Louis Ferdinand Céline - Journey to the End of the Night BOOK REVIEW

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[@joejs7659]

It’s a masterpeice, my favorite line. “But when you’re weak, the best way to fortify yourself is to strip the people you fear of the last bit of prestige you’re still inclined to give them. Learn to consider them as they are, worse than they are in fact and from every point of view. That will release you, set you free, protect you more than you can possibly imagine. It will give you another self. There will be two of you” perfectly showcasing bardamu’s connection with his alter ego/doppelganger, Robinson.

[@1dudeleek]

Anyone even talking about L.F.C. today, deserves attention and a sincere compliment.

[@struttingbirdlofi]

I tried to get my mates to read this book but they'd rather scroll through memes on facebook. Good people are hard to find...

[@sydlawson3181]

@@struttingbirdlofi retweet

[@danasheys9300]

Very little talk about Celine,,,,, anywhere. I truly believe most so called educated readers are simply afraid of what he has to say. Celines overwhelming hatred of all things is too much for most people to bear

[@kocahilmi]

@@danasheys9300 yes, that and his open anti-semitism didn’t help either. Some researcher visited him years later to find out how an brilliant writer like him could have nazi sympathies. He concluded that Celine just hated everybody and it wasn’t targeted to any group. Dude was a literary genius but alas, just bat shit crazy

[@danasheys9300]

@@kocahilmi how does being sympathetic to national socialism in 30s Germany make you "bat shit" crazy? Lies rule the world TO understand Celine you must focus specifically on bis overwhelming misanthropy not on underlying prejudice and agendas

[@brianray8351]

I never finished this book. That section about 350 pages in, when the parade of dead people float through the Parisian night - man, it was so beautiful and so sad - that I couldn't bring myself to continue. I don't think I'll ever try to finish the book because of that section.

[@Sarah-no7lv]

Possibly the dumbest comment I've ever read in my life .

[@danasheys9300]

That ridiculous. You made it up to that point. Finish finish and reread

[@leonardoricci5957]

Yes, that part is wonderful

[@b.m1902]

As much as it's packed with humour and satire, it's also deeply traumatizing. I'm about to finish it (this night), every turning page is mind-changing, there are some passages, deep as hell passages that made me shut the book and brood for as long as I don't know. I am spiritually invested in this Novel and my heart aches coming to the end. His character study is quite interesting, how he delivers the most violent, pathetic, empty, and cruel side of humanity then how he mentions spurts of goodness, weakness and a bit of beauty into the characters (like Baryton, Bebert's Aunt...) is exceptionally beautiful. Journey To The End of The Night is exciting, dark and raw like the night. Thank you for the review.

[@davidturner7590]

I first read Journey somewhat by accident when I was 18. He cheered me up . And then Death on the Installment Plan cheered me up and made laugh until I choked. He has always been one of my favorite authors.

[@andrewpereira9271]

I completely agree. I think Celine really found his voice in "Death on the Installment Plan". "Journey" was GREAT . . . but "Death" was a rocket ship.

[@johns8596]

"The only great writer who was also not a good person." 😂 Which writers did he consider great because I'm sure a few of them were not always good people.

[@thadtuiol1717]

What is a "good" person? Someone who watches CNN unironically, votes Democrat and thinks John Lennon's "Imagine" is the answer to humanity's problems?

[@sunkintree]

@@thadtuiol1717 brainrot.

[@RaHeadD10]

This is a typical libshit analysis. He doesn't agree with universalism and has some strong opinions I don't like, he's a bad person. Many writers are very questionable morally. That's what makes them great.

[@xsx1113]

​@@thadtuiol1717ok buddy we get it you worship Celine in all his antisemitism and hatred of humanity. everyone you don't like watches CNN

[@eremite3638]

Heh, fantastic review, thank you so much for listening to my recommendation. You put into words perfectly the nature of Celine, as you do to every author you review. Cannot wait for more reviews, every one is bloody brilliant.

