"I played the trumpet a bit like a porker, I think"
About this Quote
Self-deprecation can be a flex when it’s delivered with a smirk, and Boris Vian’s “I played the trumpet a bit like a porker, I think” lands exactly there: a deliberately ungainly image that undercuts any temptation to romanticize the jazzman as tortured genius. Vian wasn’t just a writer dabbling in music; he was a postwar Parisian polymath steeped in Saint-Germain’s jazz scene, where American cool got translated into French existential nightlife. The line reads like an antidote to that whole mythology.
The word choice matters. “Porker” isn’t merely “bad” or “clumsy”; it’s bodily, comic, a little humiliating. Trumpet-playing is already tied to breath, spit, strain - the unglamorous mechanics behind the sound. Vian pulls the curtain back on the physicality of art, suggesting that what audiences consume as style often begins as messy exertion. The “I think” at the end is doing quiet work too: it’s faux-modest and slightly evasive, as if he’s leaving room for debate while also locking in the joke.
Underneath, there’s a manifesto of sorts: don’t trust the polished persona. In a culture that loved grand statements (and later, grand theories), Vian chooses bathos. He punctures seriousness without rejecting ambition, implying that creativity is less cathedral than workshop - and that the artist who admits to sounding ridiculous might be the one least captured by pretension.
The word choice matters. “Porker” isn’t merely “bad” or “clumsy”; it’s bodily, comic, a little humiliating. Trumpet-playing is already tied to breath, spit, strain - the unglamorous mechanics behind the sound. Vian pulls the curtain back on the physicality of art, suggesting that what audiences consume as style often begins as messy exertion. The “I think” at the end is doing quiet work too: it’s faux-modest and slightly evasive, as if he’s leaving room for debate while also locking in the joke.
Underneath, there’s a manifesto of sorts: don’t trust the polished persona. In a culture that loved grand statements (and later, grand theories), Vian chooses bathos. He punctures seriousness without rejecting ambition, implying that creativity is less cathedral than workshop - and that the artist who admits to sounding ridiculous might be the one least captured by pretension.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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