Jouer avec la forme : politique et poétique du jazz dans la prose et les chansons de Boris Vian

Abstract

This article examines the multi-faceted influence of jazz music on Boris Vian’s writing process. As a jazz critic, a songwriter and a novelist, Vian did not merely write about jazz or use it as a prop. His writing displays a political conscience in tune with class and race issues as well as a strong measure of audacity and irreverence that characterized the music of the jazz artists he most admired. A closer look at his activity as a singer-songwriter and an analysis of his formal approach in chapter 32 of L’ecume des jours reveal a disdain for the conventional and point to traces of Vian’s own musical practice transposed to the page.