Boris Vian Books

When Jean d' Halluin first published I Spit On Your Graves in 1946, he was looking for a bestseller to kickstart his new imprint, Editions du Scorpion. Written by an African-American writer named Vernon Sullivan, the book was a visceral, often misogynistic, and (once it gets rolling) violent pulp novel offering a gritty commentary on racial injustice in the United States.

The plot centered on Lee Anderson, a light skinned black man seeking revenge for the murder of his brother at the hands of whites. Anderson, takes his revenge by infiltrating southern society as a white man (he has light skin and blond hair), bedding every white woman he can, and ultimately selecting two of those women to murder as payback for his brother's death. Despite being considered too controversial and subversive for U.S. publishers, the French public devoured the novel. By 1947, it outsold work by Sartre and Camus, giving d' Halluin the bestseller he craved.

That alone would've made for interesting literary history. But there was more to the story...

Vernon Sullivan never tried to have the book published in the United States.

Vernon Sullivan did not exist. I Spit On Your Graves was in fact written by a Frenchman. A white Frenchman. Said Frenchman had never actually visited the United States.

Then there was the law suit filed against the author by Cartel d'action sociale et morale, the same right wing organization that tried to censor the work of Henry Miller.

Last but not least, there was the grisly murder committed by a Parisian man who strangled his mistress. The authorities discovered a copy of I Spit On Your Graves at the scene of the crime with a part where Lee Anderson dispatches one of his victims circled.

Hence its bestseller status. Who didn't want to read the "murder book," as the introduction Marc Lapprand calls it?

And then of course, there was the bigger question: what if the book was not about racial injustice at all?

On the surface, I Spit On Your Graves is a pulpy, not expertly written tale of murder and sex. And upon first reading, I Spit On Your Graves comes across as that - a cheap pulp mystery, lacking only the cover illustration of a woman screaming, hands raised against her face, as an unseen stalker comes at her with a knife.

It is overflowing with graphic sex (for it's time) where Lee takes the female characters in every scenario imaginable (barring midgets and donkeys). At first one would take it as a sub-par Tropic of Cancer, except that the reader's knowledge of Lee's racial identity gives the book a taboo that is non-existent in Miller's novels. Lee gets his hands on every white woman he possibly can, and they are all to willing to be taken, even if they don't admit it at first (as is the case with Lou Asquith). As Lee relates early on in the story, "I had all the girls, one after the other, but it was a bit too easy, it turned my stomach." It comes off like a line from a 70s Blaxploitation film. And in many ways, I Spit On Your Graves reads like a Blaxploitation script. However, as the book goes on Lee flips from bragging of his conquests to being disgusted at how far he has sunk to achieve his revenge. He becomes increasingly sickened by his seduction of the Asquith girls and this drives him further towards the violent outcome.

And that is where the book starts to turn from pure pulp sadism and gratuitous sex into a more layered, psychological exploration. We know Lee is seeking revenge. We know he is going to kill. It is only a matter of time and the reader is forced to travel down the road, dragged further and further into Lee's madness, strapped in, unable to change the course.

Keep in mind, Vian was no pulp writer. He was a contemporary of Sartre and Camus, who wrote the incredibly well received Froth on the Daydream (also translated as Foam of the Daze). He was also a translator, poet, music, critic, and jazz musician who was close with Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.

In many ways, it is similar to Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho, forcing you to see the world of the book through the eyes of a very twisted and violent narrator. We immediately find ourselves repulsed by the narrator's narcissism, their ruthlessness, and most importantly their penchant for extremely grisly acts. And yet, it is this grotesque, amped, psychotic, bloodthirsty humanity that captivates us.

I'm not the first person to make such a comparison between these two books. However, there is a major difference between them. Whereas Ellis was satirizing society, specifically the Reagan-worshipping stockbrokers of the 80s, Vian was going deeper - he was satirizing publishing and ultimately, the reader.

After all, sex and murder were rampant in novels published circa 1946. Both are still widely used as devices and plot points today. In fact, one could argue that both are necessary lynchpins of all modern literature. Sex and death is what it's all about.

The book is so overly violent and misogynist because Vian is parodying pulp writing, a form very prevalent in post-war France when he wrote I Spit On Your Graves. Like Swift's A Modest Proposal, it takes the argument to its fullest extreme, giving readers the ultimate in literary-noir: a story so extremely violent and disgusting to modern thinking that the reader can't put it down.

Much has been said about the social commentary perceived within I Spit On Your Graves. Of this one can look literally. Lee, a black man who's brother was murdered by whites, seeks revenge by wreaking havoc on white society. In the end however, without giving anything away, there is no justice for Lee. So it is easy to see I Spit On Your Graves as a biting commentary on racial injustice in America during the 20th Century.