[@kublatard]

if you like celine, hamsun, beckett, genet etc try these - witold gombrowicz, bruno schulz, robert musil, thomas bernhard, gustav meyrink, italo svevo (europeans) and/or david markson, hubert selby, joseph conrad. eugene o'neill, (american) and isaac babel (russian) - these are i would say are good examples of misanthropic and nihilistic novelists. when you do read hesse dont start with the glass bead game - its a bit of a bore compared to siddharta and steppenwolfe which are both superb - i like your style and your reviews - keep them coming you are doing well.

[@BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

+glenn sheehan Well thank you I'll do so and look up many of those. So much literature...

[@piwithatsme]

+glenn sheehan I can't recommend Bruno Schulz enough. Street of Crocodiles is a great book.

[@vollsticks]

The Room by Hubert Selby Jr. is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. JTTEOTN is fucking brilliant. Just brilliant.

[@josecortez5213]

Michel Houellebecq

[@andrewpereira9271]

I don't know, I hate it when people compare Miller to Celine? Miller was obviously influenced by Celine, but that doesn't warrant the comparison. It's like comparing ants to elephants.

[@kocahilmi]

My personal favorite from Celine is Death on Installment plan.. Dark, lovely humour but full of humanity and compassion...

[@maideni666]

Seriously? maybe you can explain it to me, becuse I adored Voyage and hated Death

[@kocahilmi]

@@maideni666 of course: it’s written in a very unusual form. There are no sentences but everything is written in a quick secession of words and impressions followed by the famous three dots. It’s bombastic, overwhelming and very descriptive in a insightful way. Shows the dark side of man in a hilarious and mostly unforgettable way

[@maideni666]

I gave it up almost 500 pages in. I intend to give it another shot sooner than later ... on first read I was having a difficult time with the translation ... I actually read Voyage couple of times in a Hebrew translation which to my opinion - one of the greatest translations I ever read of anything .... I couldn’t get through Death on the Installment Plan ...

[@kocahilmi]

@@maideni666 500 paged in? Might as well finished it then.. :) how about from castle to castle?

[@danasheys9300]

This book has the funniest scene i have ever read in my life.When the boy and his family are on the boat trip and eveyone gets sea sick

[@Jean-be7uk]

Thank you for spreading the word about him. Would love hear your thoughts on Georges Bataille's "Story of the eye" or on the Marquis de Sade "120 days". Cheers

[@BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

Jean Redondo Jean, thank you so much for watching. Those two titles hold more importance to me than most things in life. They will most certainly be making an appearance.

[@Dan-ft3hr]

Just finished this.....BLOWN AWAY!!!!! Also, these reviews are fucking great! Keep up the good work sir.

[@85ORESTIS]

This is one of my favorite books! You should also read and review "Mort a credit" :-)

[@annemariejackson2761]

Another one of my favourites. Others (among many :-) include Canetti's Auto da Fe and Magda Szabo's The Door. Would love to hear your take on these some time.

[@meriemt844]

my favorite booktuber by far :)

[@maxilopez1596]

The best book of the 20th Century

[@ryanstevenson3245]

I like your channel and demeanour. Great work!

[@Mayoninja]

You should definitely review some Henry Miller! - Tropic of Cancer maybe? Or Black Spring?

[@vins1979]

Henry Miller was actually hugely influenced by Céline. Miller could not have written 'Tropic of Cancer' if he had not read 'Journey to the End of the Night' first.

[@eaudorangeverte5745]

Hi, I stumbled upon your reviews accidentally a few days ago and find them very pertinent. They are great indeed! Do you plan sometime to do a review on Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse which is also in its own way a Voyage au bout de la nuit ( and way more nihilistic actually)?

[@MazamaGaming]

Homage to Catalonia

[@mrsoul4231]

Great channel (just discovered and subscribed). I would definitely recommend Celine:A Biography by Frederic Vitoux if you want to know more;his life was just as tumultuous as his books and even more crazy.It’s beautifully written too(I guess if you’re writing a biography on a great writer,you kinda have to know what you’re doing).

