Hard-Boiled French Style: Boris Vian Disguised as Vernon Sullivan (Authorship and Pseudonymy)

Abstract

Boris Vian's publication of a hard-boiled novel, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes , under an invented identity (Vernon Sullivan, a Black American veteran of WWII) provokes condemnation from the French press and the courts. But these institutions sanction not so much the erotic and violent content as they do the pseudonymous trap laid for readers. The latter fail to recognize that Vian's masked identity is itself a mise en abyme using the genre of detective fiction to focus attention on how racial identities are constructed. In an attempt to clarify his intentions, Vian provides a second Sullivan offering, Les Morts ont tous la même peau , whose series of inversions and reversals further highlight the processes that produce the identities in question. Vian also seizes the opportunity to call into question the moral authority of Daniel Parker, the figure at the origin of the lawsuits weighing upon the French author.