Stan K-Bootle [to A.S]:
All of us bright young Brit
Commies in the 50s knew of Boris Vian mainly (solely?) through his then-popular,
anti-war, draft-burning song, Le
Déserteur...Reading reports of Vian¹s
Nabokovian wordplay a few years ago, I tried to order his surreal novel L'Écume
des jours (1947) ...The anagrammatic coincidence you offer is unlikely to play a
plausible role in resolving these factual
probabilities.
JM: A naboko/vian
wordplay? Boris V., himself, wrote under different
pseudonyms: "Bison Ravi," an obvious anagram of his name, "Hugo
Hachebuisson" and the most famous one, "Vernon Sullivan" (he
introduced him to French readers as an American writer, whose
work he translated). Sullivan's l947 best-selling wildly outrageous
novel was "J'Irais Cracher Sur Vos Tombes." He was a close
friend of Raymond Queneau ( a writer Nabokov admired & I
must re-check it in SO to be sure), and an illustrious member of
the "École de Pataphysique." There are tenuous, but actual, links to Nabokov
(black commedy, anagrams, playful hoaxes).