Rating: 
Summary: Hallucinatory and wholly original
Review: As soon as I'd put down "Journey" for the first time twenty years ago, I made a vow to learn French for the single purpose of reading Celine in his own language. I never kept that vow, but I've returned to Manheim's translation of "Journey" twice since that time, and I haven't had my fill yet. Celine's hallucinatory masterpiece still shocks, still inspires that thrill that comes in the presence of a great and lasting work of literature. Celine was and still remains wholly original; it is as if the man conceived the idea of writing a novel without ever having read one. No book you have ever read will prepare you for "Journey", yet it is no mere exercise in literary experimentation; it is a riveting and tremendously readable picaresque novel for our century and the one to come. Celine rages and rants, but curmudgeon and nihilist he's not. Bardamu, Celine's antihero, is no more a true nihilist than Celine himself, the doctor who tended Paris' poor. Without the weight of Celine's conscience, this would have been nothing more than a prolongued tirade. Once you've devoured "Journey", there is Frederic Vitoux's recent biography of Celine, a powerful and completely non-apologetic insight into one of the century's great writers.
Rating:
Summary: One of the "Great" Books of this century
Review: Most of the people I know who read "serious" literature are either terrified or contemptuous of Celine. They call him a fascist and an anti-semite. That he wrote such pamphlets (I wish he hadn't, but...), that he escaped to Germany at the end of WWII, though he hated no one more than Germans, while he insisted on living a life among the poor, the maligned, the degenerate, the petit bourgeois only adds to his bizarre background. He has been lauded both by left and right authors and jeered at--at the same time. Personally no book I've ever read, however, has more soul, more depth of feeling and is not out to bull**** me even though there is plenty of that in the book and in his writing. I thought that when I ended reading this that it would be the end of the journey. It wasn't. The journey continues along with the madness that this century has been. If anything "Journey. . ." written more than 60 years ago is a metaphor for this century. My only regret! is that I can't read it in French. But this translation is brilliant and suave without masking the crudity fundamental to Celine's writing. A thousand kisses!
Rating: 
Summary: A Landmark To Transcend From.
Review: The father of all b****** writers,the most superbly brilliant of all subcultural anti-heroes;he was the man that pushed the novel to an emancipatory height where most others that followed lost their footing & clung on to painful reed sticks,shallowing pathetically from way below.Never had I seen another writer mix the miseries of existence together with the humor of it so superbly as to make them seem like a copulating couple going through the mores in the dark,with the moonlight streaming from the nearby window.The brilliance of his style is a sparkling offshoot from the genuine talent that resides consistently from within.The innovations of the man's craft have changed world literature,& thank god it has so.For a person can pocket from any of his works a promise,a defiant compromise that always leads one above any situation in life,& see the worlds seemingly important situations in its true face:a miniscule scale.And it all started with this book. Like "Death On The Installment Plan",the other great companion to this novel,which forms the pinnacle of the author's achievement;it's biggest flaw is in its consistency,not in its style or content.Celine's first two books have to be read more than once,like all great books;& like all great books reveal much more after consecutive readings,growing revealingly into the readers awareness of its true substantial context.This book & the second are the oracles of the 20th Century;all mankind from then on have surfaced from it.
Rating:
Summary: A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't like to live there.
Review: Like any Journey it has a great start. The WWI vignettes are funny and poignant. The humor winds down through the rest of the book. The African adventure is superb, but the American episode and the the return to France have some good lines, but left me continuously seeing how much longer this journey would last. Like most trips, you're glad it's over and good to be back home.
Rating:
Summary: Recognition, although I never made such a journey
Review: Of all the books I read this book cost me most time. But I HAD to read it. It is not necessary to make his "journey" to draw the same conclusions. There are only two writers who influenced me more: the Dutch authors W.F. Hermans and Gerard Reve.
Rating:
Summary: The pinnacle of literature: Journey to the End of the Night
Review: "A man of hate" but also a man of truth and wisdom, in "Journey" Le Docteur Destouches brilliantly exposes the human race and all its workings as the raging, insane beast which it is. No one who reads it will be the same person he was when he started it; Bardamu, the antihero of the novel, will force anyone and everyone who reads it to get in touch with his/her inner nihilist. With vivid imagery and dialogue which will make you want to laugh and cry at the same time, "Journey" cuts like a knife.
Rating:
Summary: wow! what a bizarre trip!
Review: Twelve years after reading Journey, after being turned onto him by Kurt Vonnegut (see his homage to Celine in a chapter of "Palm Sunday"), I still pick it up and thumb through it and relive the bizarre, twisting/turning ride the main character takes. I thought back then after finishing it, "whoa! where have I just come from?" It definitely takes you where you havn't gone before. Quite a departure from your normal read. I found the underlying theme of destiny similar to Les Miserables, though in this case destined depressingly nowhere. Read this and tell yourself "you think you're having a bad day?"
Rating:
Summary: Here is where you use the word "best".
Review: I first read the journey when serving the army back in Yugoslavia. Everything around me didn't make much sense, even though others seemed to think so. Then I read the journey and felt like I was the one really understanding. I've read the book couple of times since and still adore it. Only Fante, Hamsun, Kafka and sometimes Buk can reach up to Celine.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest novel of the past 2000 years.
Review: By far the greatest novel of the past 2000 years. Celine transcends his time and place by writing in simple, dynamic prose that does does more to bare the human condition than anything ever writen. The book can be summed (although you should read it, repeatedly) by one line from its riveting conclusion... It isn't (an obvious reading) a broadside against love; rather it a crystalization of Celine's hatred for the lies and eception that have come to constitue modern (post 1890s) life. In a nutshell, it is Celine's opening salvo against the comfort of illusion. This novel, if you give it a chance, will absolutely change your life. It is the most compassionate black comedy ever written (a genre occupied (untill "Journey") only by the Bible!!!) Enjoy!!!
Rating:
Summary: A Journey to the centre of ourselves
Review: Céline's "A journey ..." is one of the books that should have changed XXth's century litterature. It is amazing how, after reading this book, other authors have tried to express the same hallucinatory and exhilarating view of our times, failing by years-light, of course. Reading this book is one of the most painful, most terrible experiences any reader must endure. Céline's view of the world makes no concessions. And despite that, he makes us laugh loudly in every page. He showed us just that the complete insanity in which we live can only be tolerated if seen with the eyes of delirium. Céline's book(s) make all the serious discourses on the suffering and seriousness of human life look just ridiculous. How can anyone write anything after that (except Bukowski)?
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