Boris Vian was a novelist, jazz musician, jazz critic, poet, playwright, a friend of miles davis, duke ellington, raymond queneau, jean cocteau, louis malle, jean paul sartre, and numerous others of forties and fifties p...Boris Vian was a novelist, jazz musician, jazz critic, poet, playwright, a friend of miles davis, duke ellington, raymond queneau, jean cocteau, louis malle, jean paul sartre, and numerous others of forties and fifties parisian cultural society. He was also a French translator of American hard-boiled crime novels.