraste
Celine has been described as “Henry Miller, John Steinbeck and James Joyce all at once”, but this book reminded me of Gravity’s Rainbow, which I also wasted time reading to the end, the difference being that this is at least 500 pages shorter and is modernist rather than post- and is set in WW1 rather than WW2. But I can only assume Pynchon read this novel before starting up his odious opus given that it features a foreigner in London getting up to misadventures, a mad colonel, a plot that is not so much baggy as blancmange-y and the “hero”’s “love” for a pre-adolescent girl. Nabokov this aint.
Celine has been described as “Henry Miller, John Steinbeck and James Joyce all at once”, but this book reminded me of Gravity’s Rainbow, which I also wasted time reading to the end, the difference being that this is at least 500 pages shorter and is modernist rather than post- and is set in WW1 rather than WW2. But I can only assume Pynchon read this novel before starting up his odious opus given that it features a foreigner in London getting up to misadventures, a mad colonel, a plot that is not so much baggy as blancmange-y and the “hero”’s “love” for a pre-adolescent girl. Nabokov this aint.
March 25, 2024
I remember the feeling of first reading Guignol's Band, then Journey to the End Night, then Death on the Installment Plan. That's pretty much what Céline's sequel to Guignol's Band, London Bridge, did. It reminded me. That sometimes one of us goes out and just starts barking, howling, into the chasm, up at the moon. Because it's absurd. And it's life. All of it, told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
January 27, 2018
Louis Ferdinand Celine's London Bridge is, along with Guignol's Band, an extended interpolation into parts of Journey to the End of the Night -- specifically between the World War I scenes and the scenes set in Africa. Basically, the two volumes are about Ferdinand Bardamu's adventures in London during the latter part of World War I.
One pretty much has tpo read Guignol's band first, because London Bridge is a continuation (in fact it's subtitled Guignol's Band II). Ferdinand has teamed up with Sosthene, working with a Colonel O'Collogham to create an effective (and stylish) gas mask. For the whole length of the book, Ferdinand pines for the Colonel's 14-year-old niece, Virginia, and in fact gets her pregnant. At this point, Sosthene, Bardamu, and Virginia escape, suspecting that the Colonel is about to sell them out to the police.
They make their way to Prospero's pub, the Moor and Cheese, in Greenwich. They try to ship out to South America, for the ship wouldn't take Sosthene and Virginia. Suddenly, the last major set piece of the book is a strange party thrown by Prospero for Ferdinand.
One pretty much has tpo read Guignol's band first, because London Bridge is a continuation (in fact it's subtitled Guignol's Band II). Ferdinand has teamed up with Sosthene, working with a Colonel O'Collogham to create an effective (and stylish) gas mask. For the whole length of the book, Ferdinand pines for the Colonel's 14-year-old niece, Virginia, and in fact gets her pregnant. At this point, Sosthene, Bardamu, and Virginia escape, suspecting that the Colonel is about to sell them out to the police.
They make their way to Prospero's pub, the Moor and Cheese, in Greenwich. They try to ship out to South America, for the ship wouldn't take Sosthene and Virginia. Suddenly, the last major set piece of the book is a strange party thrown by Prospero for Ferdinand.
October 8, 2022
Overwhelming. As is all of the Céline I have read.
Short phrases... lots of idiom, clichés even, common as muck...and apostrophes!...so many!...What a long book!...but funny, weird, psychedelic, hallucinatory...almost biographical: Céline didn't get a head wound in the war other than severe tinnitus, whereas Ferdinand has been trepanned, but both author and character do have damage to their arm.
Together with Guignol's Band, this book, subtitled Guignol's Band II - the title was changed by the first English language publisher - is the story of Ferdinand (the Bardamu from Death On The Installment Pkan and Journey To The End Of The Night) in London at the end of The Great War, once he had been discharged honorably from the the French army. Half of the truly weird stuff that happens in the books might be exaggerations and hallucinations due to that alleged headwound.
Ferdinand and the Tibet obsessed mystic, Sousthene, team up with a Colonel O'Collogham to join a competiton to develop a gas mask for the British Army, but down from upstairs comes Victoria the Colonel's young niece...
His instant infatuation and on-again off-again pursuit of the 14 year old Victoria is half Lolita, half Sweet Cheat Gone, and we know that Céline actually married a young "entertainer" from a bar, in England, and then left her there. The marriage was not registered at the French Embassy so he could disregard it as a French citizen, and he went off the Africa - see JTEOTN.
