Boris Vian is better known as a novelist than as a writer of short stories. And yet, no less than three collections of his short stories are available today in France in paperback: Les Fourmis (1949), which was the only collection put together in Vian's lifetime; Le Loup-garou, first published by Christian Bourgois in 1970; and finally Le Ratichon baigneur, also published by Bourgois, which came out in 1981. Add to these volumes a number of stories published in different short story collections, not to mention the chronicle pieces written for various reviews and magazines of the time (especially, those he wrote on his specialist subject, jazz), and you have a rather different image of Boris Vian, who was incontestably a great writer of short fiction. It is our intention here to reveal how his predilection for this narrative form, as distinct from his poems and the hundreds of songs that he produced, was the result of a network of influences that came to the fore over a period of time which, although limited (1945-1952), was sufficiently productive to warrant a re-evaluation of the way in which his output is generally categorised.

Influences

“SHORT Stories: Divers.” This was the heading Vian used in his personal reading list for the entry corresponding to his deep fascination with short stories, be it stories originally written in French or, as his use of the English term suggests, translated stories.