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.
No comments:
Post a Comment