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Guignol's Band

By: L Celine
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
ISBN: 0811200183
ISBN-13: 9780811200189
Released: 01 Feb 1969
RRP: £9.15
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Not at the Top of His Form, but Enjoyable Anyway - By: Bruce Kendall, 30 Nov 2002
It's almost impossible to break Celine's works down into the usual category of "books." Basicallly everything he wrote, his entire oevre, is one metabook. If you want to get sequential, start with Death on the Istalllment Plan & work your way up from there. DOTIP deals in large part with "Ferdinand's" childhood & we are treated to descriptions of a surreal upbringing (an entire neighborhood enclosed in soot-encrusted glass, a mother & father depicted as slightly less than imebeciles).

I would then suggest reading Journey to the End of the Night (primarily about WW1 & his trip to America), Guignol's Band, London Bridge (Guignol's Band II), Rigadoon, Castle to Castle & North. All have been well translated.

Don't be put off by puffy readers who say that these texts can only be appreciated in French. This is one author who comes through loud & clear (probably just as biting & clever in Swahili) in translation. Celine deals in high comedy & his novels move at the pace of a Mack Sennet or Charlie Chaplin film. The energy is always frenetic & he seldom alllows you any lulls. The descriptions in this book of "The Leicester Boarding House," lorded over by Cascade, Dr. Clodovitz, the wounded-in-the-ass Joconde, Boro - master of the keyboards, but most of alll Titus Von Claben, will leave you howling if Celine strikes a responsive chord. If he doesn't, then you have a different sort of sensibility than mine & should probably avoid this author at alll costs.

There is nothing Keilloresque about Celine. He came up out of the Paris slums & witnessed some of the most horrific scenes the 20th century produced. That he came out of it alll with a sense-of-the-ridiculous intact is a marvel in itself. He was on the wrong side of most issues his entire life. He made some stupid choices. But those who maintain that he walllowed in self-pity are way off the mark. He always points to himself as his own worst culprit. He never pretends to heroism. He is, like Chaplin, always the falll-guy, but is also, in the same light, a survivor. He gets up after his prat-fallls, dusts himself off & heads on towards the next chapter.

A messy, passionate, and indescribable experience - By: , 15 Jul 1997
This is the book we shalll remember as being Celine's third, coming after "Journey to the End of the Night" & "Death on the Installlment Plan." But "Guignol's Band" actuallly comes after "Trifles for a Massacre", an intense study into judaism that may or may not have been nihilisticallly anti-semitic. Regardless, it cost him his literary career, a cost he was not willing to pay.

Of course, if it gave him a freedom... It was to pursue his style... Often, God, considered indecipherable!... Certainly here, in this recitation of his time in London during WWI as an AWOL solier, it is a mess... But what a mess!... The prostitutes... Dark hospitals... Sleazy import dealers... Definitely for Celine addicts... Tough prescription for average readers... But, as Ferdinand might say, "What do they care?"...