BORIS VIAN – I Spit on Your Grave. First US edition: Audubon, paperback, 1971. Canongate Edinburgh, Scotland, pb, 2001. Reprinted as I Spit on Your Graves: Tamtam Books, softcover, 1998. Translation of J’Irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes, as by “Vernon Sullivan,” France, 1947.

Film: Audubon, 1962, as J’iral Cracher Sur Vos Tombes (I Spit on Your Grave). Christian Marquand, Antonella Lualdi, Paul Guers, Renate Ewert, Jean Sorel, Fernand Ledoux. Director: Michel Gast.

   Somewhere along the way last month I read Light in August, which I don’t propose to review here because Faulkner don’t need me to pimp for him. But it led me to read another two-bit paperback, obviously inspired by Faulkner’s work, I Spit on Your Grave.

   Grave was published in France in 1946, when the public there was crazy for American hard-boiled books and movies (unavailable there since 1940) and would apparently devour anything that looked appropriately tough and western, including palpable fakes like Lemmy Caution and James Hadley Chase — I digress, but it explains how I Spit on Your Grave was promoted as a French translation of an American book, when in fact it was written by one Boris Vian, who was about as American as Pepe le Pew.

   Surprisingly, though, this is quite well done. The nameless narrator, a black man passing for white (like Joe Christmas in Faulkner’s book) sets us somewhere in the southern U.S. and tells of his quest for vengeance for the lynching of his brother. Said vengeance becomes a nasty bit of business as the narrator insinuates himself into a small town and works his way around to seducing the daughters of the local rich folk — with a view to something even worse to come…

   Vian ain’t no Faulkner, but that’s not always a bad thing; he evokes the small town colorfully, his prose is sharp and well-judged and the tone is pleasingly nasty, veering toward the pornographic as the narrator exacts his baroque retribution. And I should warn you that this book contains graphic violence one seldom encounters even now in mainstream books.

   The book itself had an interesting history: when a copy was found near the body of a murdered woman (with significant passages underlined) the publishers were charged with pandering obscenity and the true story of its writing emerged.

   This only made it more popular, and it was filmed in 1959. The movie is a low-budget affair that runs out of steam somewhere along the way and softens the ending, but it evokes the dusty desperation of a one-whore town surprisingly well for a film made entirely in France and cast with badly-dubbed French actors.

   I liked it myself, but there’s a story that Vian went to a preview, screamed “What is this sh*t?!” and fell over dead.

   It’s a nice story, anyway.

Editorial Comment: Most sources state the date of the French edition as 1946, as does Dan. The year 1947 that I stated in the opening credits is that as given by Al Hubin in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. He’s on a vacation cruise right now, but I’ll ask him to help sort out this small disparity when he gets back.