Foam of the Days (L'ecume des jours), Boris Vian

C'est Comme Ça - Les Rita Mitsouko

(Tr.Spa-Eng. from a review in Shvoong)

 This is considered the author's masterpiece, the French Boris Vian (1920-1959). Of original title L'Ecume des jours (1947), The Foam of Days shows itself as a deep reading about life and love, but channeled through an apparent naivety or simplicity. The Foam of Days manages to be both romantic and nihilistic, dark and cheerful, optimistic and disarming. It summons up itself with poetic and unreal images, at the absurd level (one of the characters suffers from a water lily in the lung, which he cures by inhaling other kinds of flowers).  

 Vian leads to a world in which love is the real driving force. Alongside this main plot of a pair of passionate lovers battling the disease, a series of characters move along, pleasant or compelling, representative or caricature, and a panoply of scathing references to the intellectual atmosphere of the time, especially on the figure of Sartre, portrayed here as Jean-Sol Partre. It is remarkable the identification of Paris in the years following the German occupation, although it is never mentioned, as not being "a city [...] absent, clear, fragmentary". The abundant references to jazz and existentialism lead us to imagine that the action could be taking place in Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. 

 The book is full of small jokes and subtle puns in French, which make it a constant challenge for the translators in other languages. Therefore, continual footnotes populate the text, appealing to the foreigner reader's understanding about the impossibility of translating certain expressions into Vian's style (subtle but corrosive). The main characters are Colin, Chloe, Chick, Alise and Isis. Colin is a rich young man, a lover of jazz and skating. Colin marries Chloe, who gets ill, and Colin's anguish trying to save her from death distorts everything around him and evaporates his fortune. Chick is a friend of Colin and keen on philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, compulsive buyer of all documents and issues of that author, which eventually leads him to destruction. Alise is the beauty in love with Chick. She is also fascinated by the philosopher, though not badly. She never requires him to marry her, but then she becomes discouraged because of it. 

 Boris Vian's work is often adapted to other formats, such as theater, due to its dialogues quality and his point of view unconventionality. Foam of the Days was even made an opera in three acts by Russian composer Edison Denisov. Furthermore, with a significant alteration of the title, "Spray of the Days" (1968) was an adaptation of the book to the big screen by Charles Belmont. From Boris Vian is also L'Arrache-cœur (53), L'Automne à Pékin (47), Les Fourmis (49) or L'Herbe rouge (50). In addition, many other titles under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan.