Death on the Installment Plan

Rating:
Summary: Celine's Finest Moment
Review: 'Death On The Installment Plan' is a raging animal of a novel that eclipses even Celine's own 'Journey' (though, it must be said, not by much). Structurally it's a shambles, but the unbelievable energy behind each & every sentence is enough to propel the reader straight through the 600-odd pages. What few of the other reviews have pointed out is how gut-bustingly funny this book is. A laugh a line with Celine and no mistake...More than that, 'Death...' contains absolutely the funniest sex scene ever written, bar none. While 'Journey' is tighter and harsher and the later works are more crazily surreal, 'Death...' is the shot of pure Celine that literature needed when it was first published and which the literate world could use another dose of now. And that's no Cambridge lie.

Rating:
Summary: A Renewal of Life
Review: Andre Gide said of Celine, "...he writes not about reality, but of the hallucinations which reality provokes"...this is most evident in Mort, Celine takes us into his early bourgeois childhood and in so defines it as 'stale, petite and engaged with episodes of merde and vomit'...it's a hillarious romp through life's false mirror...

Rating:
Summary: A Renewal of Life...
Review: Andre Gide said of Celine, "...he writes not about reality, but of the hallucinations which reality provokes"...this is most evident in Mort, Celine takes us into his early bourgeois childhood and in so defines it as 'stale, petite and engaged with episodes of merde and vomit'...it's a hillarious romp through life's false mirror...

Rating:
Summary: A Renewal of Life
Review: Dr. Destouches, Louis-Ferdinand, whatever you want to call him, this man is the essence of 20th century spleen, frenetic overkill, hyperbolic, high-velocity anathema. He covers all the bases. Nothing is sacred. Everything known to man and then some is fair game for his unhomogynized, vituperative rants. And yet it is not hatred of mankind that informs his venting, it is a weird kind of love. Dr. Destouches was actually a man who would not turn down a poor patient. He had a sincere love for his wife and for his cat. He is the preeminent 20th century answer to Swift and to Pope. He holds mankind up to ridicule. He lambasts the foibles and the rot of civilization. Yet he also displays vestiges of love and of understanding beneath the ravings. He abhors the human condition, yet strangely sympathizes with its common plight. We are all actors in a ridiculous farce. Life is indeed a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, but we are brother actors, victims of central-casting. There has never before been, nor will there ever again be, such energy displayed upon a page. The man had a vision of hell on earth and was never affronted by it. He was always willing to laugh in response to the pain. His is the consummate howl, the absurd grin, the "barbaric yawp."

Rating:
Summary: Whiny cynicism passed off as art
Review: I concede two stars to this book only because I assume that I read a bad translation. Celine certainly shouldn't be criticized because I can't read French when there are so many other good reasons to criticize him! I've heard Celine's influence on Bukowski commented on several times, and I can only assume that this is because of Bukowski's admission of having read Celine, since the two authors are connected in no other way. Whereas Bukowski's HAM ON RYE is a timeless exploration of what it means to be a youth in America, Celine resorts to self-pitying and annoying drivel. Celine displays none of the youthful self-examination that lends beauty to the horrible events of Bukowski's life. Instead, all misfortune is blamed on those Celine comes in contact with, begging the question: If all of the characters are horrible thieves and liars and the author/narrator is a whining, sniveling self-apologist, then where is the sympathy of the reader to reside? It is because of this lack of compassion with the people of the book that interest is lost quicly. After that loss of interest, the book is simply one anecdote after another from the life of a man bathing in his own self-pity.

Rating:
Summary: yep
Review: I have to disagree with the reviewer who said that there was no connection whatsoever between Bukowski and Celine. I think fans of Bukowski will certainly like this book, and it is very clear Bukowski was influenced by Celine's prose. The difference is that Celine tends to be far more pessimistic and full of hatred for everyone, but he is also more poetic in his observation.

Rating:
Summary: Bluster, bombast, and bilge
Review: The subject's line meant as a compliment, for those who can take the frenetic style and unrelenting pace of this, his "prequel" to the more somber Journey to the Edge of Night. Because it deals with adolescence rather than the horrors to befall "Ferdinand" the author's alter ego in Journey, this book makes for a lighter and more entertaining read. The first half lists the smells and sights of the Passage where he grew, the toil for his parents and then working peddling the Gorloges' "manias of a whole insane asylum served up as trinkets", ensuing bad sex with the Madame G., off to England for a twist on the Dickensian orphan-cum-Edwardian schoolboy saga. Then, back to France for first Paris and then the sticks as Ferdinand works and swindles alongside the des Pereires couple. He's a mad scientist obsessed with tellurically grown tubers, she's a manic counterpart crazed by her own and her husband's hot air--in more ways than one.

The pace moves this book very quickly. Compared to the later Castle by Castle, you can see in Death the origins of the elliptical, staccato style of his later, post-WWII novels. Yet, lacking the despair if not the pessimism of the 1950s efforts, Death still carries a sassiness that makes it an easier read and less bitter to savor. Compared to the earlier Journey, the freshness of youth carries the reader more nimbly through the passages relating wonderfully the stench of being seasick, starving, pants full of excrement, stealing, and sexually randy. This book lacks the gravity of the other works by Celine, but would probably, more than Journey, be the place to start.

Yes, the constant negativism does drag the book down if you're an optimist, but then, why would someone who always looks on the bright side of life be attracted to the dark side of comedy anyhow? The narrator, like the author, knows he's a jerk, little better than the rest of failed humanity. The hundreds of pages spent with Courtial des Pereires, in their manic schemes and unrestrained rhetoric, speak of the joy of the crazy dreams we all harbor and their manipulation by those just a bit more avaricious and crafty than the rest of us. The human comedy Celine sketches here, in riotious crowd scenes and gustatory excess being at his most accessible, makes for a spirited encounter with the world, just before 1914 changed it--and the narrator and his author--all again.

Rating:
Summary: Better than Joyce
Review: This is it: the finest novel of the century. Journey to the End of Night is for wimps; the English-language novelists are prep-school showoffs. This is it: the hard core, the key text of the century.

Rating:
Summary: A trial-by-fire read; an illuminating book.
Review: Though not as consistent as "journey to the End of the NIght", "Death..." is where Celine perfects his style, a scattershot volley of sincere human emotion. "Sincere" is the right word; Celine never wrote a line that approached the glibness and superficiality of postmodern writing, and yet his best work (though most of it was written in the 1930s) continues to erode the facade of lies that the 20th century has erected over reality. His passages on a childhood filled with with petty soulessness ring true even in our time, and his never wavering cynicism reveals his most subtle quality; compassion, or, more accurately, an empathy for those who do not fit and yet struggle to live the best life they can under the immutable, spirit-crushing reality thay are born into. In a few words, a transcripted nightmare we all share. A wothy companion to "Journey", although its long-windedness makes it salighty inferior. And that's still a high compliment. Read "Journey" first, then settle down with "Death." Highly recommended for a rainy, raw day.

Rating:
Summary: Celine's Finest Moment
Review: You'll either love it or hate it. No in between. Celine's cynical coming of age story as told through the eyes of truth vs illusions we create....or was he telling it through disillusioned eyes?