Pastiche as a Reception of the Grotesque Construction of Boris Vian’s Novel “Turmoil in the Swaths”

Abstract

The article discusses the features of the grotesque construction of the first novel by Boris Vian “Turmoil in the Swaths”. It is shown that one of the dominant methods of creating the grotesque space of the work is pastiche in postmodern semantic content. It is proved that already the first novel by Vian is a harbinger of future postmodern reflection. Experimenting with various genre systems, synthesizing them and blurring the boundaries, Vian states the principle of the “pataphysical” world in his main desire – to shock and surprise the reader with unexpected plot twists and actions of the characters, purposefully, throughout the work to destroy the reader’s waiting horizon, involving in the game novel space. The first novel of the writer marks the birth of a special Vian style, which becomes the basis of all his subsequent work.

Keywords

• Boris Vian
• first novel
• pastiche
• comic grotesque
• pataphysics