Escupiré sobre vuestra tumba
by Boris Vian, Vernon Sullivan
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Fiction. In the tradition of Karl May and Franz Kafka, Boris Vian imagines an America even more amazing than the land he has never visited. I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES is the first novel to put the quotation marks around the hardboiled thriller--a vivid and startling performance (J. Hoberman). The book is Boris Vian's (1920-1959) sex-and-violence-filled homage to American noir. Originally published in France as J'IRAI CRACHER SUR VOS TOMBES--after allegedly being censored in the U.S. and show more translated into French--the novel was a best seller, establishing Vian as one of the most famous writers of the mid-twentieth century. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
When Jean d’ Halluin first published I Spit On Your Graves in 1946, he was looking for a bestseller to kickstart his new imprint, Editions du Scorpion. Written by an African-American writer named Vernon Sullivan, the book was a visceral, often misogynistic, and (once it gets rolling) violent pulp novel offering a gritty commentary on racial injustice in the United States.
The plot centered on Lee Anderson, a light skinned black man seeking revenge for the murder of his brother at the hands of whites. Anderson, takes his revenge by infiltrating southern society as a white man (he has light skin and blond hair), bedding every white woman he can, and ultimately selecting two of those women to murder as payback for his brother’s death. show more Despite being considered too controversial and subversive for U.S. publishers, the French public devoured the novel. By 1947, it outsold work by Sartre and Camus, giving d’ Halluin the bestseller he craved.
That alone would’ve made for interesting literary history. But there was more to the story…
Vernon Sullivan never tried to have the book published in the United States.
Vernon Sullivan did not exist. I Spit On Your Graves was in fact written by a Frenchman. A white Frenchman. Said Frenchman had never actually visited the United States.
Then there was the law suit filed against the author by Cartel d’action sociale et morale, the same right wing organization that tried to censor the work of Henry Miller.
Last but not least, there was the grisly murder committed by a Parisian man who strangled his mistress. The authorities discovered a copy of I Spit On Your Graves at the scene of the crime with a part where Lee Anderson dispatches one of his victims circled.
Hence its bestseller status. Who didn’t want to read the “murder book,” as the introduction Marc Lapprand calls it?
And then of course, there was the bigger question: what if the book was not about racial injustice at all?
On the surface, I Spit On Your Graves is a pulpy, not expertly written tale of murder and sex. And upon first reading, I Spit On Your Graves comes across as that – a cheap pulp mystery, lacking only the cover illustration of a woman screaming, hands raised against her face, as an unseen stalker comes at her with a knife.
It is overflowing with graphic sex (for it’s time) where Lee takes the female characters in every scenario imaginable (barring midgets and donkeys). At first one would take it as a sub-par Tropic of Cancer, except that the reader’s knowledge of Lee’s racial identity gives the book a taboo that is non-existent in Miller’s novels. Lee gets his hands on every white woman he possibly can, and they are all to willing to be taken, even if they don’t admit it at first (as is the case with Lou Asquith). As Lee relates early on in the story, “I had all the girls, one after the other, but it was a bit too easy, it turned my stomach.” It comes off like a line from a 70s Blaxploitation film. And in many ways, I Spit On Your Graves reads like a Blaxploitation script. However, as the book goes on Lee flips from bragging of his conquests to being disgusted at how far he has sunk to achieve his revenge. He becomes increasingly sickened by his seduction of the Asquith girls and this drives him further towards the violent outcome.
And that is where the book starts to turn from pure pulp sadism and gratuitous sex into a more layered, psychological exploration. We know Lee is seeking revenge. We know he is going to kill. It is only a matter of time and the reader is forced to travel down the road, dragged further and further into Lee’s madness, strapped in, unable to change the course.
Keep in mind, Vian was no pulp writer. He was a contemporary of Sartre and Camus, who wrote the incredibly well received Froth on the Daydream (also translated as Foam of the Daze). He was also a translator, poet, music, critic, and jazz musician who was close with Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.
In many ways, it is similar to Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, forcing you to see the world of the book through the eyes of a very twisted and violent narrator. We immediately find ourselves repulsed by the narrator’s narcissism, their ruthlessness, and most importantly their penchant for extremely grisly acts. And yet, it is this grotesque, amped, psychotic, bloodthirsty humanity that captivates us.