[@danielmarone5757]

That's my favorite doors song

[@syscrusher]

If you are taking requests... The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. Seems it would have consistency with many of the themes you discuss.

[@user-mf1rz9mn3l]

I wish this was longer

[@danasheys9300]

Thanks so much for talkng abour Celine You made my "Night"

[@rancorcell]

Really enjoying your reveiws i may have missed it but you got to read Mysteries by Knut Hamsun, Life of a Spider by Henri Fabre, and for love of anything H. Rider Haggard King Solomon's Mines

[@jimrader5299]

Michael, Thank you for the footage of Kerouac rapping about Celine. Too bad my French is highly limited. An indisputable fact: Kerouac's main point of departure wasn't Celine but Thomas Wolfe. Just ask Seymour Krim.

[@satirica3054]

This is a unique book... When I started reading it, I hated it (to be honest)... But there were some thoughts I couldn't deny, that were unbelievable! As more, as I got to towards the end, I began to understand him... Now I love the book! ❤️❤️❤️

[@TT-zi7hi]

2:43 I am reading Susan Sontag and it seems she would feel the same way as Céline: "Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood." (from Regarding the Pain of Others)

[@therealignotus7549]

He was a good writer and a good man

[@tomvousregarde2023]

Merci pour votre analyse !...

[@hoymuereelheroe]

You should totally go for "invisible cities"by Italo Calvino. borges was on his work, him on Borges'. Totally worth reading. Saludos desde Argentina.

[@BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

Will do, thanks for watching!

[@Tordah90]

A warm blooded hate filled hot tub. Brilliant hook! I´m ordering this book right now!

[@BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

Nice! Thanks for watching.

[@danasheys9300]

You will not be disappointed....in the book...You will be disappointed in humanity after reading

[@gavin8987]

@@danasheys9300 go shit in your hat!

[@beno_4785]

Passed 200 pages, I don't see pessimism at all, this book is so funny !

[@danielb9355]

One of the very few books I could just read nonstop. Loved it, even though I consider myself an optimist in most ways.

[@VisiblyJacked]

So if this is the penultimate novel of the disillusioned man, what is the ultimate?

[@paradiceislost9]

Have you reviewed any Hesse yet? I'm thinking of starting The Glass Bead Game.

[@BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

Nope, gotta get on the Hesse. Thanks!

[@paradiceislost9]

Better Than Food: Book Reviews I've still got to get on the Bolaño train. Such little time.

[@user-mf1rz9mn3l]

I read this book because of your recommendation but I don’t agree with that he had a violent hatred for human race, I might even say that the ending of the book was “hopeful”

[@kcconnor5085]

so glad i found you.

[@AndalusianIrish]

A review of some Will Self would be great. I love how you review books that most of the rest of "BookTube" don't review and they would not consider politically correct.

[@ellishutch5217]

Thank you - so much reading to do....

[@BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

You are very welcome, yes, so much reading always and forever.

[@mr.vinegaroon3132]

He also liked parrots and had a pet parrot. He liked an occasional sip of Mumm's as well.

[@rayanknezic8682]

This was his first novel... Wow...

[@therealignotus7549]

0:42 Candidates : Hamsun, William Golding, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Simone de Beauvoir/Sartre. However I only consider Hamsun as great, and he was probably the least bad out of these.

[@TeatroGrotesco]

Only about 50 pages in and really enjoying it. But itis soo dense and I am reading and turning pages, I have to stop and realize some of the increadible things being said. Random example: "Everyone has his own way of mourning the passage of time. It was through dead fashions that Lola perceived the flight of years." A lot of authors would build a career and a whole book around that line, for Celine it is almost thrown away at the end of a paragraph in the middle of an early chapter. It isn't even the only great line in that chapter! So, I'm forgetting to eat because it is better than food.

[@jeanvanderstegen]

“Céline was, to be franc, as punk as fuck.” Unforgettable line. Keep up the good work, though I wish quote more. Cheers.

