Boris Vian is the one writer I would choose if I were allowed only one. His best-known work is Froth on the Daydream, published on 20 March 1947; this article begins with its wonderfully surreal eel-and-toothpaste scene.
For his greatest commercial success, I Spit on Your Graves, Vian invented Vernon Sullivan, a supposedly banned African-American author whose work he claimed merely to have translated. The anti-racist intention, the racial stereotypes, the impersonation and the extreme violence make the whole affair enormously complicated.
The book appeared on 21 November 1946, the same day The Best Years of Our Lives premiered. If you like the returning-veteran territory of Born on the Fourth of July, this is your film. It is like that, only good, and without having to endure Tom Cruise. Just joking: he was good in Magnolia.
Posters for Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia.
The novel was banned in France in 1949. A film followed; Vian asked for his name to be removed and suffered a fatal heart attack during a private screening.
Somewhere along the way, two bands from Spain’s hugely overrated eighties scene borrowed titles connected to Vian: La Unión with Lobo-hombre en París and Siniestro Total with Bailaré sobre tu tumba. The latter said the phrase came from The Cotton Club. I am not so sure.
The same thing would surely have happened to Homer had he been invited to Nolan’s The Odyssey, but luckily for him he was already dead.
Vian said that only two things mattered: love and jazz, especially Duke Ellington. I will accept no debate—at least not about the first part.
Ellington starred in Black and Tan in 1929, about a dancer whose heart could not withstand the music. Music, love and a failing heart: precisely the things that ran through Vian’s life.
He also appeared with his orchestra in Vincente Minnelli’s Cabin in the Sky, alongside Ethel Waters, Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong. In 1959 he scored Anatomy of a Murder and appeared as the bar pianist Pie Eye, playing beside James Stewart.
Posters for Cabin in the Sky and Anatomy of a Murder.
We could talk about Duke Ellington forever, but at some point we have to stop. Links to everything mentioned are below.
Live, play, dance... but above all, do not get bored.See you at Spirit, if you want. A huge kiss.