About this item
Highlights
- A nonconformist satire of both bureaucracy and nonconformism from the French polymath and author of Foam of the DaysWritten at the age of 23 for his friends in the winter of 1943-44, Vercoquin and the Plankton was the first of Vian's novels to be published under his own name.
- Author(s): Boris Vian
- 200 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
"Written for his friends in the winter of 1943-44, when he was only 23. Vercoquin and the Plankton was the first of Boris Vian's novels to be published under his own name. Published in 1947, the book came out two months after his succáes de scandale under the nom de pllume of the fictitious American author Vernon Sullivan. I Will Spit on Your Graves ( a novel banned in France from 1953-1973 and for which Vian narrowly escaped a prison sentence), and two months before the publication of his beloved classic The Foam of the Days. At once social documentary, scathing satire and jazz manifesto, Vercoquin and the Plankton describes the collision of two worlds under the Vichy regime: that of the youthful dandyism of the ever-partying Zazous and the murderously maniacal bureaucracy of a governmental office for standardization. In this roman áa clef drawn from Vian's own contradictory lives as a jazz musician on the Left Bank and an engineer at the French National Organization for Standardization, the reader is introduced to a handful of characters inhabiting a world lying somewhere between Occupied Paris and Looney Tunes: Jacques Lustalot (a.k.a. The Major), Antioch Tambrâetambre, and Fromental de Vercoquin, whose competing romantic interests in the swing-dancing Zizanie de la Houspignole culminate in a misguided attempt at standardizing surprise parties. A nonconformist satire of bureaucracy and nonconformism."--Book Synopsis
A nonconformist satire of both bureaucracy and nonconformism from the French polymath and author of Foam of the Days
Written at the age of 23 for his friends in the winter of 1943-44, Vercoquin and the Plankton was the first of Vian's novels to be published under his own name. Published in 1947, the book came out two months after his succès de scandale I Spit on Your Graves and two months before the publication of his beloved classic The Foam of the Days. At once social documentary, scathing satire and jazz manifesto, Vercoquin and the Plankton describes the collision of two worlds under the Vichy regime: that of the youthful dandyism of the ever-partying Zazous and the murderously maniacal bureaucracy of a governmental office for standardization. In this roman à clef drawn from Vian's own contradictory lives as a jazz musician on the Left Bank and an engineer at the French National Organization for Standardization, the reader is introduced to a handful of characters inhabiting a world lying somewhere between Occupied Paris and Looney Tunes.
Boris Vian (1920-59) was a French polymath who in his short life managed to inhabit the roles of writer, poet, playwright, musician, singer/songwriter, translator, music critic, actor, inventor and engineer, before dying of a heart attack at the age of 39, after authoring ten novels, several volumes of short stories, plays, operas, articles and nearly 500 songs. Vian is remembered as one of the reigning spirits of the postwar Parisian Latin Quarter, a friend to everyone from Jean-Paul Sartre to Raymond Queneau and Miles Davis, playing trumpet with Claude Abadie and Claude Luter, and an influence on such future kindred spirits as Serge Gainsbourg.