----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Robison" <
zspider@gte.net>
> Incidentally, was it you, Al, that recommended
Vian's I SPIT ON YOUR
> GRAVES? I've just about finished it. It's pretty
darned hardcore. I
hear
> they banned it in France!
I did indeed recommend this complicated little hardboiled
book about revenge, written by a white Frenchman pretending
to be a black American writing a novel about a black man
pretending to be white. It was first published in 1946 in
France, ostensibly as a translation by Boris Vian of a work
by an unknown black American author called Vernon Sullivan
who had been shunned by American publishers. In fact, Vernon
Sullivan was as fictional as any of the books' characters.
Following a discussion with his wife and publisher, Boris
Vian wrote I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES in two weeks with the
express purpose of creating a bestseller. By 1949, when it
was banned in France, SPIT had sold over half a million
copies.
Al
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