I’m not the first person to make such a comparison between these two books. However, there is a major difference between them. Whereas Ellis was satirizing society, specifically the Reagan-worshipping stockbrokers of the 80s, Vian was going deeper – he was satirizing publishing and ultimately, the reader.
After all, sex and murder were rampant in novels published circa 1946. Both are still widely used as devices and plot points today. In fact, one could argue that both are necessary lynchpins of all modern literature. Sex and death is what it’s all about.
The book is so overly violent and misogynist because Vian is parodying pulp writing, a form very prevalent in post-war France when he wrote I Spit On Your Graves. Like Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it takes the argument to its fullest extreme, giving readers the ultimate in literary-noir: a story so extremely violent and disgusting to modern thinking that the reader can’t put it down.
Much has been said about the social commentary perceived within I Spit On Your Graves. Of this one can look literally. Lee, a black man who’s brother was murdered by whites, seeks revenge by wreaking havoc on white society. In the end however, without giving anything away, there is no justice for Lee. So it is easy to see I Spit On Your Graves as a biting commentary on racial injustice in America during the 20th Century.
But in many ways, Vian is still having his fun with us. After all, he’s not trying to convince us that Lee is an unfortunate character of racial injustice that we should pity. He’s getting us to hate Lee Anderson in spite of his quest for justice. After all, Vian’s audience was white, educated, French society. And it is Lee’s racial identity, his status as ‘black’ that made (and still makes the book) so controversial. If Lee was a white man bedding a bunch of women and then murdering two of them, it would be a Harry Crews novel. Vian however spins the tables, serving up a tale of a violent, lustful black man out for revenge, one that horrifies and yet draws us in, convincing a repulsed and outraged public to keep on reading. Ultimately the joke is on us. We are thinking of racial injustice, clinging to the social message seemingly contained within the book, and yet it is the titillating bits – the sex and death – that keep us reading. Swift would’ve been proud. show less
The plot centered on Lee Anderson, a light skinned black man seeking revenge for the murder of his brother at the hands of whites. Anderson, takes his revenge by infiltrating southern society as a white man (he has light skin and blond hair), bedding every white woman he can, and ultimately selecting two of those women to murder as payback for his brother’s death. show more Despite being considered too controversial and subversive for U.S. publishers, the French public devoured the novel. By 1947, it outsold work by Sartre and Camus, giving d’ Halluin the bestseller he craved.
That alone would’ve made for interesting literary history. But there was more to the story…
Vernon Sullivan never tried to have the book published in the United States.
Vernon Sullivan did not exist. I Spit On Your Graves was in fact written by a Frenchman. A white Frenchman. Said Frenchman had never actually visited the United States.
Then there was the law suit filed against the author by Cartel d’action sociale et morale, the same right wing organization that tried to censor the work of Henry Miller.
Last but not least, there was the grisly murder committed by a Parisian man who strangled his mistress. The authorities discovered a copy of I Spit On Your Graves at the scene of the crime with a part where Lee Anderson dispatches one of his victims circled.
Hence its bestseller status. Who didn’t want to read the “murder book,” as the introduction Marc Lapprand calls it?
And then of course, there was the bigger question: what if the book was not about racial injustice at all?
On the surface, I Spit On Your Graves is a pulpy, not expertly written tale of murder and sex. And upon first reading, I Spit On Your Graves comes across as that – a cheap pulp mystery, lacking only the cover illustration of a woman screaming, hands raised against her face, as an unseen stalker comes at her with a knife.
It is overflowing with graphic sex (for it’s time) where Lee takes the female characters in every scenario imaginable (barring midgets and donkeys). At first one would take it as a sub-par Tropic of Cancer, except that the reader’s knowledge of Lee’s racial identity gives the book a taboo that is non-existent in Miller’s novels. Lee gets his hands on every white woman he possibly can, and they are all to willing to be taken, even if they don’t admit it at first (as is the case with Lou Asquith). As Lee relates early on in the story, “I had all the girls, one after the other, but it was a bit too easy, it turned my stomach.” It comes off like a line from a 70s Blaxploitation film. And in many ways, I Spit On Your Graves reads like a Blaxploitation script. However, as the book goes on Lee flips from bragging of his conquests to being disgusted at how far he has sunk to achieve his revenge. He becomes increasingly sickened by his seduction of the Asquith girls and this drives him further towards the violent outcome.
And that is where the book starts to turn from pure pulp sadism and gratuitous sex into a more layered, psychological exploration. We know Lee is seeking revenge. We know he is going to kill. It is only a matter of time and the reader is forced to travel down the road, dragged further and further into Lee’s madness, strapped in, unable to change the course.
Keep in mind, Vian was no pulp writer. He was a contemporary of Sartre and Camus, who wrote the incredibly well received Froth on the Daydream (also translated as Foam of the Daze). He was also a translator, poet, music, critic, and jazz musician who was close with Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.
In many ways, it is similar to Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, forcing you to see the world of the book through the eyes of a very twisted and violent narrator. We immediately find ourselves repulsed by the narrator’s narcissism, their ruthlessness, and most importantly their penchant for extremely grisly acts. And yet, it is this grotesque, amped, psychotic, bloodthirsty humanity that captivates us.
I’m not the first person to make such a comparison between these two books. However, there is a major difference between them. Whereas Ellis was satirizing society, specifically the Reagan-worshipping stockbrokers of the 80s, Vian was going deeper – he was satirizing publishing and ultimately, the reader.
After all, sex and murder were rampant in novels published circa 1946. Both are still widely used as devices and plot points today. In fact, one could argue that both are necessary lynchpins of all modern literature. Sex and death is what it’s all about.
The book is so overly violent and misogynist because Vian is parodying pulp writing, a form very prevalent in post-war France when he wrote I Spit On Your Graves. Like Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it takes the argument to its fullest extreme, giving readers the ultimate in literary-noir: a story so extremely violent and disgusting to modern thinking that the reader can’t put it down.
Much has been said about the social commentary perceived within I Spit On Your Graves. Of this one can look literally. Lee, a black man who’s brother was murdered by whites, seeks revenge by wreaking havoc on white society. In the end however, without giving anything away, there is no justice for Lee. So it is easy to see I Spit On Your Graves as a biting commentary on racial injustice in America during the 20th Century.
But in many ways, Vian is still having his fun with us. After all, he’s not trying to convince us that Lee is an unfortunate character of racial injustice that we should pity. He’s getting us to hate Lee Anderson in spite of his quest for justice. After all, Vian’s audience was white, educated, French society. And it is Lee’s racial identity, his status as ‘black’ that made (and still makes the book) so controversial. If Lee was a white man bedding a bunch of women and then murdering two of them, it would be a Harry Crews novel. Vian however spins the tables, serving up a tale of a violent, lustful black man out for revenge, one that horrifies and yet draws us in, convincing a repulsed and outraged public to keep on reading. Ultimately the joke is on us. We are thinking of racial injustice, clinging to the social message seemingly contained within the book, and yet it is the titillating bits – the sex and death – that keep us reading. Swift would’ve been proud. show less
J'irai cracher sur vos tombes was written essentially as a prank, to provoke a reaction from the conservative establishment. Vian dashed it off in a fortnight in summer 1946, at the suggestion of a publisher acquaintance who was looking for something along the lines of Tropic of Cancer. The provocation was a bit too successful: the book caused the necessary scandal and became an overnight bestseller, but was attacked in court by a self-appointed guardian of public morals, starting a complicated series of legal actions that ultimately cost Vian and his publisher a great deal of time and money. As originally published, the book claimed to be a translation of a work by a black American writer, "Vernon Sullivan", who had not been able to show more get his work printed in the prejudiced USA. (This subterfuge led to the absurd situation that at one point during the court cases, Vian was producing evidence to try to show that the book was not his own work, whilst a year or two later he found himself having to prove exactly the opposite.)