But in many ways, Vian is still having his fun with us. After all, he's not trying to convince us that Lee is an unfortunate character of racial injustice that we should pity. He's getting us to hate Lee Anderson in spite of his quest for justice. After all, Vian's audience was white, educated, French society. And it is Lee's racial identity, his status as `black' that made (and still makes the book) so controversial. If Lee was a white man bedding a bunch of women and then murdering two of them, it would be a Harry Crews novel. Vian however spins the tables, serving up a tale of a violent, lustful black man out for revenge, one that horrifies and yet draws us in, convincing a repulsed and outraged public to keep on reading. Ultimately the joke is on us. We are thinking of racial injustice, clinging to the social message seemingly contained within the book, and yet it is the titillating bits - the sex and death - that keep us reading. Swift would've been proud.

There isn't a whole lot to say about this book that hasn't been mentioned in previous reviews: It's about a black man who looks/poses as white to infiltrate a white town and avenge his brother by embarassing and killing two aristo-white girls.

The novel follows his narration from entering the town to socializing with the locals and preparing his revenge. I was surprised that I was not shocked, disturbed or offended by any of the content in this book, though I can certainly see how it would affect people the way that it did, particularly in the time when it was published. Vian, a staunch supporter of African American culture, as well as an acerbic cynic, was a huge fan of taking this sort of material and rubbing *Our* noses in it.

However, at this point I would dare say that the book is only mildly disarming and that anyone who has ever read anything by hardboiled authors such as (aforementioned) Jim Thompson, or Paul Cain, or beat poets like Bukowski, should not be offended by the text - at least on the surface. The language is simple and concise. The sex scenes included are just shy of explicit and the violence scarcely described.

The most frightening ingredient of the book is of course the implication it makes regarding racism and tolerance in American culture. The disgust towards black people indicated in the text is particularly raw. However, it is interesting to note at this point in the review that Vian had never set foot in America. Like Kafka and (now) von Trier, his perception of the American mindset is thusly a little skewed.

The borderline material in the book is incredibly ruined due to embarassingly poor editing, specifically in the formatting department. There are several simple grammatical errors involving quotation marks and the like, but the most glaring problems are present in line breaks and new paragraphs in the middle of a given sentence. These issues come to surface in the later half of the book and I found rather tedious. This sort of sloppy editting is inexcusable, particularly with something so simple.

This over-rated book doesn't have much going for it except controversy created by some French Puritans in the 1950's who called it "pornography" and had it banned, thereby fueling its popularity. It's rather tame by today's standards, and very outdated and silly, not to mention dull. Most of the writing style is flat, drawn out prose, an imitation of Jack Keroauc and 1940's film noir crime novels, which the author translated. I find most of the scenes incredulous and there's a lot of "sex" going on, which doesn't seem very plausible in the novel. It deals with a black man who actually looks white who goes on to plot some type of revenge against "whitey".

This is a fascinating book, all its back history making it more so, and remarkable to think it was written in 1946.

For its time it is truly shocking and extremely graphic. Even by today's standards it is pretty explicit.

However, for all that there really isn't much to this novel. It only takes a couple of hours to read and as such is a 'pleasant' diversion but the book lacks substance. It only took 10 days to write as a bet and that shows in places. Having said all that it is a worthwhile read and a real eye opener.

Glad I read it, wouldn't go back to it, won't make it onto my all time list but conditionally recommended.

If you've read James M. Cain and David Goodis and Jim Thompson and Charles Williford and like the dark, tough-as-nails paperback original fiction of the forties and fifties, pick this up. It's a postwar Frenchman's take on the dark underside of America, a place he'd never been-- so his imaginary America is even more corrupt than the stuff the Americans were writing. It's sleazy "realism" (that is: fantasy), with all the teenaged girls panting nymphos and all the men racist pigs. The jargon is just "off" enough to raise a smile (though the translation is probably fine-- I read it in English), and the behavior of our "hero"-- a black man passing as white named Lee-- is completely reprehensible. He hates _everybody_. Due to the odd nature of its authorship and its aspirations, this is an entertaining read: not necessarily a good novel, but an intriguing and entertaining one.

1st class service all the way. Thanks.

Capturing the verve, vitality and creativity of St Germain at it's richest peak, this book seduces, subjects and forces one to submit to all that St Germain was in its artistic heydey! Take me back, take me back!!!

the book has a very unique design and a lot of nice photos, while the content is absolutely magnificent.
i bought it as a present along with the Duke Elington masterpieces box set since Vian was inspired by Indigo Mood while writing his masterpiece Foam of the Day.
I am thinking to order another copy of the book for myself.

