Product Description
L'Ecume des jours (Foam of the Daze) is a jazz fueled Science Fiction story that is both romantic and nihilistic! Vian's novel is an assortment of bittersweet romance, absurdity and the frailty of life. Foam of the Daze is a nimble-fingered masterpiece that is both witty and incredibly moving. It is a story of a wealthy young man Colin and the love of his life Chloe, who develops a water lily in her lung.The supporting cast includes Chick, an obsessive collector of noted philosopher Jean-Sol Partre's books and stained pants, and Nicolas who is a combination of P.G. Wodehouse's fictional butler Jeeves and the Green Hornet's Kato. The soul of the book is about the nature of life disappearing and loving things intensely as if one was making love on a live grenade! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Great book, poor translation
Beside this English translation I have read two other editions of this book (one in its original language -French- and another in a language other than English). I have to say that, by comparison, this one kinda dissapointed me. A lot of expressions and meanings were lost in the poor translation, some were downright stupid mistakes. "Foam of the Daze"?!? I wonder if this book was typed by dictation, since the correct translation would be "Foam of the Days". It reminded me of the typing on the TV's CC system, or listening to one of Beethoven's symphonies with a quasi-deaf conductor leading the orchestra.
I believe it takes someone with writing talent and command of both languages to translate superior literature like this and retain its original greatness. Yes, the story is very moving, but when it comes to writers like Boris Vian, I'd say there's much more than a story.
I wish I could recommend a better English translation, but so far I've only read this one. All I can do is warn you about the poor quality of the edition presented here.

WOW
I will put it in a simple way: I have read and re-read this book in French, in Spanish and now in English more than fifty times and still find it to be the best love story ever told. Vian characters are straight, pure, honest and passionate in a way that we only can dream about. They are so full of life that you can actually cry when they die (I know, sound commonplace, but how often do you really mourn a character?). Vian draws this paradox of life and death better than anyone I know. Oh, you may wonder why I've read this book so many times... well, you know, Vian is actually telling you a different story every time you lay eyes into this book of marvels. Another commonplace would be to say that your life will change dramatically after reading this book. Ok, don't take my word, just go for it yourself. And, if you can, share your thoughts...

Review from the Los Angeles Times (Feb 1, 2004)
A legend throughout Europe - French musician, translator of Raymond Chandler and seminal science fiction writer, poet, songwriter, novelist and screen actor - Boris Vian remains little known in the United States. Los Angeles-based TamTam Book aims to correct this, having published a paperback edition of Vian's landmark thriller "I Spit on Your Graves" in 2001 and now a new translation of his masterful "Foam of the Daze" (L'Ecume des jours"), with the first translation of "L'Automne à Pékin" to follow.

There have been two previous English translations of "Foam": Stanley Chapman's 1967 British edition, "Froth on the Daydream," and Jon Sturrock's U.S. version, "Mood Indigo," which appeared shortly thereafter. Chapman's is by far the superior, admirably transposing Vian's rhythms into English and finding equivalents for his multi-level puns and wordplay. But Brian Harper's hip new translation, edged toward the modern U.S. reader, may well become the standard.

This is a great novel, mind you. Though on its surface, the simplest of stories - Vian summed it up as "a man loves a woman, she falls ill, she dies" - beneath are a host of ambiguities, digressions, levels of meaning. Not quite beneath actually, for subtexts keep erupting to the surface. It is in many ways a novel built of eruptions.

Simply, then, this is a tale of two couples: Colin, a rich and rather superfluous man, and Chloe, a woman dying from a lily growing in her lung; Chick, whose life is ruined by his collecting of Jean-Sol Partre's books and memorabilia, and Alise, who tries to save Chick from himself by murdering Partre. As the lily grows in Chloe's lung, Colin does all he can to keep her alive. But her bed sinks closer to the ground and the room grows ever smaller. Because Colin has no money left to pay for burial, Chloe's coffin is simply thrown out the window.

In Vian's world, nothing is simple, nothing may be taken for granted. Because people they love have died, mice persuade diffident cats to kill them; bells detach themselves from doors to come and announce visitors; neckties rebel against being knotted; some broken windowpanes grow back overnight while others darken from breathing difficulties; a piano mixes cocktails to match the music being played upon it; armchairs and sausages must be calmed before use. When Colin puts Duke Ellington's "The Mood to Be Wooed" on the phonograph, the O's on the record label cause the corners of the room to become round.

