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Article: "Black comme moi": Boris Vian and the African American voice in translation.
- Article from:
- Mosaic (Winnipeg)
- Article date:
- March 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 University of Manitoba, Mosaic. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1946, Boris Vian published a faux-French translation of a novel by a non-existent African American author. Emphasizing through parody and self-referentiality the "impossibility" of translation from American English into French, Vian simultaneously attacks both the notions of a constructed, fetishized "original" text and of racial authenticity.
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In late 1946, capitalizing simultaneously on the post-war market in France for African American fiction and the seemingly insatiable French appetite for American crime stories, twenty-seven-year-old novelist, jazz critic, and occasional translator Boris Vian published, in translation, the work of ...