There is coverage of Paris in the 1890's, and Paris in the 1920's, but coverage of the 40's and 50's, the era of the existentialists, is pretty sparse. To the media, existentialists meant both real philosophers, like Sartre and Camus, and, to make lurid copy, anyone who hung out in the infamous jazz and poetry cellar-clubs of St. Germain. Vian's book, however, is devoid of media-hype. It is, as the editor says, "a snapshot of history as it happens."
I happened to be there for some of it, like hanging at the Cafe de Flore that Sartre and de Beauvoir had established as the current literary scene; while across the street at Le Lipp I found a vestige of an older one: a dude who was still a surrealist. And I hung at Chez Inez, with jazz musicians and ex-pats from Harlem, a club owned by a zanzy black American woman; and at bars with people like Orson Welles' ex-girlfriend, and Juliette Grecko, who played in Cocteau's Orpheus and claimed she almost married Miles Davis.
For me, too naive to realize it, it was a time like none other. Fortunately, Boris Vian nailed it down.

A silly, very tongue-in-cheek user's guide and hymn to 1940's Paris' ground zero for jazz, artists, existentialists, hipsters, wanna-be's, stars, and hangers-on: the neighborhood of St Germain des Pres. Written by a Germanopratin and one of France's most unique postwar novelists, it's riddled throughout with big, beautiful period photos of locales, principal denizens, and famous slummers (Sidney Bechet, Prevert, Sartre and Beauvoir, Juliette Greco, even Garbo, Faulkner and Orson Welles, to name a few). The real attraction is the photos, but the content is pretty entertaining--part ethnography of a strange nocturnal and extinct species of Parisian scenester (both mocking and affectionate), part screed against the popular press' charicature of the neighborhood's inhabitants and habitues, it's funny, fascinating, and full of curious information. Did you know, for example, that the stereotypical existentialist's uniform included brightly colored Converse allstars and a plaid shirt unbuttoned to the navel?

Normalmente no comento acerca de lo que piensan otros lectores: cada quien su rollo. Pero siendo este libro el más cercano a mi humilde corazón, me atrevo a decir que el autor de la reseña anterior simplemente no tiene imaginación. ¿Qué tiene que ver si Chloe muere de un nenúfar en los pulmones? ¿Cambiaría en algo o sería mejor el libro si muriese de un cáncer? ¿No es un nenúfar, además de todo, un extraordinario pretexto para construir una gran metáfora llena de humor negro?

Este libro no solamente es una exaltación a la vida, al amor y a la tragedia de la muerte, es un deleite literario en sí mismo. Es uno de esos pocos libros en los que la historia, la manera en que está narrada y los recursos literarios que la adornan están a la par. Una verdadera obra maestra. Y NO, JAMÁS será aceptable equiparar su calificación con la un mugroso betseller.

Este es un libro que muestra el absurdo de la existencia, la muerte de la inocencia y del idealismo: el darse cuenta y la angustia inherente de la realidad sin adornos idealizados. Esto suena interesante, pero en sí la novela es un tanto cansona para leer, las descripciones rayan en el surrealismo y las situaciones son absurdas. Por ejemplo, la esposa del protagonista muere porque en sus pulmones crece un nenufar. Aun así, si te gusta la tragicomedia, el humor negro, las situaciones absurdas y maravillosas, el simbolismo y el existencialismo, esta novela es para tí. Ah, y si sabes quien es Jean Paul Sartre, vas a disfrutar su caricatura- referencia omnipresente en la obra-, Jean Sol Partre.

Esta novela es un drama sobre una historia de amor, pero al estar salpicada de tanto lirismo y surrealismo llega a confundir llevándote por los caminos del humor a poco que uno se descuida.

A mí me ha llamado especialmente la atención la potencia narrativa justamente de estos elementos fantásticos, con cuatro palabras, en una sola frase uno se ve trasladado a esos escenarios imposibles. Para los tiempos que corren, tanta novela histórica, tanto realismo periodístico es una bocanada de aire fresco

Carlos Ortega
2006-01-27

I like this book a lot. I was very different from all the books, I've read from this author but I liked it a lot. And I really appriciate the fact that he was able to change completely his style of writing and pretend being someone else[Vernon Sullivan]. And eventhough the book is written in the style of detective stories of "hard school", the main story is really impressive and not cheap at all. I enjoy it. You can also see that he wrote it on purpose to make the critics even more angry so be prepared at some sexual parts and some slang.