Thursday 2 April 2015

Froth On The Daydream


I wonder what Jean-Sol Partre thought of this novel. 

The title is perfect. The book is so weightless it barely exists. You sometimes get this odd feeling that any second your eyes will turn into a couple of tiny fluffy birds and fly away into eternity.

Reading Boris Vian’s novel from 1947 is like eating froth and drinking foam. However, it does create its own world. A world so irrelevant it could only be done in France after the Second World War. The kind of world that includes cute little mice living in bathrooms, clouds coming down at your request, shattered glass growing back. And, of course, crowds of people going crazy about Jean-Sol Partre (silly, but it works). 

Surreal, pointlessly irresistible, something a humourless and over-idealistic Luis Buñuel could turn into a film.