Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...metaphor is not inappropriate: though Boris Vian wrote the novel in 1946, the world it created seems more in tune with perceptions at a stoned-soul picnic than with the view from a bistro in post-war Paris. In a brief preface Vian explains that the book's "material realization consists in projecting reality obliquely and enthusiastically onto another surface which is irregularly corrugated and so distorts everything...
VIAN maintains a kind of baroque humor throughout, but puns and word games (unfortunately badly translated) shade into black humor which at the novel's end becomes a Kafkaesque surrealism that we find frightening rather than funny. Sartre, who was a real-life friend of Vian's, is amusingly satirized as Jean-Sol Partre, the cult idol who enters packed lecture halls on elephant back, crushing his waiting fans. But when Chick, Colin's friend, sacrifices everything, including his girl-friend Alise, in order to buy Partre's work, the joke turns grisly. Chloe dies from a water-lily growing...
...this strange, poetic universe it becomes unforgettable. Vian's language evokes both sensuality and a kind of fragile tenderness; Chloe's skin is "amber-colored and as appetizing as marzipan," but she coughs "like a piece of silk tearing." This delicacy is poignant in the second half of the novel, as Chloe and Colin become the innocent victims of an inexplicable determinism for which no one will take responsibility. At Chloe's grotesque, horrifying funeral, Colin cross-examines Jesus...
...Vian was generally considered the prince of the enfants terribles of French existentialism. His death in 1959 at the age of 38 was sudden, but it could hardly be called unexpected. While he was alive, the only one of his books that sold was a semi-pornographic novel that he'd written for a bet under a pseudonym; his most successful song, "Le Désérteur" (made popular in the States by Peter, Paul and Mary) was banned in France for its frank anti-war message. As a rule the critics treated him with amused tolerance. Recently, however...
...unlikely that Vian's novels will become particularly popular in this country: they're very French, and they suffer in translation. But Mood Indigo has a magic no heavy-handed translator can counteract. It's effective on so many levels that reading it is more than a pleasant pastime--it's like an initiation into Vian's way of responding to reality. And a very powerful one too: chances are that when you read your second Vian novel, it will be like coming home...