Howdy, Veeky Forums. I see Journey to the End of the Night mentioned a lot in threads here...

Howdy, Veeky Forums. I see Journey to the End of the Night mentioned a lot in threads here. Has anyone read other Celine works they recommend? Is he worthwhile outside of JTTEOTN

Other urls found in this thread:

vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres6/CELINEtrif.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Death on the Installment Plan and North are considered his strongests, along with Journey.

>Death on the Installment Plan
Besides being an incredibly shitty attempt at translating the title, the book itself bored me to no end. Journey was good and went places. Death is just incredibly long-winded account of Céline being a good for nothing boy that constantly shits his pants.

Yes, all is good (the later works are somewhat less popular and more hardcore), although you're losing much of the flavour if you read a translation.

His interviews on YouTube are pretty good too, if you can understand--Céline is being Céline all the time, it's not just a literary style.

It's hilarious and I quite enjoyed it and read it quickly. Manheim is a great translator but I agree he euphemised the title.

It would have been a perfect novel if he hadn't been jerking off retards so much. Seriously, wtf was up with that? But a lot of Celine fans rank it as his best.

>a lot of Celine fans rank it as his best.
Yeah I know. It was just too long for me and nothing really happened and there wasn't even any interesting character development. Ah I fucked it up!... Now my dad will be pissed again... and my parents already have no idea what to do with me... and the shit that keeps sticking to my ass... better jerk off some more...

I wouldn't know about the quality of the translation in general, read it in French. It's just that the title always irks me.

I've read him in both english and french. Manheim does a great job but I can understand your complaints. I couldn't recommend it to many people.

I kept imaginging pic related as his father. I'd laugh so hard every time his father would start bitching about his son. The kid really was a shithead.

And he goes to England and all the English he learns is "river...water...no trouble" my fucking sides. Apparently none of it is a really accurate depiction of Celine's childhood.

I'm reading Castle to Castle right now. The first 120 pages thus far have been:
>My asshole publishers make too much money and I can't afford to eat. I hope they get brain tumors.
>My medical practice is failing because I'm an unattractive old man. My patients are assholes.
>I didn't even gas any jews. Why is everyone so mad I allied myself with the nazis?
>Every contemporary French literary figure other than me is a pussy.

No plot to speak of outside of some flashbacks and a hallucinatory sequence in which Charon brings one of his friends on a boat (dressed as a gaucho) and they then trade insults with each other. I find it hilarious but I understand why his later work doesn't seem to get brought up much.

Celine could not turn his troll-mode off...This guy was too much...

Apparently he sent a copy of Bagatelles to his Jewish friend. And after the war he'd say shit like, "Jews ought to make me a statue in honour of all the things I could have but did not do to them." Gee...t-thanks, Celine. And he was always insisting all his problems came from Voyage and not the pamphlets.

>all his problems came from Voyage and not the pamphlets

This is true, he tricked the entire left into believing he was one of them and the new Zola with le Voyage.

Their disappointment wouldn't have been a big deal if he hadn't hit them with a masterpiece first.

That kind of makes sense. But it mostly speaks to how retarded Sartre and Beauvoir were, when a guy like Empson writing in China could see where Celine was headed.

>Empson

Never heard of him before, but he looks interesting. Thanks!

here ya go anons:
vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres6/CELINEtrif.pdf

> when they go visit his uncle in Mort a credit who ran away from paying his debts and he's living a cushy, easy life and starts singing "O sole mio" while paddling his boat or whatever

fucking lost it so hard right there

śmierć na kredyt

Read Death on Credit and Castle to Castle. These and Journey are his best. Then, if you like him, read the rest of his books.

Have you read North?

Was there any specific event in his life that spawned his intensive antisemitism? I don't recall any mentions negative or positive of the Jews in Journey or Death on Credit. Is this elucidated at all in the pamphlets he wrote or are they just rampant tirades?

Also, I know it's memed to death here, but how difficult is Céline's writing for a non-native French speaker? I had four years of AP French in high school (which didn't amount to much) and have read some Camus stuff fairly easily, but it's to my understanding that Céline wrote heavily in a unique style of French slang. Would I end up spending 15 minutes per page Googling and trying to parse archaic French street speak or is it not that bad?

I'm actually reading Death on the Instalment Plan now. It's p good. It's bleak but man Celine can write.

>Would I end up spending 15 minutes per page Googling and trying to parse archaic French street speak or is it not that bad?

It is that bad. However, his first book is much easier to understand than, say, Guignol's Band.

Stylistically, he's not difficult to understand. But he employs slang that no one really employs anymore. Vonnegut is says he might be better in translation because of that. But really it's not that bad. Although the Manheim translations really are good. Basically like Guerney's Dead Souls tier good. As good as it's gonna get.

I guess the most common explanation is that WWI really fucked him up. I dunno. He sort of makes fun of his dad in Death on credit for blaming Jews and Freemasons for his sons shitty behaviour.

The thing that makes him an outlier as far as collaborationists go is that he was too extreme for even the Nazis and once they invaded France he stopped writing. So he wasn't of much use to them. Henri Guillemin has some good videos about him if you're interested. It's what made me consider Celine as something more than a meme.

i cant even imagine the velvet pussy he got at his peak