[@jeanvanderstegen]

*I wish you quote more

[@xiomarsuigkeitenbarenfange6170]

Thank you for breaking this book down. It is my ex boyfriend's all time favorite book and it really put many things in perspective knowing how much he loves this book and hates himself. I feel better than ever that some of us are honest about our hatred for the human race. The rest are all pretty duplicitous to judge those who do while doing a parody of what a kind person looks like (to them) and basically being a bigger creep for it. You have a good channel here. I am glad I landed here. Good Stuff. That was a projection, but just know you taught me something and that is the point.

[@sk8tb1]

is there a writer that writes about. death, dreams tribes, patterns, beign animal ?

[@acidothewakener4951]

Nice description, remember reading about all of the above among others

[@trorisk]

not beeing an animal but you have Gérard de Nerval novel "Aurelia or Dream and Life". He wrote this novel in a psychiatric hospital after the death of the woman he loved. He describes psychotic dreams, crazy fits he had and so on. The novel is not finished but is a work of art.

[@jelliott0077]

“A warm blooded hate filled hot tub” lol

[@HarrysonTucker]

Are there any books that you have read that stood out and have a somewhat "optimistic" view on life?

[@BetterThanFoodBookReviews]

Don Quixote?

[@toothgapbirch7265]

steinbeck cup of gold, пожалуйста

[@JohnDoe-vc5qb]

If you speak and can read french you should really do yourself a favor and read it in it's original form. A lot like Vian, Borge or Octavio Paz, no translation work really does it justice. I suppose it's probably the same for most Japanese authors.

[@pdiddley7597]

Not totally indiscriminate; he saw plenty of poor as medical patients for free.

[@jimrader5299]

I don't agree that the Beats closely resemble Celine, except Burroughs. Ginsberg & Kerouac were religious, if in their own way, and resemble Celine only in their use of everyday urban language. H. Miller...well, he vacillates wildly between nihilism and idealism. Genet is more out of 19th cty. French lit. / But I appreciated the capsule description of "Journey", it captured its doomed spirit of adventure. / I read it in 1969, at 17 & recall a critic stating that Celine's outlook resembled "today's young people" and that sex to Celine was merely useful in quelling anxiety. / Celine's two novels about waning days of Nazi occupation reveal his collaboration as dr. to Nazi/ Vichy bureaucrats ("North" & "Castle To Castle"). Celine's disparagement of "the world in general" can be found in many fiction writers, modern , post-modern or traditional; essentially, it is a misanthropic endeavor.

[@mickaelprevost273]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/p2WlgZSZdsd-asU

[@karingoering2441]

Céline was a great man

[@isejingu4120]

Are there any other extremely pessimistic, misanthropic book anyone can suggest me? I've finished reading The Catcher in The Rye some days ago and aside from this book I only have "Project X" by Jim Shepard on my list. I prefer first-person narration, but I don't mind third-person at all.

[@jeromefecto8085]

Le quai des brumes, Pierre Mac Orlan. I don't know the title in english, but that book written in 1927 have all the darkness in the world. Very short, it don't have the genius style of Céline however it was one of his main influence.

[@johns8596]

The Room by Hubert Selby Jr

[@sunkintree]

Notes From Undeground Nausea

[@maideni666]

I tell anyone I meet to read this. I convince no one.

[@christiangastelum7035]

Review Death On Credit!

[@DiamorphineDeath]

Not digging it so far. Reminds me a lot of Miller, which I dug as a younger man, but now I’m getting to the point where I’m tired of hearing a bohemian writer talk about the urbanite existence, even if it’s nihilistic and critical. Endless scenes of walking down streets, and mentions of town/city/street names...just very bland with very little actual substance being expressed so far. I liked storm of steel by junger a lot, which is interesting as Celine and Junger are both held up in similar circles now as being the real “counter-cultural” artists of the 20th century along with Mishima, but shit man, this book is dragging so far.

