Finished Celine

The restaurant let me go early. I thought to get my hair cut but the place was jam packed. Too bloody cold today. I came back to wrestle with the last ten pages of  Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night (1932).

The last time a novel took this long to read was when I re-read Raintree County. This novel was 509 pages. 

It was not a slog, quite the opposite, but a very thick read. If I had a real computer rather than this miserable phone, I would be writing several posts populated with quotes. Even in translation, there is much that is quotable for its turn of phrase, for its sardonic ideas. 

Starting with World War One, I thought I found a precursor to Joseph Heller's Catch 22. These chapters lack the idealism of  Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and/or John Dos Passos's 1919.

When the protagonist goes to French colonial Africa, it is a The Heart of Darkness for the mendacious.

The echoes disappear as the protagonist goes to America and then back to France. The lack of idealism continues. Life is a Death-haunted mess. It seems fitting that he helps run a madhouse at the end.

Since I cannot do justice myself, I will be dropping posts about Celine in the next few days. Just click on the Books label below.

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