biography
pronunciation:
[veeã]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1920–59)
|
| biography:
| Playwright, novelist, poet, and musician, born in Ville d'Avray, NC France. He was a pupil of the École Centrale in 1938, formed a one-man band at Saint-German-des-Près after the war, and became a jazz critic and columnist on Temps Modernes. As a trumpeter at the Tabou, he had formed his first jazz group in 1937, and twenty years later, with Henri Salvador, created Rock 'n' Roll à la Française. His poems and songs appeared in the collections Je voudrais pas crever (1962) and Chansons possibles et impossibles, which gave rise to the scandal of the ‘Déserteur’ in 1955. As a writer, J'irai cracher sur vos Tombes, seen as a pastiche of the American ‘black’ novel, was published under the name of Vernon Sullivan, one of many pseudonyms. Banned in 1946, it proved an unexpected success, but he disapproved of the film adaptation (1959). L'Equarissage pour tous (1947) was a nihilist farce. The best-selling L'Ecume des jours (1947) and L'Herbe rouge (1950) deal with love and alienation with astonishing verbal fantasy, and he remained provocative with Le Gôuter des Généraux (1964). Under the influence of Ionesco, he wrote Les Bâtisseurs d'Empire. None of his many scenarios survive, but Georges Delerue composed an opera on his libretto Le Chevalier de Neige, performed at Nancy in 1957. He did not complete his Traité de Civisme. His early death was the result of a heart condition. |
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