Roman de gare de Boris Vian. Pas grand intérêt c’est rigolo. ( )

This thing is wild. Like Palahniuk by way of hentai, homegrown from Hardy Boys seeds with jazz fertilizer. ( )

È il secondo che leggo degli hard-boiled scritti da Vian con lo pseudonimo di Vernon Sullivan. Se mi fosse stato chiaro che il libro rientrava in questa categoria (o avessi fatto più attenzione in libreria...) credo che non l'avrei letto. Confermo la sensazione avuta col precedente (Perché non sanno quello che fanno): letteratura superficiale, che deve essere stato più piacevole scrivere che ora leggere. In definitiva, nemmeno troppo divertente (in questo caso, nonostante lo spunto sci-fi comunque discreto, che poteva dare al libro un senso più profondo di critica sociale). In somma: siamo ben lontani da quello che considero il Vian "serio" (quello de La schiuma dei giorni o Sterpacuore), di cui ho molta voglia di leggere altro. A proposito: si accettano consigli sugli altri libri "seri" di Vian (ho in ordine L'erba rossa). ( )

Tras saludar a los amigos y tomar una copa, Rock Bailey salio del club del viejo Lem a tomar el aire. Una invitacion a fumar, un pequeno mareo yb& Rocky, joven y atractivo deportista californiano, se ve envuelto, sin comerlo ni beberlo, en una turbia historia de experimentos geneticos, luchas entre bandas y misteriosas apariciones y desapariciones de rubias despampanantes. A cuestas con su preocupacion por conservarse casto hasta los veinte anos, Rocky, ayudado por sus amigos, intentara resolver una enmaranada trama a lo largo de las paginas de esta delirante y corrosiva parodia de novela negra, tan de moda en sus dias. Aqui todo es posible: dar al traste con los buenos propositos de castidad, lanzarse en paracaidas sobre una isla, que hablen los perros, que se hagan chistes sobre el presidente Trumanb& y que se desee la muerte de los feos.

review of
Boris Vian's To Hell With The Ugly
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 11-12, 2019



I've read mention of the writing of Boris Vian for more than 4 decades. I recall him being a writer that the Surrealists liked. That wd usually be enuf to get me to read his work. &, yet.. This is the 1st bk by him I've read. &, YES!, it was great! It's a good imitation of American hard-boiled crime fiction imaginatively mixed w/ utter absurdism. I loved it.

The book design is by Tom Recchion. I met him thru my friend Peter Zahorecz in 1989 when we went to the west coast of the US for the Without Borders anarchist gathering & then meandered south to LA. The publisher, Tosh Berman, is a 'friend' on Goodreads, someone who shares similar literary tastes to my own.

"When my publisher, Tosh Berman, asked me to describe it for him, I said, "Imagine a pornographic Hardy Boys novel set on the Island of Dr. Moreau to a bebop soundtrack." I think that's a pretty good tagline" - p I

I often become engrossed in a film from the beginning, from the title sequence. Same thing for a bk: the 1st paragraph can be a pretty good indication of the quality or lack thereof of what follows. Of course, authors are conscious of this & write accordingly:

"Taking a smack on the head is nothing. Even being drugged twice during the course of the same evening is something a guy can live with. But stepping outside for a bit of fresh air and then all of a suddent coming to in your birthday suit in a room with a naked woman, well I'd say that's when things started to get weird. As for what happened next..." - p 1

The main character, who narrated the above, is a 19 year old body-builder who's made a vow to himself to not have sex until he turns 20. A part of the humor of the bk is all about the preposterous obstacles in the way of his keeping his vow.

""Let's dance some more," she proposes, just as Lem Hamilton starts playing a new number.

""No thanks," I say. "You're going to end up leading me into depravity, and my training doesn't permit that sort of thing. I'd be happy, nevertheless, to buy you a drink."

""So your training permits you to drink?" she shoots back, just like that.

""Of course." It's Douglas who confirms this. He hasn't missed a word of our conversation. "Listen, Sunday. Don't try to seduce ol' Rocky here. He's unwavering, and all the girls that chase after him just end up running into a brick wall.["]" - p 6

""Who brought me here?" I ask. "Where are we? I want to know what this business is all about and just what it's supposed to mean. What would you say if someone doped you up and dragged you off to some room you'd never seen before? If they left you there, stark naked, and then sent in some guy whose intentions were all too obvious?"" - pp 11-12

It just gets better & better.

""Who's Wolf Petrossian?" I ask. "I've never heard of the guy."

""Strange cat," murmurs Kilian. "He had his hands into everything... One of the only guys I've ever heard of who was pulling down dough by actually exploiting a convent."

""Jesus Christ! How'd he manage that?" I say.

