Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their release owing to their unconventional outlook.

Vian's other fiction, published under his real name, featured a highly individual writing style with numerous made-up words, subtle wordplay and surrealistic plots.

It was also in 1936 that Vian became interested in jazz; the next year he started playing the trumpet and joined the Hot Club de France.

Vian became fully immersed in the French jazz scene: for example, in 1939 he helped organize Duke Ellington's second concert in France.

After Vian's graduation, he and Michelle moved to the 10th arrondissement of Paris and, on 24 August 1942 he became an engineer at the French Association for Standardisation (AFNOR).

By this time he was an accomplished jazz trumpeter, and in 1943 he wrote his first novel, Trouble dans les andains (Turmoil in the Swaths).

The former, a tragic love story in which real world objects respond to the characters' emotions, is now regarded as Vian's masterpiece, but at the time of its publication it failed to attract any considerable attention.

Frustrated by the commercial failure of his works, Vian vowed he could write a best-seller and wrote the hard-boiled novel I Spit on Your Graves (J'irai cracher sur vos tombes) in only 15 days.

The year 1946 marked a turning point in Vian's life: At one of the popular parties that he and Michelle hosted he made the acquaintance of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, became a regular in their literary circles and started regularly publishing various materials in Les Temps modernes.

He continued his literary career by writing Vernon Sullivan novels, and also published poetry collections: Barnum's Digest (1948) and Cantilènes en gelée (Cantelinas in Jelly, 1949).

Like the previous two books, it did not sell well; Vian's financial situation had been steadily worsening since late 1948, and he was forced to take up translation of English-language literature and articles in order to get by.

By 1955, when he was working as art director for Philips, Vian was active in a wide variety of fields: song-writing, opera, screenplays and several more plays.

He had been unhappy about the fact that French singer Marcel Mouloudji (1922–1994), who had interpreted "Le Deserteur" (The Deserter) on stage the year before, had not accepted the original lyrics because he thought that they would lead to the song being banned.

In 1958, Vian worked on the opera Fiesta with Darius Milhaud, and a collection of his essays, En avant la zizique...

Et par ici les gros sous (On with the Muzak... And Bring in the Big Bucks), was published the same year.

[4] Almost immediately after his death, L'Écume des jours, and then L'automne à Pékin, L'Arrache-cœur, and L'Herbe rouge, began to gain recognition in France and were taken up by the young in the 1960s and 1970s.

As a songwriter, Vian inspired Serge Gainsbourg, who used to attend his show at the cabaret Les Trois Baudets and who wrote, thirty years later: "I took it on the chin [...], he sang terrific things [...], it is because I heard him that I decided to try something interesting".

Vian is still viewed by many as the emblematic figure of Saint Germain des Prés as it existed during the postwar decade, when this district was the centre of artistic and intellectual life in Paris.