Boris Vian and The Foam of the Daze

I've just read Boris Vian's "Foam of the Daze," translated by Brian Harper and Published by TamTam; and I'm having difficulty accepting it. I suppose the story is about acceptance and love. As if events form a persons identity and if things had been different how they would change who we are. At one point the story comes to a crescendo, where you realize there is no regret or remorse for things to be different only for them to get better.

To begin with, the tragedies are so ludicrous and infuriating but so heart wrenching, it's not so much that this woman has a water lilly in her lung or that the characters are throwing away money on flowers and obscure editions of literature it's that life is horrific and there isn't a single thing that a person can do to change their fate or win the favor of the fates, but it doesn't have to be that awful. I found the shift of their dwelling space especially traumatic, to go from where they were to where they end, with ceilings caving in and rooms vanishing as is the earth could voluntarily swallow you whole and belch afterwards as a very sad view of existence. The novel and it's characters is intended to be taken very literally and metaphorically simultaneously, in a universe where worn shoes grow back and mice walk on crutches.



Except in some cases the story is so true and paints such a vivid portrait of the harsh reality that people might face on a daily basis. Alise is in love with Chick, and Chick is in love with Alise. Chick has a job although not a very good one, and Alise is from a wealthy family. Colin, is very wealthy and gives Chick a quarter of his fortune so that he may marry Alise, continue to work and live a comfortable life. Chick is grateful but is obsessed with an author who publishes five or six articles a week. Chick spends the money he is given so that he may buy the latest publications, but it's not just rare manuscripts and memorabilia it's relics that the author has touched or even breathed on. So much so that he has wasted all of the gifted money very briefly, and in the process lost his job.




Yet this woman loves him, perhaps not more so but she blames the author for his continued proliferation. I will add that much of the story is so absurd that it can't be believed, but is moves so thoroughly with such swiftness that I found myself not only lost in the story but practically tearing out each page as I read in frustration. But if this story is about acceptance it might be about the hopelessness people often find themselves lost in as if upon receiving a phone call the phone booth literally shrinks in size, the windows become walls and what was once a door in now only a keyhole. Characters in these types of situations tend to find themselves crawling through windows to enter stores or out of windows and onto ledges depending on the circumstances. But life doesn't always have to be so hopeless. It is maybe more about making bad decisions worse, and looking at the world as if it might swallow itself up whole tomorrow. And rather than take a single step backwards to appraise the events, they find themselves in rooms where doorknobs have been removed, with hearts torn out, and mountains of books that are just smoldering and unable to catch fire.



But this is what makes the L'Ecume des Jours "Foam of the Daze" and not "Froth of the Daydream" as it was initially translated by Stanley Chapman, these predicaments and tragedies which by definition can't be true and we pray can never be true. As a passing note the story is quasi scifi where everything depends on a seemingly incomprehensible retro-organic futuristic technology within a quaint romantic/ fascist society. Towards the end it all becomes painfully clear when the character has finally managed to get a high paying job as a security guard at the gold production facility, where he must circle the perimeter of the plant once a day, and in order to do that he must run as fast as he can on a jagged concrete ground, even if it means not stopping and turning around to stop and listen when he hears something happening in the darkness of his surroundings. So maybe it's more about a blind acceptance of the world and the love for family that is so compelling to the human experience that the characters can't stop doing what they love because if the do they could get ground up in the factory machine, but if the don't they end up getting stoned at a funeral.

Boris Vian didn't live very long, he wasn't even forty years old by the time he died during a screening of J'irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes, but he managed to cram ample experience into his relatively short life. He was a novelist, playwright, poet, songwriter, jazz musician, translator, engineer, husband and father. He wrote a number of novels including "Hearsnatcher" which I'm almost scared to read, if it is half as depressing as "Foam of the Daze" I won't be able to finish it and if it's half as compelling I might not be able to go to work.

But I did actually see some similarity to Goddard's "Alphaville," but I digress.

