Even Better than the Real Thing: Boris Vian, Vernon Sullivan, and Film Noir

Abstract

The light-skinned Negro who passes permanently cuts himself off completely from the colored world.... Sometimes he prepares for the adventure by learning Spanish, French, Italian or Portuguese. He thus becomes foreigner, and as everyone knows, foreigner is apt to be any shade color --Herbert Asbury, Who is Negro? (1946) In 947, year after its publication, Sullivan's novel J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (I Spit on Your Graves) topped the best-seller lists in Paris, selling in the region half-million copies. Set in the American South, with strong echoes William Faulkner's Sanctuary and Richard Wright's Native Son, J'irai cracher narrates the tale Lee Anderson, an African American who passes for in the small town Buckton. (1) As the novel unfolds, the narrator reveals that he has come to Buckton to avenge the lynching his brother. During the course the novel, Anderson rapes and then murders two wealthy sisters to exert what he claims is racial vengeance. The book's Boris Vian, wrote in his preface to the novel that I Spit could never have been published in America, claiming that it had been refused publication in the U. S. because the descriptions violence performed by black man on women. In the preface, Vian gives an account how Sullivan, an African American who passed for white, had fled the racial oppression the United States to settle in Paris. One must see, Vian writes, a manifestation desire for revenge in race still ... badly treated, and terrorized, sort temptation exorcism 'real whites' (viii). And yet it was in France that the controversy erupted: the novel was banned by the French government in 1949, becoming the first book since Madame Bovary to be tried for obscenity in France (Campbell, Exiled 17). The history the novel took further twist when, in apparent fulfilment the censors' fears, middle-aged businessman strangled his mistress, leaving copy Sullivan's novel by the side the bed. French journalists were quick to point out that the murderer had circled several passages Sullivan's novel, including graphic description strangulation (Campbell, Exiled 82). During the media furor, it transpired that the novel's translator, Boris Vian--a writer, dramatist, jazz musician and composer--was in fact the author I Spit. Vernon Sullivan was fictional nom de plume Vian had created. This was case, as James Sallis neatly puts it, of man (Vian) pretending to be black man (Sullivan) writing novel about black man (Lee Anderson) pretending to be white (Vian x). According to several accounts, Vian wrote I Spit after bet with his friend Jean d'Halluin, the director Editions du Scorpion who wanted to rival the success Gallimard's Serie Noire. A best seller? Vian asked. Give me ten days and I shall manufacture one for you (Cismaru 28). The result, produced little later than the ambitious ten days, was I Spit on Your Graves. The film version Vian's novel was shown in 1959. When the movie was first screened, Vian reluctantly went to the viewing, keen to make sure that his name had been expunged from the credits project from which he wanted to distance himself. Several minutes into the film, Vian cried out, These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!, whereupon the writer suffered heart attack and was shortly pronounced dead (Vian ix). Vian is probably best known outside France for his novel L'Ecume des jours (translated variously as Froth on the Daydream, Mood Indigo, and Foam the Daze) but he also wrote some well-known antiwar songs in the mid-1950s during the Algerian conflict. His best-known song, Le Deserteur, became big hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary in the mid-1960s as Vietnam protest song, and yet despite his transatlantic appeal in song, his literary work has not had the critical attention it merits; Gast's film version the book is barely noted in critical writing or reviews. …