In Vian's books, the world becomes ineluctably strange, the world as a child or a madman might see it. And that's the recipe for "Foam of the Daze," a novel with paradox at its heart, as critic David Meakin has observed: one part light-hearted fantasy, one part tragedy. Add wordplay and romance to taste. Your heart will be broken. You will be confused and confounded. You will laugh aloud. And at least for a time, however hard you try, your own world will refuse to be what you think it is.

Here is Colin in church after Chloe's death:
"Why did you have her die?" asked Colin.
Oh... said Jesus, drop the subject.
He looked for a more comfortable position on his nails.
She was so sweet, said Colin. Never was she bad, neither in thought, nor in action.
That has nothing to do with religion, mumbled Jesus, yawning. He shook his head a little to change the slant of his crown of thorns.
I don't see what we've done, said Colin, we don't deserve this.

He lowered his eyes... Jesus's chest was rising softly and regularly, his features breathed calm, his eyes had closed and Colin could hear a light purr of satisfaction coming from his nostrils, like a sated cat."

Vian died June 23, 1959, at 39 as he sat watching a film version of his thriller "I Spit on Your Graves." He'd neglected to take his heart medications that morning and as the first frames ticked by on screen, he is said to have uttered, "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!" and collapsed.

Vian's was a short, very full, very strange ride, like that of his ever-youthful characters in "Foam of the Daze."

James Sallis, Los Angeles Times Book Review (Sunday, February 1, 2004). ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Boris Vian's Manual of St. Germain des Pres
1st class service all the way. Thanks.

Groovin' in St Germain
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!!!

beutiful
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.

History as it happened
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.

Curious and delightful artifact of postwar bohemian Paris
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? ... Read more

Book Description
"[This collection] displays Vian's range from gallows humor to verbal fireworks, and happily serves to give visibility to this important writer."- Publishers Weekly."Ultimately, Blues for a Black Cat is a collection of moral fables, albeit fables told in a cynical, mocking voice and set in a skewed version of the real world. Under the surface absurdity and verbal play, they offer serious indictments of human weakness and pretensions. Further, they reveal the spiritual emptiness just beneath our civilized façade. Vian's blues are not only for a black cat, but for a society without meaning."- Manoa."[Blues for a Black Cat] brings back the nimble Vian in a collection of his short fiction, initially published as Les Fourmis in 1949. The work has the unmistakable flavor of the time and place, Claude Abadie's jazz band, the coded and absurdist messages of rebellion, the wistful fables, verbal riffs and goofy anarchic encounters; the mise-en-scene includes an expiring jazzman who sells his sweat, a cat with a British accent and a piano that mixes a cocktail when "Mood Indigo" is played."-Boston Globe.Boris Vian (1920-59), a trained engineer and jazz trumpet player, was a major literary figure in World War II France. Julia Older is the author or editor of many works. Her stories, translations, and poems have appeared in New Directions, the New Yorker, and many other journals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Literary rarity
In Blues for a black cat, Boris Vian's literary genius shines with rare intensity impossible to find in modern works. While I read a few of Vian's works in the past, revisiting this book was the perfect escape from the mundane world of today's literature. Without getting into any plot or revealing too much about this compilation of short stories, Blues for a black cat, is an insane, entertaining, humorous, profound, powerful avant-garde literary rarity. Vian's style remains unique decades after the original publication, and while seemingly incoherent on the surface, it is intentionally so. Vian plays with words and objects, breathing life into them, making them take on a life vastly different from what we are used to, changing directions and staying on track at the same time, and inserting a deep incision in to our consciousness. Through humor, Vian touches upon uneasy topics -- shallow interpersonal communications, lack of spirituality, empty lives... and above all, our humanity. Humanity, with its faults, seems to be a common thread throughout Vian's works (at least those I had the chance to read). The list of subjects in this book will be too long, but one story will forever remain, in my opinion, one of the best short stories written about WWII (or any war for that matter) -- Pins and Needles.
As Vian himself says: "Routine dulls impressions." Readers be assured, there is nothing dull about his writing. His prose is full of gems, his ramblings are amusing, his literary rebellion is unrepeated by the generations of writers that came after him. While not pure surrealism, his approach to reality, to make the most mundane breathe with a new life, is fascinating.
Julia Older's excellent translation finally brings this important piece to the English speaking audiences.
Blues for a black cat would be a great sample of Vian's work for those not familiar with this author.
... Read more

Product Description
Published in Paris in 1946 as a hardboiled thriller loaded with sex and blood, allegedly censored in the US and "translated" into French--I Spit On Your Graves was both a pure mystification and direct home to American literature and movies. More deeply, it was 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. Find out why this young author outstripped sales of Malraux, Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir when it appeared in France...and continues to scandalize today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Uncomfortable book not helped by flawed printing
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.

Sadistic fantasies of Boris Vian
"I Spit on Your Graves" cannot be interpreted as an accusation ofracism.In reality the plot is only a pretext for explicit depictions of sadistic, even bestial crimes, without the slightest compassion for the victims. It would be a perfect book for all readers who have hidden sadistic tendencies as they could enjoy the cruel scenes without remorse, convinced that their pleasure is justified because the hero is just taking revenge in the name of his lynched brother. Nothing, however, justifies such sickening, unnecessary cruelty. Boris Vian's book appeals to the worst human instincts and to the most appalling fantasies. Let me take the example of one of the murdered girls: she is not only killed in a cruel and utterly humiliating way, but also subjected to sadistic torture. An extremely disgusting and dangerous book because it celebrates sadism in a hypocritical way.

A Real Oddment for Aficionados of the Hardboiled
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.

A Worthless Unimaginative Read
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".

high on shock low on content...
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. ... Read more

Product Description
Vian's 1947 novel Autumn in Peking (L'Automne à Pékin) is perhaps Vian's most slapstick work, with an added amount of despair in its exotic recipe for a violent cocktail drink. The story takes place in the imaginary desert called Exopotamie where all the leading characters take part in the building of a train station with tracks that go nowhere. Houses and buildings are destroyed to build this unnecessary structure - and in Vian's world waste not, make not.Vian, in a mixture of great humor and unequal amount of disgust, introduces various 'eccentric' characters in this 'desert' adventure, such as Anne and Angel who are best friends; and Rochelle who is in love and sleeps with Anne, while Angel is madly in love with her.Besides the trio there is also Doctor Mangemanche; the archeologist Athanagore Porphyroginite, his aide, Cuivre; and Pipo - all of them in a locality similar to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, where there is a tinge of darkness and anything is possible, except for happiness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A must read
This book is totally awesome.I have read all Boris Vian's books in French and this translation is good.Some of his books are a little out-there for some people but I would highly recommend reading this book to everyone. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

An Allegory of Protection unto Death
This allegory of good, bad and over-concern is narrated by a psychiatrist named Timortis (Timor Mortis) who comes upon this unknown village in an unknown country in an unknown time.Somethings in the village are familiar but many are not and assumptions have to be made as to who is what and what is who.Timortis enters a house in the village in which a woman is about to give birth (she has three sons: a set of twins named Joel and Noel and a single named Alfa Romeo).He ends up staying with the family for years (maybe eight, it hard to say) but only psychoanalyses the nanny who thinks the word is a euphemism for sex.

There are odd going ons in the town such as an "Old People's Market" and a church at which the Priest has a curate who is a devil and they battle for the amusement of the villagers.But all this is an afterthought to the trials and tribulations of the mother, whose only thoughts are how to protect her children from everyday problems that escalate up to how to protect them from meteorites.

The book is a study of the ends to which love can drive people and how love cannot only be stifling, it can be downright dangerous.

Great French Classic
Another Boris Vian even better than all the rest. Broaden your horizons and read this!

Utterly fascinating
Sometimes funny, often disturbing, thoroughly unique, and utterly fascinating.A psychoanalyst goes looking for desires to analyze because he lacks any of his own.He settles in a very bizarre and rather brutal village where shame is forbidden, horses are crucified, old folks auctioned, and a woman makes love at long distance with the blacksmith via a robotic spitting image of herself.Very weird, but not in the usual way.It's all presented so matter of factly, with such a straight face, that the effect is unlike any other literature of its kind.

"He propelled himself towards some particular piece of debris that was floating on the top and picked it up expertly between his teeth.It was a tiny hand.Covered with inkstains.He climbed back on board again.'Tut, tut,' he said when he looked at it.'Old Charlie's boy's been refusing to do his homework again."