In The Bathroom

I recently finished reading "The Bathroom", by Jean Philippe Toussaint. The story is about a man living in Paris with his girlfriend named Edmondsson. She works part time for a gallery and he lives in the bathroom of their apartment. It sounds complicated at first but I suppose he does other things besides living in his bathroom, he dreams, he watches football and sometimes he talks with the Polish painters who have a show at the gallery where Edmondsson works but have offered to paint the kitchen for a little spending money and something to do while they're in Paris. In fact what color they want to paint the kitchen is a very serious issue, it isn't the simple economics of the decision, it also is a consequence of how time will change the color. They seem to spend most of their time inside the kitchen smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey, and in some cases skinning octopuses. But there is more to their lives than choosing the color of their walls.

He travels unexpectedly to Venice. I'm not sure whether or not the adventure was a good idea, but it did get him out of the bathroom. The bathroom was too wombic, if he wasn't going to wash or look at himself in the mirror there was nothing else for him to do but smoke cigarettes, read and stare. His mother comes to visit at the request of Edmondsson, she brought pastries and suggested diversions but steadfastly there he remained. In Venice there is even less to do than in the bathroom. He stays in a small hotel room and doesn't do anything except wander the halls at night and stop into the bar for a drink or two when the football is on. He stays there alone and bored until he decides to call Edmondsson. The phone calls become an extensive regularity, sitting on the floor of the hotel lobby around the corner of the clerks desk in hushed tones he talks to her for hours. Everyday, sometimes twice a day, the phone calls become the focus of his existence, and then she visits. It's obvious he is in love with her. His relationship with her borders on obsession, but he seems to be out of sorts at the moment. While Edmondsson is in Venice with him, she wants to do all of the adventurous things like go to the museum, and see the art, but he's already been in the city for a month and all he wants to do is lay in bed with her. One morning he gets up early to find some tennis balls, he wanders around, to get some exercise, and returns to the room. But she doesn't really want to play tennis, and he doesn't really want to do anything else. Things got out of hand and he absentmindedly threw a dart at her. You are not supposed to do these sorts of things, Do Not Throw Darts At Girlfriends! She goes to the hospital and then returns to Paris, while he stays on in Venice.

Now the story is difficult to describe because there are so many details to it. He doesn't want to grow up. He'd rather play in the bathtub while his mother sits by his side than attend a reception at the Austrian Embassy. The couple is so free that they make love in the bedroom while the Poles skin the molluscs and paint the kitchen. While in Venice though he comes down with sinusitis and spends a good number of weeks living in a hospital smoking cigarettes and watching people in neighboring rooms through his window. And all of this is extremely unhealthy. I will remind you that Jean Philippe Toussaint is alive and well and continues to produce a massive volume of work. I found it all extremely depressing, this guy doesn't want to do anything when he is in Paris except make love and sit in his bathtub, his girlfriend even encourages it by joining him in the bathroom. But he leaves the city on an unannounced whim and heads to Italy, where he doesn't do anything except smoke and miss Edmondsson. I had trouble reconciling all of this. When Edmondsson arrived, she was thrilled, ready to enjoy him, Venice, and perhaps start a new life there if that's what he wants to do, she bustles around sightseeing, she gets him into a church where he is put off by the dark and the candle smoke. Finally, he wants to play tennis, in fact he's practically dying to, and she is so happy for him she says she doesn't want to, all she wants to do is lay in bed and make love.

In the end he returns to his life in Paris with Edmondsson, but I don't know if he has really changed. Actually I would guess not, because the first thing he does is go to the bathroom and lay in the bathtub. I don't know if I can really relate to this character. There was a point in my life when I was living in a little studio apartment in West Philadelphia and I was convinced that the woman upstairs was living in her bathroom. Whenever I went into my bathroom there was this sense that she was up there in the bathtub. I imagined her getting comfortable with a blanket and her TV. Insulated by the six inches of porcelain on either side. While I was down stairs, beneath her, shaving or washing or grooming, wondering if she was really their or not. And reading this made me think of Dottie Lasky's tiny tour. When she reaches the bathroom leg of the tour she's reading from her recently published book of poems "AWE", the audience and the camera sit in the bathtub while she stands in the doorway reading her poem about a universe of cats.