Autumn in Peking

In a slightly surreal alternative version of 1940s Paris, a disparate set of eccentric characters go off, for more or less discreditable and always satisfyingly absurd reasons, to work on the construction of a new railway line in the remote and unpopulated desert region of Exopotamie, which is somewhere near the terminus of bus route 975. The railway has no obvious purpose, and due to an unfortunate planning oversight it is going to pass through the middle of the only building for miles around, which happens to be the hotel where the construction crew are staying. Meanwhile, an archaeologist and his team are tunnelling under the whole area in a quest for ancient remains.

Set against this background is a complicated network of sexual show more rivalries and jealousies, gay and straight, comic and tragic. And a moderate amount of accidental death, murder, medical incompetence, model-aircraft flying, and general carnage.

It's full of social satire (even if most of the people being sent up have been forgotten by now), and often very funny at a detailed level, as the narrator's careless use of figurative language turns out to have all sorts of real-world consequences, and of course it's splendidly grotesque and ridiculous at a macro-level, but Vian also manages to draw us in to sympathise with the self-destructive obsessions of his characters.

And that title? Apparently Vian was so struck by the coincidence that neither the subject "autumn" nor the location "Peking" played any part in his novel that he felt that he had no other choice than to use this title. (I would guess that that's equally true for at least 30% of the books on my shelves, so it's perhaps a good thing that Vian's insight has not been shared by many other authors...)

The edition I read was a 1960s reissue of Vian's 1956 second edition: it's fun to see that it retains the famous anomaly of having a chapter numbered XXIII fall between chapters XI and XIII of the Second Movement. It's almost certain that this was just an oversight when Vian renumbered the chapters between the first and second editions, but Vian's sense of humour is so subtle that no-one seems to be quite prepared to second-guess him to the extent of correcting this, just in case there is a buried joke there (and of course there are theories as to what this joke might be). show less

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 show more 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 . . .” show less

The story such as it is, is pretty basic, kind of like a play you know? Group of people in the desert. Bit of Kafka here and there but not too much.
Some humour, plenty of vulgarity. It is surreal but most of that is confined to the first quarter. I don't do well with surreal but in this case a lot of it was inanimate objects described like animate creatures, which is the very essence of most animation so i just pretended those parts where a cartoon :) .
The delivery of the dialogue can be quite stilted not sure if thats in the original or just the translation, which must have been a nightmare so well done Mr.Translator anyway.
Not much more to say, very Indie, its nothing amazing but i was never bored.

The tragic love is described by the way and with numeral exactness, wheras things are described with poetic means. I agree with the rezension from 2008 here. I can add one detail and one aspect.

Vian treats every theme concerning jazz with thorough knowledge as he is personally involved, that is some kind of biografical.

In his time he was not involved in "fashionable" Resitance or existencialsm due to his real betraied love.

The main aspect is another. Vian was engineer, and I suppose that he knew the foundations of theoretical physics. That is the same as with Douglas Adams oder Robert Musil.

Velocity depending of the place and a bus ride ending in infinity, a desert, and a driver that keeps to the schedule with probality. That is why show more some metapherns seem to be absurd, but they are not, they are formed by scientific models. show less

Absurd book, which appeals to me despite, or perhaps because, of it's weirdness.

Vian, Boris

This surreal novel starts delightfully, with buildings that breathe; buses powered by catfish bones; bizarre analogies; a chair with fever and high blood pressure; a man called Anne; and the impossibility of getting a bus to work. Such oddities are mentioned in passing, without the need for explanation.

The good
The first 33 pages include:
• “With the nimbleness of a pendulum he leaped onto the steps.”
• “A sort of intrepid drowsiness… invaded his body like a carnivorous fish.”
• “He tossed back the [bed] covers. Affectionately, they crawled back up his legs and enveloped his body.”
• “The cheese, of which only a large chunk remained, scampered about lazily on the mauve plate with its mauve holes.”
• “Electricity show more fell in little pearl-like drops from the broken wire.”

The story concerns building a railroad across a desert, starting at Exopotamie, where there is nothing but a small hotel and an archaeological dig. Neither autumn nor Peking feature, but there’s a love triangle, a randy abbot, and a doctor more interested in model planes than healing patients.


Image: Trans-Saharan Railway, built by Vichy France, with forced labour, in the early 1940s (Source)

The ick
The first hint of a darker tone is on page 37:
“Whenever he met a pretty girl he always wanted to possess her.”

After 50 pages, the short, stilted, dialogue-heavy sentences lost their lustre, and the quirkiness mostly evaporated, replaced with occasional casual racism and homophobia, and increasingly revolting misogyny, plus sexualisation of a child.

It focuses on men’s sexual needs, and a recurring concern is that women are used up and dried up the longer they’re in a sexual relationship, being little more than “a hole with a little hair around it”. Yuk.

I kept hoping it would return to the earlier humorous mood.
It didn’t.
Was this normal in 1946?

Other quotes

• “Long, thin ideas that had been flattened out under a layer of more recent events, ideas so flat that looking at them in sections… he was unable to distinguish or differentiate their form and color. He could only sense them moving underneath ,sinewy and reptilian.”

• “The night was like yellow ink, sliced open by luminous and slender brush strokes that fell from the stars at various angles.” show less