"Somebody perfectly free has no urge to do anything at all."
In descriptions so richly imagined that he sometimes has to invent new words, Boris Vian brings to life the strange world discovered by a wandering traveler, Timortis, a psychiatrist who has been born an adult and has no memories of his own.An "empty vessel," he believes that if he can learn everything there is to know about someone through psychoanalysis, he can bring about a transferrence of identity and make his own life more complete.When he hears the cries of Clementine, a village woman giving birth to triplets, he stops to give aid and ends up delivering her sons--Noel, Joel, and Alfa Romeo.

Though the birthing scene is humorous, the full satirical flavor and the allegorical construction of this novel do not unfold until Timortis travels into the village.There he discovers that he has arrived just in time for the Old Folks Fair, at which old people are auctioned off like cattle and treated like them.Later Timortis visits a shop where he sees a child being worked to the verge of death, then revived with icewater.Farm animals, however, are given days off when they behave themselves and allowed to hitchhike if they need rides.A scapegoat, named Glory Hallelujah, retrieves putrid, decaying things from a blood-red stream with his teeth, his job being to "swallow the shame of the whole village." The vicar announces that"God is not utilitarian.God is a birthday present...a luxury, a tasseled cushion made of beaten gold."A horse is crucified for his sexual depravity.Additional bizarre episodes abound, leaving the reader to ponder the meaning of the non-stop action, at the same time that s/he is whisked along by the speed of Vian's prose to new and still more surprising events.

Puns, word play, and literary inventions fill the novel, even as Vian's often lyrical sentences and vibrant descriptions set the scenes.Satirizing the existing world for some of its most obvious faults, Vian presents a remarkably open-ended allegory, which makes the reader think at the same time that s/he often laughs at the absurdities and winces at the truths.But this is no full-blown alternative universe created to illustrate a serious and specific political or social agenda.Here Vian symbolically smiles at the reader as he leads Timortis through this strange community from episode to episode, illustrating his own opinions in a more or less random way, having fun all the time, while making some serious points.Not scholarly, though highly literate, this is a book for which one must buckle up, sit back, and just enjoy the ride.Mary Whipple ... Read more

Book Description
Boris Vian lived during a period of redefinition in France, from the instability of the Thirties, through the German Occupation, then into the friendly if overwhelming presence of the American liberators. Vian resisted identification with the movements now associated with mid-century French literary and intellectual history--surrealism, existentialism, the absurd--while creating a multifaceted ouvre that owed and contributed something to them all. This study concentrates, however, on the importance of American influences on Vian's extensive jazz activities and his mock translations of American noir novels under the name Vernon Sullivan. Vian personally embodied the increasingly transatlantic nature of Western culture and the melding of elite and popular forms of expression. The diverse components of this synthesis shed light on the construction of both individual and national identity in postwar France. ... Read more

Book Description
This book is a study of the novels of Boris Vian, the artist, writer, jazz musician and occasional pornographer. Primarily known for his classic novel of doomed young love, L'Ecume des jours, and the pseudonymously-written erotic roman noir J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, his work displays a bewildering variety of styles, genres and narrative voices. The purpose of this book is to show that Vian's novels in fact display an overall thematic coherence, dramatizing the growth of the individual from childhood to adolescent idealism and ultimate adult disillusion. Vian is a highly popular author in France: this book seeks to prove that he is also a serious literary artist. The wordplay, pastiche and parody which fill his texts should not blind the reader to the deeper themes and issues which lie behind them, just as the protean character of his style should not be allowed to conceal the single integrated narrative which runs throughout his novels.

... Read more

Book Description
It is a close study of four novels by Boris Vian. It aims to show how L'Écume des jours, L'Automne À PÉkin, L'Herbe rouge and L'Arrache-coeur form a unified and coherent tetralogy. By establishing close links between these four texts, it becomes possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding, not only of the significance of the tetralogy in exposing a complex and multi-layered novelistic strategy at the heart of the vianesque, but of the individual novels as autonomous creations. An examination of the novels reveals that they are not merely joined to one another via a superficial network of textual similarities (that which I refer to as intratextuality), but that this intertwining is emblematic of a common method of narrative construction. Each Vian novel is dependent, for a thorough understanding of the text to be possible, upon the multiple lines of external influence running through it. The sources of this influence (which I refer to as intertextuality) are located in various major texts of twentieth century literature, anglophone as well as francophone. Thus, in each instance the narrative is driven by a complicated interaction of intratextuality and intertextuality. ... Read more