 
|
|
Paperback
Publisher: New Directions
Ralph Manheim
ISBN13: 9780811216548
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
The dark side of On the Road: instead of seeking kicks, the French narrator travels the globe to find an ever deeper disgust for life. Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion. .
When it was published in 1932, this then-shocking and revolutionary first fiction redefined the art of the novel with its black humor, its nihilism, and its irreverent, explosive writing style, and made Louis-Ferdinand Celine one of France's--and literature's--most important 20th-Century writers. The picaresque adventures of Bardamu, the sarcastic and brilliant antihero of Journey to the End of the Night move from the battlefields of World War I (complete with buffoonish officers and cowardly soldiers), to French West Africa, the United States, and back to France in a style of prose that's lyrical, hallucinatory, and hilariously scathing toward nearly everybody and everything. Yet, beneath it all one can detect a gentle core of idealism.
| Customer Reviews: |
|
| |
| not to be missed |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
 |
|
The second funniest novel for me--after the incredible A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole.
I'd say Henry Miller was influenced by Celine, as was Bukowski--and a few others.
Get the Ralph Manheim translation.
I have no idea why the publisher chose to include Vollman's afterword here, because it is not only idiotic, but absolutely unncessary.
|
| A users guide to misanthropy...drink up!!! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
When I hold this book, I feel as though all of the truths of the world as stated by Satan himself are contained in the pages-if he existed-but of course since you are HERE reading THIS, you don't believe in such silly things.
My days are spent naked and drinking, enduring the din of my illegal immigrant neighbors in this cheap congregation of buildings in a crap neighborhood. The sun burns my skin, their volume burns my mind, I drink to not hear them.
The fact that my hatred for all of you has been written already in such a poetic and beautiful manner justifies every night I have buried my face in my blankets and screamed, my booze-soaked breath stinking up the sheets as the wife wonders what it's all about.
It's all been said, it's all been done. I'm just waiting for the dirt.
Thank you Celine.
|
| Perfect |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
Journey to the End of the Night is a gorgeous piece of prose. Add to it the piece by William Vollmann, and you have a book that you'll want to read, and own.
|
| Journey to the End of the Night |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
 |
|
This piece of translated French literature is not easy to read. It asks lots of questions of the reader who has to work hard to decipher the text. But this is a reflection of the original. The French text is difficult to read, and requires input from the reader as well. Stick with it, because it is a literary masterpiece, unveiling a world that is not normally available to an English audience.
|
| Censorship and missing passages in the older tranlsation |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
I have the older translation of the novel, so I can't judge the new one by Ralph Mannheim. But I can say there are significant problems in the older translation. Overall, it's adequate, though it reads a bit more roughly and awkwardly than the original. But my main concern is that it is censored for content. The older translation drops words and entire phrases that may be offensive or overly explicit -- a strange choice, since anyone capable of reading Celine from beginning to end probably is not easily offended to begin with. It is also rather at odds with the novel's ethic: a physician's unflinching clinical eye exposing the ugly things in the dark.
As a general rule, all explicit references to anatomy are censored. Some examples. P. 214: "au boud de mon organe" becomes "in its proper place." P. 261: "on ne pouvait rien voir de son vagin" becomes "I couldn't examine her properly."
Explicit references to sexuality are toned down. Examples: p. 260, "sa maniere de se faire baiser a des profondeurs inoubliables et de jouir comme un continent" becomes "her gift for tremendous delights, for enjoyment to her innermost depths." P. 211: "vin du pas cher, de la masturbation, du cinema" becomes "the cheapest wine, the movie, anything." P. 199, the "..." indicates another excision: "Meme a se masturber"
Even relatively innocuous language gets toned down: "merde" is usually translated as "filth," "salaud" as "bloody."
By themselves, these little changes aren't a big deal, but they're so consistent that it does change the overall tone -- above all, it makes the book lose its clinical severity, its unblemished, open-eyed quality, substituting more euphemistic and tactful language for frankness. That misses the personality of the book.
Overall it's a decent translation, but I'd be curious to know if the new translation avoids these problems. If it does, you might be better off reading Manheim's version.
***
Addendum
As I've gotten further into the book, I've found much more egregious cases of censorship in the older translation, so I strongly recommend people try this new translation. For example, some passages COMPLETELY EXCISED (the first for blasphemy, apparently, the second one for scatological humor):
p.363 in the English translation is missing:
"Par example a present c'est facile de nous raconter des choses a propos de Jesus-Christ. Est-ce qu'il allait aux cabinets devant tout le monde Jesus-Christ? J'ai l'idee que ca n'aurait pas dure longtemps son truc s'il avait fait caca en public. Tres peu de presence, tout est la, surtout pour l'amour."
p.382 (mostly excised, not completely):
"Elle faisait a presents 'des vents en allant a la selle, que c'etait comme un vrai feu d'artifice...Qu'a cause de ses nouvelles selles, toutes tres formees, tres resistantes, il lui fallait redoubler de precautions...elle etait obligee de se mettre de la vaseline alors avant d'aller aux cabinets."
p.384 ("after a moment of friendliness...")
"je me suis tortille autour de son ventre comme un vrai asticot d'amour. Vicieux, on se mouillait et remouillait les levres pour la conversations des ames."
|
|
