Boris Vian’s Letters to Stanley Chapman

Letters to Stanley Chapman

By Boris Vian

Atlas Press & bookartbookshop, 2009

ISBN: 9781900565509

‘The main thing in life is to leap to every possible conclusion on every possible occasion.’

These words, the opening sentence of Boris Vian’s first novel as translated into English by Stanley Chapman, could be taken almost as a ‘Pataphysical Imperative.  That novel, Froth on the Daydream, received its first English publication in 1967, some eight years after Vian’s obscenely early death, but the two men had corresponded much earlier, in the mid-‘50s.  This elegant booklet presents facsimiles of seven of Vian’s letters.

In one, Vian writes that he has ‘had a bad time taking care of a fluttering heart’, a presentiment perhaps of the cardiac attack that would later strike him down.  Anyway, he comes across in the letters as a friendly guy, a giver, his writing full of bawdy wordplay.  There’s mention of ‘a cuntemporary celebrity’ in another letter, an epithet that should be used more often nowadays.  Limericks are discussed at the beginning and they apparently exchange some of their efforts (Vian praises Chapman’s limericks, though none are included here, showing them to a friend, the Scottish comedian Monty Landis) and in later letters the two embark on a project to write songs together.  The plan is to write songs in a rock ’n’ roll style, then a new-fangled thing, with Chapman translating and adapting Vian’s French lyrics.  The correspondence becomes a bit more business-like and matter of fact here.  Some songs, typewritten and with a few annotations, are included in the booklet – they came with the letters.

Why did the correspondence end?  Are Chapman’s own letters extant?  Is this the full haul of Vian’s letters to his English friend?  I confess I don’t know the answers to these questions.  Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one small error in presentation: the fourth letter (dated 9 April 1956) was written before the third (3 Sept 1956), otherwise they are presented in chronological order.

For fans and admirers of Boris Vian, a man of myriad talents, this is a welcome publication.  An elegantly produced booklet, consisting of red lettering on a marbled cream cover and art paper between, it is well worthy of its subject.

Some further information about Boris Vian can be read here.

The Philosophers’ Madonna

The Philosophers’ Madonna

Eclectics & Heteroclites 8

By Carlo Emilio Gadda

Translated and Introduced by Antony Melville

Atlas Press, 2008

ISBN: 9781900565448

This obdurate novella is full of pungent, flavoursome prose.

It is the first significant work from an Italian novelist who sought to do justice to the messiness and complexity of the human enterprise, to what some people – who really should know better – call ‘life’.

The Lady referrred to in the title is a fresco on a castle wall and the story, from what one can glean, involves a love triangle of a kind: Baronfo, an engineer and an itinerant collector of books, is courting Maria, the daughter of a noble family who is in danger of being left on the shelf.  But this certain Baronfo has also gone with a lass named Emma and maybe he’s even knocked her up (she has a son, a lad called Gigetto, who takes after Baronfo).  Anyway, Emma is not too pleased and she shows it, as you may understand.

What you’ll want to read The Philosophers’ Madonna for, though, are the digressions: the empire fat and nocturnal muscles between the skeleton of the story.  Such as the theories and speculations of a pneumaticist called Ishmael Digbens, for example: pneumatics here being a branch of metaphysics concerned with the soul and spirit, not a branch of physics whose provenance is air and gases.  Or the story of a Marchesi who gives up his noble title – this little tale perhaps being intended as a counterpoint to The Leopard.  There is also a discourse on the different varieties of witches and the reasons thereof.  It is all due, apparently, to the nature of the contract.  In this case the devil is, quite literally, in the detail.  That gallant fellow, the list, also makes a welcome appearance: here a list of subjects that a convivial bookseller might make reference to, in quaint preamble to a hard sell.

A couple of reasons for gratitude, to end.  Firstly to Antony Melville for a superb translation, at once joyfully idiomatic and full of delightfully complex syntax.  The second Thank You is because The Philosophers’ Madonna has been a jaunty stimulus to seek out the work, and explore the worlds, of Carlo Emilio Gadda, a writer hitherto unknown to me.

Within the introduction Melville quotes Italo Calvino‘s appraisal of Gadda:

He tried throughout his life to represent the world as a muddle, a tangle, or a bungle, in fact to represent without dilution the inextricable complexity of life, or rather the simultaneous presence of the most disparate elements which compete to determine each event.

Now who can say that this was not a noble aim?  On completing The Philosophers’ Madonna, first published incidentally as long ago as 1931, I’ve learned that Calvino wrote an essay about Gadda in Why Read the Classics?  That has already been devoured and his other novels await.

Some Limericks by Norman Douglas

Some Limericks
By Norman Douglas
Introduction by Stephen Fry
Atlas Press, October 2009
ISBN 978-1-900565-49-3

This is, as far as one can tell, a faithful reissue of a book of quite obscene limericks that was first published by Norman Douglas, privately, in 1928.

There have been several pirated editions since then, but none has been as scrupulously faithful to the original as this one.  The reason for my slight doubt as to the complete accuracy of this edition (the ‘as far as one can tell’ above) is that there appear to be a further two typos on pages 73 and 80, this in addition to the two deliberate typos noted by the publisher on page 107.  One of the latter, ‘to the pure all things are puer’, gives a strong indication of Douglas’ primary peccadillo, which it is not necessary to go into at this point.  Suffice it to say that it got him into hot water on more than one occasion.

In his introduction and commentary to the limericks, Douglas strikes a certain kind of pose: magisterial and magnanimous, mock-authoritative and understanding, bullet-proof as far as being shocked or outraged is concerned.  It is a stance that gives rise to a definite and delightful frisson when set beside limericks that are salacious, scatological and blasphemous – or all three together, a rare treat.  Douglas’ Geographical Index is a helpful pointer toward his choicest and wittiest remarks, for example: ‘Manchester, waggishness of mill-hands near’.

The author makes one or two serious points.  He writes, for example, that limericks are in essence a folk creation: very few can be said to have a specific author.  Even the inventor of the form is unclear, though Edward Lear has been mooted as a possible candidate.  Douglas puts forward the interesting theory that obscene limericks in particular are a reaction to Puritanism, claiming also that they reached their zenith during Queen Victoria’s age.  They are, consequently, ‘as English as roast beef’ though other Britons, and Americans too for that matter, have undoubtedly played a part in their development.  In American culture, too, Puritanism has taken root.  Douglas’ remarks lead one to question whether limericks can survive in a permissive age.

Stephen Fry’s introductory remarks are appreciative of both the author and the subject of his study, so no great worries there.  And on a personal note: I’ve read a version of the limerick on page 90 with the line ‘long-standing fallacies’, rather than ‘old-fashioned fallacies’ as here, and believe the former to be better.  Simply because you are given two or three puns (long-standing fallacies & long, standing phalluses) rather than one (fallacies & phalluses).

All right-thinking people, whether roast beef-eating Englishmen and women or not, should read Some Limericks at some point in their lives.  Surely this is as good a time as any?