"Originally published as Vercoquin et le plancton in 1947."--Title page verso
Summary:
"Written for his friends in the winter of 1943-44, when he was only 23. Vercoquin and the Plankton was the first of Boris Vian's novels to be published under his own name. Published in 1947, the book came out two months after his succès de scandale under the nom de pllume of the fictitious American author Vernon Sullivan. I Will Spit on Your Graves ( a novel banned in France from 1953-1973 and for which Vian narrowly escaped a prison sentence), and two months before the publication of his beloved classic The Foam of the Days. At once social documentary, scathing satire and jazz manifesto, Vercoquin and the Plankton describes the collision of two worlds under the Vichy regime: that of the youthful dandyism of the ever-partying Zazous and the murderously maniacal bureaucracy of a governmental office for standardization. In this roman à clef drawn from Vian's own contradictory lives as a jazz musician on the Left Bank and an engineer at the French National Organization for Standardization, the reader is introduced to a handful of characters inhabiting a world lying somewhere between Occupied Paris and Looney Tunes: Jacques Lustalot (a.k.a. The Major), Antioch Tambrétambre, and Fromental de Vercoquin, whose competing romantic interests in the swing-dancing Zizanie de la Houspignole culminate in a misguided attempt at standardizing surprise parties. A nonconformist satire of bureaucracy and nonconformism."-- Back cover
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.