Autumn in Peking

by Boris Vian

published

January 23rd 2005 by Tam Tam Books

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binding

Paperback, 284 pages

isbn

0966234642 (isbn13: 9780966234640)

description

Boris Vian's 1947 novel Autumn in Peking (L'Automne à Pékin) is perhaps his most slapstick work, with an added amount of despair in its exoti...more

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Nathaniel rated it:

01/21/08

bookshelves: originally-in-french

Read in January, 2008

Boris Vian is not a predictable author. I loved “Heartsnatcher,” barely tolerated “Foam of the Daze” and “I Spit on Your Graves” was not intended to be a vehicle for his talents. For the first sixty odd pages of “Autumn in Peking” (a title with absolutely no bearing on the contents of the book), I was fairly convinced that I’d embarked on another nonsense festival that probably holds together better when all of the (supposedly brilliant) wordplay of the author has not been kill...more Boris Vian is not a predictable author. I loved “Heartsnatcher,” barely tolerated “Foam of the Daze” and “I Spit on Your Graves” was not intended to be a vehicle for his talents. For the first sixty odd pages of “Autumn in Peking” (a title with absolutely no bearing on the contents of the book), I was fairly convinced that I’d embarked on another nonsense festival that probably holds together better when all of the (supposedly brilliant) wordplay of the author has not been killed or made wooden by translation.

I was sustained at first (and rewarded throughout) by the way that Vian animates things in playful and unexpected ways: “She was wearing a short skirt and Angel’s gaze made its way over her shiny, golden knees and insinuated itself between her two long and streamlined thighs. It was hot there, and refusing to listen to Angel, who wanted to pull back, the gaze decided to do its own thing and move further on up. Angel became increasingly embarrassed and regretfully closed his eyes, leaving his look to die on the young girl’s skirt. Its cadaver remained there until the girl ran her hand over her skirt and unknowingly knocked it to the ground when she stood up several minutes later.” This is Vian at his irreverent best. He is not content with a clever comparison or a frisky metaphor; he grounds his flights of fancy in narrative reality and bends every rule of physics and style to accommodate them. Sometimes, this can be annoying; as can the vaguely Futurist obsession with technical and mechanical terms. But it is often refreshing, comic and memorable.

After the first sixty pages of the book, all of the characters to whom we have been introduced are en route to Exopotamie, the convenient referent-free, desert backdrop of “Autumn in Peking.” In this non-place, a grab bag of satirical characters (the doctor, the priest, the blue collar worker, the playboy, the detestable manager, etc.) pursue their obsessions, set about trying to build a useless and destructive railroad or attempt to excavate a vaguely pharonic set of ruins. All of these pursuits have elements of absurd comedy; but the plot advances, primarily, around the question of who will sleep with whom.

Late in the scheme of things, Vian deepens his focus on Angel (male) who pines for Rochelle (female) who is constantly and obviously fornicating with Anne, a playboy who does not feel any deep loyalty to Rochelle. Angel is made to represent the over-precious, emotionally wrecked, obsessive suitor, out of touch with the realities of a sexual relationship, while Anne occupies the diametrically opposed, all too calloused self-serving position. Other characters of note attempt to bridge the gap between them and propose a more balanced way of being in the world.

The drama around the love triangle advances the book’s central argument that things are ruined when they are treated as nothing more than objects—whether of obsession or of use. (Vian’s writing style itself is busy proving the same thing with its irreverence towards concepts and expectations.) Living, breathing, chairs die when they are not appreciated as objects and women fall apart and spoil when they are simply used and in the broader world, work, for its own sake, is a doomed and shameful joke.

Anne will close the curtains, lovably: “For just about every living man, there exists one of these office types, a parasite man. That’s the justification of the parasite man, this letter that’ll straighten out the business of the living man. So he drags it out to prolong his existence, and the living man doesn’t know about it . . . If every living man got up, searched the offices for his own personal parasite, and killed him . . .”

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