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Summary: Blurbs from the back of the book
Review: "Published in Paris in 1946 as a thriller loaded with sex and blood, allegedly censored in the US and "translated" into French, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes --I Spit on your Graves -- was a pure mystification, but also a direct homage to American literature and movies, by a young author, Boris Vian (1920-1959). More deeply, it was also a violent attack on racism by a jazz fan who had already befriended many black musicians and was to become the closest French friend of Ellington, Davis and Parker. The novel became a best seller in France and established a scandalous reputation for Vian. But for the past forty years, Vian has become one of the most famous writers of the mid 20th Century, and his hoax of 1946 is only one example -- provocative and outrageous, though powerful and meaningful -- of his prolific production: novels and short stories, plays and scenarios, chronicles, poems and songs.-" Gilbert Pestureau"In the tradition of Karl May and Franz Kafka, Boris Vian imagines an America even more amazing than the land he has never visited. I Spit on Your Graves is the first novel to put quotation marks around the "hardboiled" thriller--a vivid and startling performance." J.Hoberman. "To Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden glories of French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent and disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by." Jim Krusoe
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Summary: RAW POWER
Review: Boris vian was the lightest spirit of the french thinkers. This book sarcastic to death can reveal such aspects of life and human behaviour that you remain breathless.
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Summary: in english or in french
Review: i have read this book in his original native language as well now as in english . Both are terrific . It reads well in english becasue it takes place in the US . Vian was underated ... 5 stars still underrates him
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Summary: in english or in french
Review: i have read this book in his original native language as well now as in english . Both are terrific . It reads well in english becasue it takes place in the US . Vian was underated ... 5 stars still underrates him
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Summary: It's Boris
Review: It's the book I always advice to people who read too little or who don't like litterature. And at each time they like it very much. It's really easy to read, the style is quick and accurate. A lot of action, a bit of sex... with the Boris' style which is different as usual, it's the Vernon Sullivan style less intricate but just as good. Now it's not still censored so everyboby should take the opportunity to read it.
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Summary: The Two Graves of Boris Vian by Paul Duncan (Crime Time)
Review: The Two Graves Of Boris Vian I Spit On Your Graves by Boris Vian, Tam Tam Books, $17.00, ISBN 0-9662346-0-X Paris. Summer 1946. Jean d'Halluin wanted to launch his new press, Editions du Scorpion, with a bestseller, so he asked his friend Boris Vian if he knew any good hardboiled American writers he could publish. Vian said that he'd just translated a book by Vernon Sullivan, a black American who couldn't get the book published in America because of the racist overtones. The title was J'irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes (I Spit On Your Graves). The story is about Lee Anderson, who enters the small town of Buckton, and takes over the management of the local bookstore. To make sure he gets sales, he must use all the sales literature sent by head office (the most salacious titles get the most publicity), he must skim the new books so that he knows what they are about, he must remember the names of everyone in town, and he must go to church. Making a good living, Lee decides to find out where the local girls hang out. Being, slightly older, blond, muscled, a good dancer, a singer and guitarist, with an ample supply of liquor, he is immediately welcome in the small group. Lee is driven to seek women and to screw them at every opportunity. They are happy to fall into his arms and to take everything he can give. Only, Lee is black, a mulatto who passes for white, and he's seeking revenge on white people for the death of his brother. With this in mind, he finds two rich sisters, and decides he will seduce each in turn, humiliate them, then kill them. * Paris. November 1946. In France, immediately after the war, everything American was great. The film noirs of the war years which had been banned by the Germans, were grabbing the public's attention. Marcel Duhamel started his Serie Noire line of American hardboiled translations at Gallimard. Only not many people seemed to be that interested in Vernon Sullivan. What the book needed was publicity. It got it, in spades. February 1947. Daniel Parker, head of a right-wing moral action group, who was already fighting the depraved works of Henry Miller, decided that J'irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes was equally depraved. Many people had never heard about this depraved work and decided to find out for themselves just how depraved it was. April 1947. A salesman in Paris went mad and strangled his girlfriend in a hotel room. Beside her lifeless body, he left a copy of the book. He had circled certain passages describing the death of one of the rich sisters by strangulation. It was a scandal. Everyone wanted to know more about the murder, and about the book which inspired it. Jean d-Halluin printed lots more copies, outselling French favourites Sartre and Camus in 1947, and had sold half a million by 1950. Boris Vian made a lot of money from it too, and some notoriety, because by 1948 it had been revealed that there was no such person as Vernon Sullivan and that Vian was the real author. * Rather than find and translate an American crime thriller, which would have been too much work, Vian had gone on his traditional family holiday to Vendée on August 5th 1946 and, in ten days, had written the book. The American pseudonym had come from Vian¹s friend Paul Vernon and the jazz pianist Joe Sullivan. The original title was I Dance On Your Graves, but his wife didn't think it was gritty enough, so 'Dance' was changed to 'Spit.' Although Vian had never been to America, he had learnt a lot about racial prejudice and attitudes from black American jazz musicians he played with - Vian was a well-known jazz trumpeter on the Parisian cabaret circuit. When