The Opiate, Summer Vol. 6
Maternal Paranoia & Boris Vian’s Heartsnatcher M
oth er s. C a n’t l ive with them a nd l iterally can’t l ive without them. T hi s i s the p rimar y point dr iven home by o ne o f Boris Vian’s more under a ppreciated work s, Heartsnat cher. Whil e his uniq u e bran d of ma g ica l rea l ism was m o st c on cretely establ ished with L’ É cum e de s Jours (Froth on the Daydream)—which would later become all shiny and new again when Michel Gondry adapted it into 2013’s Mood Indigo—it is Heartsnatcher that takes the most liberties with the blurred line between reality and fantasy. As Vian’s final novel published in 1953, L’Arrache-coeur, as it was named in its original language, explores
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Genna Rivieccio the strange travails of a psychotherapist named Timortis who seems to have actually been born yesterday upon first encountering Clementine and Angel, a married couple in the process of delivering “a pair of twins, and one on his own... He arrived very definitely a moment or two after the others. It’s the sign of a strong personality.” So begins Vian’s undercutting, scathing account of what it means to be a mother. Setting the scene that Timortis happens upon, Vian writes, “The mother was lying on the bed, suffering the hundred and thirteen pangs of childbirth.” It’s immediately clear that Clementine serves as the representation of the
