Foam of the Daze - Boris Vian

jenks

thread death
So, i'm twenty pages from teh end and I have enjoyed the read but I have yet to be sure what I feel about the book.

It reminds me, in places, of Perec's W (double-vie in French). The way it starts so light, almost whimsical and then turns ever darker in this surealistic world it has created.

I like the jazz name dropping - as if all the roads in London were named after grime stars or something. And I like the food references. maybe the pisstake of Satre is over done but the fetishisation of books, as opposed to knowledge is interesting.

I'm not sure if the characters are more ciphers and insubstantial in comparison with teh play of ideas.

Anyway, it's a start. I'd not read him before, so I am grateful for that.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"So, i'm twenty pages from teh end and I have enjoyed the read but I have yet to be sure what I feel about the book."
I'm glad you said that because that's pretty much exactly how I feel. I read the book yesterday and I really enjoyed it (mainly) but I'd like to know just what he was getting at, why he creates that world, then makes everyone so happy and then puts them through so much etc I won't say too much more because I don't want to give anything away but when everyone is ready I've got a fair bit to say on this.
I think it compares very favourably to the play version I saw because a lot of the magic was either thrown out or hard to grasp when they acted it (especially through their thick French accents).
 

martin

----
Isn't the flower growing out of the woman meant to link fertility to some cancerous affliction? Read it yonks ago after I saw him namechecked on a Nurse LP, can't remember much about it though. Vian was on lots of drugs.
 

jenks

thread death
I finished it and thought that it was enjoyable but not necessarily substantial. But then again I feel like that about a lot of what could be termed surrealism.

I liked the humour in it - Nicholas the uncle/chef/lothario was fun - how he spoke like them when he was out of his 'role', the groping of girls etc but the doomed love affair was saddish without ever becoming truly moving.

Alos the discovery of Chick's profession - its brutality and inhuman remorselessness and how this rund counter to his passion for books etc was well done and maybe truer taht many would liek to admit - culture not necessarily making us cultured.

Of course I also wonder how it reads in the original - the introduction seemed to suggested that he was forever punning.

Now martin mentions it, I'm not surprised his is a name dropped by NWW.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Isn't the flower growing out of the woman meant to link fertility to some cancerous affliction?"
OK, I saw the flower as cancer but, yeah, I guess it could equally well be viewed as representing fertility as well. Not a nice link.

"but the doomed love affair was saddish without ever becoming truly moving."
Which one, Chloe and Colin or Alise and Chick? I certainly found the former quite moving. I know what you mean about how often surrealism can fail to stir as a result of how hard it may be to relate to but in this case I found the slowly moldering house and the game but ultimately helpless mouse's attempts to bring sunlight to the dying girl really added emphasis to the situation.

At times I thought that it was different from surrealism and just a description of their state of mind. For example when he cuts the attendents head off with his skate because he is moving too slowly I took that to be what one would like to do in that circumstance rather than what actually happened. Perhaps I'm wrong in thinking that though.

I also loved the humour and I'm sure you're right that loads of puns are lost in translation.

I still want to know what the actual point of it was? Was it some kind of revenge on those who, like Colin, have everything easy, don't have to work and mock those who do? Doesn't seem likely really but I can't think of any reason why he creates these people just to torment them.
 

you

Well-known member
Intro was interesting ( as with vians 'I spit on your graves' the writing and reading of the book is as much a part of the performance/art as the actual story in a kinda 'meta' kinda way... for me at least ) id like to try an examine this more but my brain is mush after giving full time employment a bash.... but ive kinda kept this murky undeveloped notion ( of meta writing/performing etc ) of mine in mind whilst reading this one... while some descriptions are purely poetic and wonderful, in a normal..errr...good (?) way, others are just awkward and very close to being non-sensical - I really think both of these aspects of the read are a consequence of the alleged 1000 translations and its a pleasure to drift between the two,.... burroughsesque hallucinatory scenes lunge into awkwardly exacting and scientifically broached scenes..... and the world of colin and nicolas and chloe etc feels kinda penumbral through these constant shifts of the readers awareness/immersion blahblah.....

OK, so im maybe a few more pages in since I posted this in the other thread, and mmmmm, im not really convinced that the writing-translation-story-publication are all as innately connected in a meta kinda way as they are with "i spit on your graves".... rather a story and characters are present along with Vians lust for puns, and sayings and dodgy translations ( or the possibilities of..) but all these things are not strictly pointing towards the same end.

Personally I prefer "I spit...", so far.

Does anyone know what im banging on about?? Its a damn shame Wikipedia doesnt do a page for "I spit on your graves" I cant be arsed to go into it ( and even if I did it wouldnt make much sense........ sorry for the self depreciating comments - ha (!) )
 

you

Well-known member
I spit on your graves

Vian was unpublished and struggling to get anything published when a friend who ran a publishing house asked him to find a cool american book to translate as american lit would be be sure fire hit to kick start the publishing house and get some business - Vian said he would and that he already had a great book in mind ( he didnt )... so he promptly went away and wrote in french an original story about a very pale black guy who could only make his way in a new town by letting people assume he was white but just happened to have a deep voice..... the book was set in america and supposedly wrote by an american - Vian used a pseudonym. Obviously there is a parallel in the actual story he wrote and the fact that he couldn't write it as a frenchman and get it released. The book was a huge hit and actually found at the scene of a horrid crime, it became a bigger hit than expected and after a year or so people kept asking for this american author and the hoax ended up being revealed....... Or so the story goes... I dont know if this is all part of the piece or not and cant entirely trust it but thats what the intro said.

Hopefully this will explain a bit of what I was rambling on about.

I dont think L'ecume de jour is quite as meta in its construction/ layering as this though.

Rather, I think its a kind of surreal story that contains Vians penchant for puns, and translation problems/jokes etc etc. Im a bit underwhelmed to be honest, but I still ( i know i know..) havent finished it.

Must admit, the imagery is almost cartoonish at times, which I like, but the story isnt gripping me.

Like when the bloke shooting colin shoots a skull and cross bones hole in the door.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
OK, that's a great story about the origins of the Spit On Your Graves book, didn't know about that.
But I don't know what you mean by this

"I dont think L'ecume de jour is quite as meta in its construction/ layering as this though."
Can one say "quite as meta"? Do you just mean that it doesn't have that extra story around the origin of the novel associated with it? How could it?

"Rather, I think its a kind of surreal story that contains Vians penchant for puns, and translation problems/jokes etc etc"
That's what it is I reckon. But is there some aim to the story? I'm usually happy to accept that something I've read doesn't have such a thing but in this case it feels as though it has (or ought to) and I'm missing it.
 

you

Well-known member
Yeah, I really picked the wrong words, although at first I was searching for an aspect of meta structuring through the surrealism and the puns and translation etc - but no 'foam of the daze' just isnt.

After the so thoroughly layered concept of "I spit.." i was kinda thinking/presuming 'foam' was abit more than what it is - but I just cant see anything to say thats its much more than what we have already established.

Another bad suggestion from me I feel :slanted:
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Another bad suggestion from me I feel"
No way - I wanted to read it anyway and I enjoyed it. I'm definitely going to check I Spit On Your Graves now as well, you make that sound very interesting.
 

jenks

thread death
I agree - not a bad choice, as i said upthread I have enjoyed reading it and thinking about it. I'm going to check out 'Spit' as well.
 
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