The phantsmogorical gas mask which must be 90% metal given the banging and clattering, the pub visits that turn into fantastic orgies, the perpetual rain, and the tumultuous party scenes: what is real and what is Ferdinand's diseased imagination? He abuses everyone and everyone abuses him, to an absurd degree of consistency. People are seemingly bashed, stripped, mocked, and then they have a sing-a-long as a German bombing raid shatters the night. Towards the end, in a pause from the manic urgency of the previous 380 odd pages there are several much more quiet passages of lyrical description, particularly of the boats on the river and the workers on the waterfront which Ferdinand finds fascinating.
For example: "The river quivering, crisscrossed, whipped up every which way... A hundred small open boats rush out, charge into the traffic... sculling... with a splash! splash! splash! pulling hard at the oars... streaming in from all corners...into the wakes... onto the stems... the sterns... slipping around the laggard stems... corks of foam... grazing past everything... arches... propellor blades... churning furiously... fervent halyards seized in flight... from one end to the other... bellying cargoes... overwhelming monsters... a small fry of pilot fish in the first light of day from crest to crest of foam nimbly scudding free... splashing up farther away... even more lively... spinning tops rcoing from wave to wave.. sending up sprays..."
But Céline takes back to his reality straight away, with: "I've painted you a picture of the farandole [a French dance] on the lapping waves... But there's more to life than sights to see! We've got to hurry along..."
And finally, on London Bridge they struggle against the wind, eventually get across, and the book ends. Plot? What plot? Who needs a plot?
I am so pleased with myself for having finished... speaking of struggle!... but ultimately well worth it. My plan is get through the other six of his books I haven't read by the end of the year, using a biography/commentary by Merlin Thomas as a guide. I might die of exhaustion midway through that ambituous task!
Short phrases... lots of idiom, clichés even, common as muck...and apostrophes!...so many!...What a long book!...but funny, weird, psychedelic, hallucinatory...almost biographical: Céline didn't get a head wound in the war other than severe tinnitus, whereas Ferdinand has been trepanned, but both author and character do have damage to their arm.
Together with Guignol's Band, this book, subtitled Guignol's Band II - the title was changed by the first English language publisher - is the story of Ferdinand (the Bardamu from Death On The Installment Pkan and Journey To The End Of The Night) in London at the end of The Great War, once he had been discharged honorably from the the French army. Half of the truly weird stuff that happens in the books might be exaggerations and hallucinations due to that alleged headwound.
Ferdinand and the Tibet obsessed mystic, Sousthene, team up with a Colonel O'Collogham to join a competiton to develop a gas mask for the British Army, but down from upstairs comes Victoria the Colonel's young niece...
His instant infatuation and on-again off-again pursuit of the 14 year old Victoria is half Lolita, half Sweet Cheat Gone, and we know that Céline actually married a young "entertainer" from a bar, in England, and then left her there. The marriage was not registered at the French Embassy so he could disregard it as a French citizen, and he went off the Africa - see JTEOTN.
The phantsmogorical gas mask which must be 90% metal given the banging and clattering, the pub visits that turn into fantastic orgies, the perpetual rain, and the tumultuous party scenes: what is real and what is Ferdinand's diseased imagination? He abuses everyone and everyone abuses him, to an absurd degree of consistency. People are seemingly bashed, stripped, mocked, and then they have a sing-a-long as a German bombing raid shatters the night. Towards the end, in a pause from the manic urgency of the previous 380 odd pages there are several much more quiet passages of lyrical description, particularly of the boats on the river and the workers on the waterfront which Ferdinand finds fascinating.
For example: "The river quivering, crisscrossed, whipped up every which way... A hundred small open boats rush out, charge into the traffic... sculling... with a splash! splash! splash! pulling hard at the oars... streaming in from all corners...into the wakes... onto the stems... the sterns... slipping around the laggard stems... corks of foam... grazing past everything... arches... propellor blades... churning furiously... fervent halyards seized in flight... from one end to the other... bellying cargoes... overwhelming monsters... a small fry of pilot fish in the first light of day from crest to crest of foam nimbly scudding free... splashing up farther away... even more lively... spinning tops rcoing from wave to wave.. sending up sprays..."
But Céline takes back to his reality straight away, with: "I've painted you a picture of the farandole [a French dance] on the lapping waves... But there's more to life than sights to see! We've got to hurry along..."
And finally, on London Bridge they struggle against the wind, eventually get across, and the book ends. Plot? What plot? Who needs a plot?
