Hi list,
Please forgive me for sending this over the list, but I
thought that people
here would be interested in my title:
Monday, December 14, 1998
PRESS RELEASE
TO CONTACT: Tosh Berman
phone: 323-661-8741
fax. 323-661-3025
e-mail. tosh@loop.com
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES BY BORIS VIAN (1920-1959)
ISBN 0-9662346-0-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:
97-80958
Translated from the French by Boris Vian & Milton
Rosenthal 200 pp. $17.00
The most talked about novel of the year in Paris in 1947 was
the
work of an American black writer, but he was not Richard
Wright. The book
was published in French as J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, by
Vernon
Sullivan. The English title would be "I Spit on Your Graves",
but as was
expected in a preface by the book's translator - Boris Vian,
again -
Sullivan had no hope of seeing his work published in his
native country.
For one thing, it was obscene, containing many descriptions
of sexual acts.
For another, it was extremely violent, and the violence was
that of a
black against whites. "J'irai cracher sur vos tombes" charts
the erotic
adventures of a light-skinned Negro, Lee Anderson, after he
takes up a job
managing a bookshop in the small Southern town of Buckton.
Like Joe
Christmas in Faulkner's novel Light in August, Lee is light
enough to pass
for white. He becomes fixated on two sisters,but his desire
to dominate
them sexually is morbidly, fatally, connected to a need to
obtained
vengeance on behalf of his darker-skinned brother, a victim
of white
violence in the past. Seducing a series of white girls with
pathologically
inspired energy, Lee revels in a private revenge (they do not
realize he is
a Negro); but it is not sufficient to satisfy him, and in the
end he
murders both sisters, before being killed himself by a police
bullet.
According to the translator, Sullivan's light skin would
have
enabled him to live, like his protagonist, among whites, but
he preferred
'les Noirs'. While "J'irai cracher sur vos tombes" became
highly
successful, Sullivan remained an enigma. In fact, this
Afro-American novel
was a hoax. The book had been written in French, and
'Sullivan' was a
ghost. His real name was Boris Vian.
Taken from PARIS INTERZONE by James Campbell
#
"Published in Paris in 1946 as a thriller loaded with sex
and
blood, allegedly censored in the US and "translated" into
French, J'irai
cracher sur vos tombes --I Spit on Your Graves-- was a pure
mystification,
but also a direct homage to American literature and movies,
by a young
author, Boris Vian (1920-1959).
More deeply, it was also a violent attack on racism by a jazz
fan
who had already befriended many black musicians and was to
become the
closest French friend of Ellington, Davis and Parker.
The novel became a best seller in France and established
a
scandalous reputation for Vian. But for the past forty years,
Vian has
become one of the most famous writers of the mid 20th
Century, as his hoax
of 1946 is only one example --provocative and outrageous,
though powerful
and meaningful -- of his prolific production: novels and
short stories,
plays and songs."
-Gilbert Pestureau
"In the tradition of Karl May and Franz Kafka, Boris Vian
imagines
an America even more amazing than the land he has never
visited. I Spit on
Your Graves is the first novel to put quotation marks around
the
'hardboiled' --a vivid and startling performance."
-J. Hoberman
"To Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden
glories of
French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an
utterly untypical
work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even
now, with
misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains
potent and
disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a
singular book,
not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by."
-Jim Krusoe
I Spit on Your Graves is available through:
Small Press Distribution at
Small Press Distribution
1341 Seventh Street
Berkeley, CA 94710-1409
800-869-7553
Also at Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobel, and through your
local independent
bookstore.
End of Press Release
-----------------
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
----------------
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