[...] And then, according to the theory supported by Vian, which was by no means invented, the boundaries between eroticism and pornography, between pornography and obscenity, between respectable and other literature, are extremely blurred (the best experts and the most meticulous judges know this well): the perversion lies in the mind of the reader and the simple description of a tree can provoke in him who the demon of sex persistently tickles visions that the Satyricon or the Marquis de Sade (whom Vian rightly classifies either among philosophers or among comic and non-erotic writers) barely sketch.

"Sexually means with my soul," wrote Boris Vian one day.

Noel Arno

Descendant of a French bourgeois family, Boris Vian was born in 1920 in Ville d'Avray, on the outskirts of Paris, and died in 1959. The first carefree years of his childhood are followed by the economic destruction of the family and its consequences, the heart disease from which he will suffer all his life, and the gloomy messages of the impending war, which Vian will experience in the aftermath. Equipped with a solid classical and musical education, Vian studied and worked as an engineer, but at the same time he was a novelist, poet, songwriter, translator, chronicler, actor, painter, musician, jazz enthusiast, and trumpeter. Known, in the early years of Liberation and existentialism, as "the prince of Saint-Germain-des-Prés," he associated with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Raymond Queneau, and played at the Hot Club de France and Tabou. Among other works, he wrote "Autumn in Peking," "The Heart-Stealer," "Red Chlorophyll," etc., and composed "Le Déserteur," an anti-militaristic song of all times. His diverse literary work bears his signature, but also a large number of pseudonyms. Vernon Sullivan is the cursed alter ego of the author with which he signs his commercial successes, such as the notorious "I Spit on Your Graves."

Boris Vian, creator of a "language-universe," declares through his protagonist: "There are moments when I wonder if I am playing with words. Perhaps words are made precisely for this purpose?".

His iconoclastic relationship with language and institutions, his versatility, the myth of his personality, did not allow Vian to have the position he deserved in his time. His books were rediscovered in the 1960s and became cult readings for the generation of May '68, as well as for subsequent generations. The "eternal teenager," according to Maurice Nadeau, continues to captivate readers everywhere.