Vian was brought to court by Daniel Parker for translating "objectionable foreign literature," Vian collaborated with Milton Rosenthal on an English-language version, published by Vendome Press in April 1948, to 'prove' that Vernon Sullivan was real, and deflect attention away from Vian. It didn't work - the cat was out of the bag and, in 1951, Vian was fined one hundred thousand francs. Boris Vian wrote four other translations of Vernon Sullivan, which didn't have the same impact as the first novel but still sold a fair amount. (Much like James Hadley Chase and No Orchids For Miss Blandish.) Ironically, it was as a result of I Spit On Your Graves, that he got offered work to do real translations - his first book being The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing. After that came other crime author translations like Peter Cheyney, before diversifying with translations of Nelson Algren A E van Vogt, August Strindberg and, most appropriately, Richard Wright. * Born March 10 1920 near Paris, and brought up in comfortable surroundings, at the age of twelve Boris Vian contracted rheumatic fever, which left him with a chronic heart condition. He was told that he could die at any time and would certainly not live past the age of forty. Unsurprisingly, this had a profound effect on the way he lived his life, and the subjects he wrote about. Life and death co-existed in his life and work. Always conscious of the lack of time he had to do anything, Vian threw himself into everything he did. His daytime job was as an engineer. After hearing Duke Ellington's orchestra in Paris, Vian took up the trumpet despite medical advice against it. When he was twenty-two, he was performing with the Claude Abadie orchestra. He worked to all hours. Vian was a surrealist, a pataphysician, an absurdist. He became the closest French friend of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, and was friends with the leading authors (Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir) who got his short stories into the influential magazine Temps Moderne. He wrote two unpublished novels before he got his break with I Spit On Your Graves. And after the crime books and translations, his own more personal work, began to appear. Such was his output, that many of these were not published until after his death. After the publication of what many regard as his best book L'ecume Des Jours (published in English as Froth On The Daydream and Mood Indigo) in 1947, Vian gave up the day job and concentrated in writing full-time. L'ecume Des Jours is a tragic love story set in a world where figures of speech assume literal reality, and familiar objects fight back surrealistically. Streets are named after jazz figures Sidney Bichet and Louis Armstrong; Colin, the hero, has a "100,000 doublezoons" before dinner, Colin and Chloe drink "pianococktails" created by a machine which mixes exotic drinks according to the music of Duke Ellington; Chloe becomes fatally stricken when a water-lily grows on her lung. There being no money for a funeral, the undertaker throws her coffin out the window, where it strikes an innocent child and breaks her leg. He wrote four hundred songs. Dozens of books. Hundreds of articles. Poems. Plays. Libretto for opera. His pseudonyms include Baron Visi, Adolph Schmurz, and Bison Ravi. All were full of spontaneous humour, and violence. * In Papers on Language and Literature, Jennifer Walters observed that, "the central theme of Vian's prose work is the way man moves incessantly and irrevocably toward death. His books are liberally bestrewn with corpses of all kinds, and rare is the story which does not end with the death of one or more of the protagonists." Vian knew he was going to die, but was going to do what he wanted until that time came. There were no boundaries for him, and his characters reflect this attitude. In I Spit On You Graves, Lee Anderson has no moral compunctions. He screws women and under-age girls. He gets them drunk so that he can screw them. At one stage, he says of Jean Asquith, one of the rich sisters, 'I never had any luck with her. Always sick, either from having drunk too much or screwed too much.' So what is the point of the book? Vian wants to shock us, to create a mini-earthquake in our heads. He doesn't hide what people can be like. If you go into a bar, you are going to see a lot of young men and women getting drunk and eyeing each other up, to see who they want to get laid by. Vian shows this. The characters are not worried about this behaviour - it's natural to them. What is shocking is the way Vian writes about it. The language is terse, direct, concise. He doesn't pull punches. * In 1959, a film version of I Spit On Your Graves was made, which Vian did not want to be associated with. Watching a preview, as the opening frames flickered on the screen, he commented, "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!.." and his heart stopped. He was only thirty-nine. And with him, died Vernon Sullivan. It is only now, more than fifty years after its first publication, do we get to read I Spit On Your Graves. For me, it was a revelation. Perhaps it will be for you as well. Paul Duncan, Crime Time
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Summary: Different Style of approaching the subject
Review: This book is one of most important mile stones in Boris Vian's literal life, and a must read for B.V. fans. The book is banned in many countries because of its direct approach to sexuality and racism. It is a short book and one may read it in couple of hrs, I recommend it to viewers. I dont want to state my personal thought about the book not to effect th readers about the book. My advice would be to read it and attain some knowledge about the life of the writer to have a structural thought for the book
Rating:
Summary: Different Style of approaching the subject
Review: This book is one of most important mile stones in Boris Vian's literal life, and a must read for B.V. fans. The book is banned in many countries because of its direct approach to sexuality and racism. It is a short book and one may read it in couple of hrs, I recommend it to viewers. I dont want to state my personal thought about the book not to effect th readers about the book. My advice would be to read it and attain some knowledge about the life of the writer to have a structural thought for the book
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Summary: high on shock low on content...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: high on shock low on content...
Review: 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.
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