""Under the pretext of making a cartoon about the life of Saint Martin," says Gary. "And he had all the nuns working as go-betweens.["]" - p 22

Every hard-boiled crime fiction novel has to have a fight.

"I'm rolling around the floor like a bowling pin because one of them has tackled me by the legs... And what ensues is one of the toughest little fisticuffs I've ever seen in my life.

"That is if I could have actually seen it!" - p 59

To Hell With The Ugly was originally published in 1948. It seems to me that Vian's humorous take on sexuality was a bit precocious w/in the genre.

"This Mary Jackson is a nymphomaniac. Plain and simple. She finally leaves my legs alone and settles back into the seat where she wraps her arm around my neck. Jesus Christ Almighty! Seems that I'm always taken advantage of when I am in no position to defend myself.

"I've taken all I can: my head is covered with bruises, my back is killing me, my hands are tied, and this nut job is toying with me and getting her kicks subjecting me to a plethora of Merovingian perversions in the neighborhood of my zygomatic arch. All in a car heading to one Markus Schutz's estate. Dr. Markus Schutz. A man who abducts people in order to make them sleep together! And who has at his residence operating rooms where photos are taken..." - p 65

Never let it be sd that Vian doesn't push the plot right on along so some hand-grenades enter the picture.

"The guy from the first watchtower is trying to break free from the rubble. Judging from what we can hear, he's a bit injured from the fall, but being the selfish bastards we are this provokes absolutely no feeling of sympathy in us." - pp 74-76

Rocky & his companions meet their 1st artificially constructed human.

""What's your name?" asks Mike.

""You can call me what you like," he says. "Generally, they call me by my model number."" - p 79

""I'd like to," says Jef Devay (I prefer to call him by this name). "But I'll have to accompany you. I should, according to the rules, sound the alarm. But I am a misfit, and sometimes I don't follow the rules. If that were not the case, you'd already be dead, more or less."" - p 80

""That's enough," said Gary, cutting him off. "How do we get out of here?"

""Oh!" says Jef, suddenly all sophisticated, "it would be ridiculous and disagreeable to leave Dr. Schutz's model health establishment before visiting the incubation chambers and the laboratory for the acceleration of emryos. That way I could explain to you exactly and in detail how this accident happened to me, which I'm sure would be most fascinating for you."" - p 92

Yes, Jef Devay is a defective model. The series R are much better (r r) but, oh well.

""We'd better get out of here now," he says. "Dr. Schutz will be none too happy to see that you've killed a series R subject."" - p 91

"Fine, I'll say it! I was so frightened by that hideous monster that I wet my pants like a three year old, O.K.?" - p 92

As if Rocky's pissing himself isn't bad enuf, Jef has a complaint too.

""Hell," says Jef, disappointed. "You think this is fun, spending my life in a loony bin and pretending to like it? For once I finally get some visitors. The least you could do is pretend that you're interested. Listen. I've got something else to show you. I didn't really want to because I personally consider it a rather exhausting spectacle, but there's one more girl upstairs who's probably... Well, I won't ruin the surpise."" - p 96

There's just one misadventure after another.

""I accompanied her home," says Douglas, suddenly vehement. "I bought her dinner, took her to a movie, the whole shebang. The evening cost me forty-seven dollars. So I go up for a drink. I thought everything was cool, so I took off my clothes and she got all pissed off. I tried to kiss her and she smashed me in the face with an ashtray. She took off and slammed the door behind her, with my pants in her hands. She said I was welcome to sleep in her bed if that was what I wanted, but that she'd rather sleep alone than with a pervert, especially a pervert with a mug like mine. So I've got no more pants and I can't go home because my keys were inside. I spent the night here."" - pp 102-103

I suspect that the next bit is an inside joke that I don't get.

"I sat down next to Aubert George, who tells me about how he started off in life wanting to be an actor. The only play he was ever in ran for a grand total of one month and he had but ten or twelve lines. He played some guy who walks into a bookstore, asks for a book, and leaves. He told me the play was just bullshit (I'm quoting him word for word) but that everyone got a kick out of it." - p 113

Maybe the play alluded to is one of Vian's. Apparently that's not the case. "Vian also started writing plays, the first of which, L'Équarrissage pour tous (Slaughter for Everyone), was staged the year it was written, 1950." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Vian ) In other words, Vian didn't write any plays until after this novel was written. Maybe he's alluding to a play he liked, maybe to one he didn't like. Maybe neither. Dunno.

If you don't have a sense of himor just open this bk to any page & rub it on yourself 3,408 times.

"I don't count the number of strides we're taking, but it must be somewhere between three thousand four hundred and seven and three thousand four hundred and nine when we emerge on the plain." - p 118 ( )