So, it's an amusing little bit of literary history, but is there any more to it than that? Not a lot, really. It's fast-moving and cleverly written, but the subject-matter carefully sticks to the worst possible taste all the way through. The first-person narrator is Lee Anderson, a man who by an accident of genetics has a skin that is pale enough to let him "pass", but otherwise benefits from all the traditional advantages of the black male (deep voice, boxer's shoulders, innate ability to play tennis and the Blues, irresistible sex-appeal and a very large you-know-what). Working as a bookshop manager in a town where no-one knows his background, he's able to devote his spare time to having varied and entertaining sex with all the bobbysoxers who hang out at the drugstore (the boys lust after him as well, but he ignores them).
This small-town idyll occupies about half the book, then Anderson meets two rich and beautiful sisters from the next town and sees his great opportunity to get revenge on the white race for what they did to his brother, leading to some marginally more grown-up sex scenes and an extended road-movie section and Grand Guignol finale.
Something that struck me about the book was that the action, whether it's sex or car-chases, is never interrupted by trivialities. The picnics are free of wasps and poison-ivy, no parents or small siblings intrude into the parties, no zip ever gets stuck or shoelace knotted, there are no traffic cops to upset the speeding and drunken driving (until the final chapter when the plot needs them), and no-one ever worries about condoms. This looks to me like a strong indication that we're dealing with pornographic fantasy rather than literature, although I know that the French and Americans are nowhere near as obsessed with bathos as the British.
By today's standards the actual content of the sex scenes probably isn't all that shocking, but it's not very pleasant to read a long string of first-person descriptions of encounters that a less subjective narrator would probably consider to fit the definition of rape, not to mention a couple of violent killings. The get-out clause is that Anderson's (and presumably Sullivan's) experience of racism has twisted his moral perspective completely out of joint, but I'm not confident that that really flies, especially when you have to deal with all the complexities of a white Frenchman pretending to be a black American pretending to be a black American pretending to be a white American. There's definitely racism in there somewhere. show less
So, it's an amusing little bit of literary history, but is there any more to it than that? Not a lot, really. It's fast-moving and cleverly written, but the subject-matter carefully sticks to the worst possible taste all the way through. The first-person narrator is Lee Anderson, a man who by an accident of genetics has a skin that is pale enough to let him "pass", but otherwise benefits from all the traditional advantages of the black male (deep voice, boxer's shoulders, innate ability to play tennis and the Blues, irresistible sex-appeal and a very large you-know-what). Working as a bookshop manager in a town where no-one knows his background, he's able to devote his spare time to having varied and entertaining sex with all the bobbysoxers who hang out at the drugstore (the boys lust after him as well, but he ignores them).
This small-town idyll occupies about half the book, then Anderson meets two rich and beautiful sisters from the next town and sees his great opportunity to get revenge on the white race for what they did to his brother, leading to some marginally more grown-up sex scenes and an extended road-movie section and Grand Guignol finale.
Something that struck me about the book was that the action, whether it's sex or car-chases, is never interrupted by trivialities. The picnics are free of wasps and poison-ivy, no parents or small siblings intrude into the parties, no zip ever gets stuck or shoelace knotted, there are no traffic cops to upset the speeding and drunken driving (until the final chapter when the plot needs them), and no-one ever worries about condoms. This looks to me like a strong indication that we're dealing with pornographic fantasy rather than literature, although I know that the French and Americans are nowhere near as obsessed with bathos as the British.
By today's standards the actual content of the sex scenes probably isn't all that shocking, but it's not very pleasant to read a long string of first-person descriptions of encounters that a less subjective narrator would probably consider to fit the definition of rape, not to mention a couple of violent killings. The get-out clause is that Anderson's (and presumably Sullivan's) experience of racism has twisted his moral perspective completely out of joint, but I'm not confident that that really flies, especially when you have to deal with all the complexities of a white Frenchman pretending to be a black American pretending to be a black American pretending to be a white American. There's definitely racism in there somewhere. show less
O que mais salta aos olhos aqui é o fato deste livro ter vindo do mesmo autor de L'Écume des jours, que são basicamente extremos opostos. Como nada me choca depois de ter lido as notícias sobre misoginia e racismo em qualquer jornal diário, certamente não são os terríveis acontecimentos ficticios desse livro que irão me chocar, mesmo porque nunca havia visto em livro toda a escrotidão perversa do ser humano de uma forma tão realista. É isso, folks, esse é o ser humano.