I am so pleased with myself for having finished... speaking of struggle!... but ultimately well worth it. My plan is get through the other six of his books I haven't read by the end of the year, using a biography/commentary by Merlin Thomas as a guide. I might die of exhaustion midway through that ambituous task!
November 17, 2025
Questo è il mio Celine:
"Tra Wardor Street e Guilford avevo scovato, tempo prima, nei primi mesi che ero a Londra, tutto un balatrone in uno di quei vicoli chiusi, a vetrine, vietati alle macchine, un pò come i nostri Passage a Parigi, tutto di botteghe d'antiquariato, di curiosità, mappamondi, patacche, i centomila ricordi di viaggio... Là ci facevo lunghe soste, ore intere... a incantarmi... Guardavo tutto... roba che fa galoppare la fantasia, che ti fa venire una disperazione... che non vivrai bastanza tempo per viaggiare, per andare dappertutto... per conoscere tutti i paesi dove succedono cose esaltanti, avventure mirabolanti... tutte quelle vetrine, quei ninnoli... roba che ti sconcerta, che ti suscita centomila domande!... Ero infelice... troppo curioso del mondo... troppo avido... mi sarei portato dietro tutta la bottega, oltre al mio cargobisaccia, ..."
(p. 116)
"Tra Wardor Street e Guilford avevo scovato, tempo prima, nei primi mesi che ero a Londra, tutto un balatrone in uno di quei vicoli chiusi, a vetrine, vietati alle macchine, un pò come i nostri Passage a Parigi, tutto di botteghe d'antiquariato, di curiosità, mappamondi, patacche, i centomila ricordi di viaggio... Là ci facevo lunghe soste, ore intere... a incantarmi... Guardavo tutto... roba che fa galoppare la fantasia, che ti fa venire una disperazione... che non vivrai bastanza tempo per viaggiare, per andare dappertutto... per conoscere tutti i paesi dove succedono cose esaltanti, avventure mirabolanti... tutte quelle vetrine, quei ninnoli... roba che ti sconcerta, che ti suscita centomila domande!... Ero infelice... troppo curioso del mondo... troppo avido... mi sarei portato dietro tutta la bottega, oltre al mio cargobisaccia, ..."
(p. 116)
August 27, 2024
The orgy scene ranks amongst Celine's finest, funniest writing. The translation of Londres cannot arrive fast enough for demented readers like me!
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March 3, 2017its a really interesting described book
June 22, 2008
another mystery. I never got this book... did I give it away so soon? I have to read it. I have to.
*********
I got another copy and started it for good measure. "Shit!"
**********
& then I read it.
POW!
I revelled more in Guignol's Band.... this obsessive blacking-out-hallucinatory fantasy is kind of emptied out when it comes down to it. Having fun with teh sick.... o great lit'rature, to make a kiddy comment like that is unthinkable... when it comes to serving justice... to any writer who automatically gets 5 stars for a title... yes, it does.
But! I like to write! Ending.... superb phraseology... oh god! in the form of... those exclamations! shit!! Are you kidding? Read this trash! Go ahead!
*********
I got another copy and started it for good measure. "Shit!"
**********
& then I read it.
POW!
I revelled more in Guignol's Band.... this obsessive blacking-out-hallucinatory fantasy is kind of emptied out when it comes down to it. Having fun with teh sick.... o great lit'rature, to make a kiddy comment like that is unthinkable... when it comes to serving justice... to any writer who automatically gets 5 stars for a title... yes, it does.
But! I like to write! Ending.... superb phraseology... oh god! in the form of... those exclamations! shit!! Are you kidding? Read this trash! Go ahead!
October 16, 2025
Love him or loathe him, Celine had always something to say and he was far from being shy as his "voice" was loud enough.
That story is seen again in London Bridge, as Ferdinand (and the protagonist's name tells you all about...) a French WWI veteran, has chosen London as a living place. He's a grown man, but even those ones "are able" to get their choices wrong. Like falling in love with a fourteen-year old girl...
That story is seen again in London Bridge, as Ferdinand (and the protagonist's name tells you all about...) a French WWI veteran, has chosen London as a living place. He's a grown man, but even those ones "are able" to get their choices wrong. Like falling in love with a fourteen-year old girl...
October 16, 2014
Celine lost control of his subject--and of his mind--in this one, which continues where Guignal's Band lets off. With much relief, I finally gave up on London Bridge after 150 pages.
October 27, 2021
Roth was right Céline is freedom for writers
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews