By BORIS VIAN (TamTam Books; 1947/1998)
Many readers find this notorious novel, the first by France’s ever-eclectic Boris Vian (1920-1959), to be some kind of transgressive masterpiece. I found it a bit of a hodgepodge, a deliberately overwrought Frenchified attempt at American noir fiction; its initial 1947 publication was as an American pulp novel, credited to one “Vernon Sullivan” and translated by Boris Vian.
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES (J’IRAI CRACHER SUR VOS TOMBES) was quite controversial in its native France. It also (as elucidated in a 1998 introduction by Marc Lapprand) made a not-inconsiderable splash, becoming an unexpected best-eller after a copy was discovered in the possession of a Parisian man who strangled his mistress in 1947. The novel also begat an unsuccessful 1959 French language film adaptation; it was while viewing said film, in fact, that Vian breathed his last (his alleged parting words: “These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!”).
The English version, accomplished by Vian himself (who apparently only bothered with the translation because he wanted to solidify the hoax he and his initial publisher had perpetrated), was written in 1948. It’s distractingly clumsy, which is but one of many annoyances.
Despite a compellingly frenzied and feverish prose style (it was evidently written very quickly), the book suffers from a meandering narrative that has Lee Anderson, a light-skinned black man, looking to enact vengeance on the white race for the lynching of his brother. This he does by taking a job as a bookstore clerk in a Southern town and seducing a couple of white women, with the aim of killing them. Anderson’s innumerable sexual trysts are explicitly (by 1940s standards) described, as is his final rampage, which is even uglier and more disgusting than expected.
Vian published three other “Vernon Sullivan” books, including THE DEAD ALL HAVE THE SAME SKIN (1947), TO HELL WITH THE UGLY (1948) and THEY DO NOT REALIZE (1950). Having read the first of them, I can attest that it’s of the same ilk as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES, but I found the trashy shock value, its most interesting element, to be conspicuously absent.