| Guignol's Band: Novel Contributor(s): Céline, Louis-Ferdinand (Author), Frechtman, Bernard (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0811200183 ISBN-13: 9780811200189 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation OUR PRICE: $16.16 Product Type: Paperback Published: January 1969 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Classics |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 54010186 |
| Physical Information: 0.65" H x 5.24" W x 8.01" (0.61 lbs) 287 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The hero, the semi-autobiographical Ferdinand, moves through the nightmare of London's underworld during the years of World War I. In this distressing setting, he meets pimps and prostitutes, pawnbrokers and magicians, policemen and arsonists. He sees social and physiological decomposition as these processes unfold along parallel lines of development. The illusions of existence are nakedly exposed. The narrative erupts in C line's characteristic elliptical style. His splintered sentences and scatology reflect his fury at the fragmentation of experience and at his own impotence in the face of it. Out of his rage, he forces the meaninglessness back on itself, and the exuberance of his struggle triumphs in the comic exaggeration of satire. Ultimately, his subject is not death but life, and he responds to it by a strengthened commitment to the sensual and concrete. His hallucinatory world is so vividly realized that it does, indeed, challenge the reality of the reader's more conventional world. |
Contributor Bio(s): Frechtman, Bernard: - Bernard Frechtman was a writer, critic and translator.Celine, Louis-Ferdinand: - Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) was a French writer and doctor whose novels are antiheroic visions of human suffering. Accused of collaboration with the Nazis, Céline fled France in 1944 first to Germany and then to Denmark. Condemned by default (1950) in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace, Céline returned to France after his pardon in 1951, where he continued to write until his death. His classic books include Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan, London Bridge, North, Rigadoon, Conversations with Professor Y, Castle to Castle, and Normance. |