L'Herbe rouge
By Boris Vian
1950
First Published
3.83
Average Rating
177
Number of Pages
Boris Vian (1920-1959) was a magnificent jack-of-all-trades—actor, jazz critic, engineer, musician, playwright, songwriter, translator—not to mention the leading social light of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés scene. His third major novel, Red Grass is a provocative narrative about an engineer, Wolf, who invents a bizarre machine that allows him to revisit his past and erase inhibiting memories. A frothing admixture of Breton, Freud, Carroll, Hammett, Kafka and Wells, Red Grass is one of Vian's finest and most enduring works, a satire on psychoanalysis—which Vian wholly and vigorously disapproved of—that inflects science fiction with dark absurdity and the author's great wit. Much in the novel can be regarded as autobiography, as our hero attempts to liberate himself from past traumatic events in the arenas of religion, social life and—of course—sex.
Avg Rating
3.83
Number of Ratings
2,516
5 STARS
28%
4 STARS
37%
3 STARS
25%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
2%
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Author
Boris Vian
Author · 29 books
Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered for novels such as L’Écume des jours and L'Arrache-cœur (translated into English as Froth on the Daydream and Heartsnatcher, respectively). He is also known for highly controversial "criminal" fiction released under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan and some of his songs (particularly the anti-war Le Déserteur). Vian was also fascinated with jazz: he served as liaison for, among others, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis in Paris, wrote for several French jazz-reviews (Le Jazz Hot, Paris Jazz) and published numerous articles dealing with jazz both in the United States and in France.