[@dramares]

The KMG Show EP201, 1:40:00...

[@1990calum]

I've actually just finished it and I didn't like it. There was so much which could be removed in order to make a much smoother plot. It dragged on a lot. And had a bad start. I was disappointed considering Bukowski loved it so much and it is so highly recommended.

[@maideni666]

read it again and slower !

[@sunkintree]

It's not a book with an important plot...Guy signs up for war, makes it out, then wanders around for a bit while musing on his distaste for various aspects of life. That's the plot.

[@thomasfranche6770]

I like Bolaño, but of course he would say that about Céline (a good writer who was a "bad" man), Bolano was a far-left extremist. People nowadays would probably say the same thing about Céline, that he was a far-right extremist. All of that is debatable. I'm currently reading Voyage au bout de la nuit (in French) and I'm 100 pages to the end. I appreciate it, but I don't enjoy reading it. I find it almost like drudgery. But I will finish it. Funny that you say it's one of your "favorite books". I find that you exagerate the merites of serveral authors a lot though, Clarice Lispector, Knausgård, etc... I'm not really a fan, but I've read them, but I wouldn't praise them like you do. Have you ever done a review of a book that you DIDN'T like ?

[@drmom9900]

It's a tempting mistake to see a man of the past using the lens of today

[@PIERRECLARY]

EXACTEMENT!

[@PIERRECLARY]

+Pierre Clary ...AND cELINE WAS AN EMBARASSEMENT TO THE FRENCH FASCIST/NAZI COLLABORATORS AFTER 1944, READ "CASTLE TO CASTLE", "NORTH" AND "RIGADOON" TO GET THE STORY OF CELINE ON THE RUN THEN IN SURVEILLED RESIDENCE THEN ON THE RUN AGAIN IN THE CRUMBLING REMAINS OF NAZI GERMANY GERMANY ...AS MAD AS JOURNEY AND TRUER.

[@PIERRECLARY]

+Pierre Clary sorry bout the cap locks

[@alexmorrison9156]

All true, but I aldo found it boring; never finished it. I´ll give it another look. Prefer Tropic of Cancer

[@xltoday]

okay? alright then!

[@Stefanio64]

Hey Bradley Cooper :-) Just kidding. Love the Book too!!!

[@xiomarsuigkeitenbarenfange6170]

Oh and I like the way Will Self doesn't give a mad fuck how obscene his anti social behavior is. He doesn't try to make it beautiful, poignant, etc he just drags you straight into his neurosis and guilt and you become this hostage. A hostage who gets spit out with street smarts earned sitting in the comfort of your own couch. You feel dirty and want to take a shower and I know I feel happy to be a woman by the time I am done, which I rarely find inordinately edifying.

[@jeromefecto8085]

" Le cri le plus farouche jamais poussé par un homme"

[@Piltribus]

now that you have to present a face book or a book face it's not going to be easy to understand the human ... don't forget Antonin Artaud 😐

[@acidothewakener4951]

It's the most antimilitaristic book ever written, also

[@bebertthecat]

He was a great person

[@josecortez5213]

...

[@GrootsieTheDog]

I think I would have loved the angst and humor of this book as a young dude (I used to like Henry Rollins anger rants, now sad to see him at it in his late 50’s) it is some serious bro lit from what I’ve heard so as a man turning 50, I think I would find it tedious. Life is too short to be a poopy head trolling the human race. Also, there is no excuses you can make for a Nazi sympathizer, either now or then. The fact that he was a brilliant observer of humanity makes it all the more abhorrent. There’s a name for cats like him - big ahole.

[@frederickpasco7607]

Céline wasn't a proponent of Fascism, he was much more of an anarchist.

[@user-wl4sr4tl7f]

You have never read his political writings and you do not know what the word Anarchist means.

[@christopherpaul7588]

He did support the Nazis at the beginning. So did Knut Hamsun.

[@jesuisravi]

Celine? No. Just no.

[@kirkalex5257]

One of the greatest ever written.