Journey to the End of the Night | 
pickNot so long ago I ragged on Henry Miller and 'The Air-Conditioned Nightmare' for often being tiresome and just "an old man venting his spleen". Why, then, do I love this book so unreservedly? It's every bit as angry and pessimistic as TACN. Is it just Céline's youth? There's certainly an attendant energy and dark humor. Maybe humor is the key. I love a gleeful cynic, dispensing witticisms as the ship goes down in flames. An all-time favorite.
Liz_M You make this sound like something that might appeal. But, an internet friend whom I admire loves this book. Since we have almost exactly opposing tastes, I assume I won't like it.... 😆 😉 4y
The_Penniless_Author @Milara It's funny, because the only way I would consider him a "stylist" is as an "anti-stylist" - i.e., he wrote in normal, working-class speech that was true to life rather than an affected, highbrow "literary" French. And not a pastiche of working-class speech, either; it was just his normal mode of speaking. I think that was a lot more shocking in French than it would have been in English. To me, he's more raw energy than stylized. 4y
The_Penniless_Author @Liz_M Maybe this is the book that will bring you together! 😉 4y
The_Penniless_Author @Milara Just to follow up, I've never read anything else by Celine but Journey. I can't vouch for his later works, and I know a lot of writers who loved him early on grew weary of his later stuff. So his writing may have gotten more stylized over the course of his life. 4y
The_Penniless_Author @Milara Come to think of it, I do remember that Celine did away with traditional punctuation later on and started using only elipses and exclamation points. He also began divorcing himself from traditional plot/exposition. So yeah, I guess he became more and more stylized as he went on. Stick with Journey - it's as stripped down and propulsive as the best punk rock, and miles better than most of the stream-of-consciousness stuff it inspired. 4y
