Boris Vian's "Vercoquin and The Plankton" (Wakefield Press, 2022)

Sunday, November 20, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-939663-82-5

I fell in love with Boris Vian while in Japan with my wife, whom I also love dearly. Lun*na Menoh introduced me to Vian’s work because she thought my writing reminded her of his work at the time. She was surprised that I didn’t know of his writings. At the time, I vaguely heard his name, but through the world of French Jazz, something I barely knew about then. She took me to a bookstore and showed me all his books in print, in Japanese, and well-stocked on its shelves. Over time I realized that Japan has a close relationship with the French concerning its literature and films. If you go to a French bookstore, you can find many Japanese authors on display and translate them into French. I was shocked that so many French authors were translated into Japanese and seemed to have a significant section in the well-stocked stores in Tokyo and beyond.

Two things that changed my life radically were meeting Lun*na and the other is my introduction to Boris Vian. When I returned to America, I started my press TamTam Books, to publish Vian’s work in English. I couldn’t speak a word of French, and I was getting Vian’s job through my wife’s description of his novels. It is like a Hollywood pitch where the film producer is intrigued by the idea and goes for it to the maximum. I will not go into the gritty details (that will be for a future post). Still, I eventually published Vian’s principal works, including his masterpiece L’ecume des jours (Foam of the Daze) and his alter-ego Vernon Sullivan's noir books. Words can’t express the joy of being an outside observer and reading Vian’s first book, Vercoquin and the Plankton, under his name. Beautifully translated by Terry Bradford and published by the consistently excellent Wakefield Press.

Vercoquin and the Plankton were written in 1943-44 and published in 1947. To call this novel absurd is an understatement. Vian is all about absurdity. There is a duality in Vian and his writing that is fascinating. A trained engineer who can think of machines as analytical tools can also expose the faults of such reasoning by dwelling in fantasy, which is very much based on reality. Vian embraced this duality with a militant stance, such as being a jazz musician playing Dixie/Swing Jazz and writing about his love and hardcore stance for BeBop. He worked as an engineer at the French National Organization for Standardization, and Vercoquin and the Plankton exposed his feeling about such a formal work landscape. The novel reminds me of Kafka’s writings and Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Both authors deal with the ‘you-can’t-win situation in a work environment that is unhuman and often cruel. Vian treats his world like a Looney Tunes cartoon, with all the slapstick and Surrealist overtures and undertones.

Vian uses real characters in the novel, such as his best friend at the time Jacques Lustalot, known to the world as The Major. The Major is very much the Neil Cassidy to Vian’s Kerouac. One can say that the fictional character Antoche is Vian, the Major’s best pal in the novel. Also, keep in mind that Vian didn’t have any respect for those who read too much into his characters. Still, separating the author from his work in the Vian world is complicated. This is also a novel concerning the counter-culture youth group of the German Occupation of France era, the Zazous. Although a few years older than the teenagers who adored Swing jazz, records, and dandy-like obsession with dressing, Vian was the daddy of that grouping. Pre-Mods when it was dangerous to be seen out in public and, therefore, the Number one enemy of the Vichy Government. The Zazous wore long jackets that went to the knees with many pockets as possible. This caused outrage in Vichy because they had a law about rationing clothing material. The other visual obsession was carrying an umbrella, rain or shine, which meant a British presence to the French. Often they would also have an English newspaper to give the appearance that they read in English, or at least pretend to do so. Here artifice is just as necessary as substance. This is the Vian theory that runs throughout his work.

The translator Terry Bradford wrote a wonderful introduction and went into the characteristics of each character in the novel. This is a beautiful production of a Vian book. I feel great that Vian will live in English for contemporary readers and those in the future. Vian writes about youth with an accurate understanding of what it means to be young and to embrace a horrific world. We can learn much from this master of absurdity and a man of great taste.