Upon previewing the film version of this book apparently Boris was so angry that his heart gave out and he dropped dead at the relatively young age of 39. Famous last words before that event: "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!" Originally published under a pseudonym (Vernon Sullivan--supposedly a black man) what we have here is a white French writer posing as a black American writer; whose main character is really a black American posing as a white American in the very racist (at least at the time; arguably less so now) deep south. Vian more or less carries it off but I at least get the sense that in doing so here he kind of stretches credibility to the breaking point. The main character Lee is light-skinned and passes as show more a white man. On the other hand his brothers--victims of racism in one way or another do not. Lee gets himself a job in a bookstore in a town where nobody knows him and begins hanging out with some of the local kids--partying, drinking, lots of sex--eventually working himself up the food chain to the more hoi polloi he eventually sets his sights on two sisters the 20 year old Jean and the 15 year old Lou with the object of corrupting them and with the idea of killing them later on to revenge himself on society for the racism that his family has suffered in the past. The two sisters are very beautiful and stuck up. A kind of satiric somewhat surreal and soap operatic cynicism drives the action along to its bloody conclusion. In some ways it reminded me of Ross Thomas's 'The fools in town are on our side'. Anyway Vian must be given credit for his imagination in being able to create such a novel about a world in which he never lived--much like Kafka in his 'Amerika'. show less
Es pot llegir (encara que no la posaré a la llista dels llibres que s'han de rellegir). Com a novel·la negra, és fluixa. És millor com a representació d'un poble qualsevol dels Estats Units de mitjan segle XX. La traducció d'Àlvar Valls, que fa un abús espantós dels adjectius possessius, entre altres errors, s'arriba a fer en alguns moments absolutament enfarfegosa.
Sono indeciso se dargli tre stelle o due ... l'ho trovato sforzatamente violento e trucido. Bravissimo a scriverlo in una settimana ma forse poteva non ridursi così all'ultimo momento! Non ci ho trovato le emozioni degli altri due suoi libri che ho letto, "La schiuma dei giorni" e "Autunno a Pechino": tristezza, ironia, fantasia e assurdo tutte in maniera meravigliosamente esagerate. Forse quando uscì era un libro di rottura, forse solo un'operazione commerciale, pubblicitaria o solo un suo divertimento; la scommessa appunto.
L'histoire se passe dans une petite ville au fin fond du Far west américain. Un homme débarque à la recherche d'une nouvelle vie. Il arrive à s'intégrer et même à être heureux jusqu'au jour où il est introduit chez deux sœurs d'une famille aisée...
Un roman écrit avec des tripes! Lecteur accrochez-vous!
Un roman écrit avec des tripes! Lecteur accrochez-vous!
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Author Information
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Boris Vian (1920-59) was an engineer, inventor, jazz trumpeter, actor, recording artist, and prolific writer
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Escupiré sobre vuestra tumba
- Original title
- J'irai cracher sur vos tombes
- Original publication date
- 1946
- People/Characters*
- Dan Parker
- Important places*
- Buckton, Verenigde Staten
- Related movies
- I Spit on Your Grave (1959 | IMDb)
- First words
- Nobody knew me at Buckton.
- Quotations*
- Il me recommanda de ne pas négliger mes devoirs religieux. Ça, c'était une chose dont j'avais pu me débarrasser, mais je m'arrangeais pour qu'on ne s'en aperçoive pas plus que du reste (...) je crois qu'on ne peut pas re... (show all)ster lucide et croire en Dieu, et il fallait que je sois lucide.
-Je veux brûler la maison, Lee. Notre père l'avait construite. Nous lui devons tout ce que nous sommes. C'était presque un Blanc, pour la couleur, Lee. Mais, souviens-toi qu'il n'a jamais songé à renier sa race. Notre fr... (show all)ère est mort et personne ne doit poséder la maison que notre père avait construite de ses deux mains de nègre. - Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Sotto ai pantaloni il suo basso ventre formava ancora un bozzo derisorio.
- Original language*
- Français
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Mystery
- DDC/MDS
- 843.914 — Literature & rhetoric French & related literatures French fiction 1900- 20th Century 1945-1999
- LCC
- PQ2643 .I152 .J3513 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures French literature Modern literature 1900-1960
- BISAC
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