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B.S. Johnson Omnibus
This collection contains B.S. Johnson's critically acclaimed novels - "Alberto Angelo", "Trawl" and "House Mother Normal - A Geriatric Comedy".
- GenresFictionLiteratureNovels
Paperback
First published January 4, 2003
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About the author
B.S. Johnson
40 books130 followersB. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley Johnson) was an English experimental novelist, poet, literary critic and film-maker.
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's pre-university course at Birkbeck College, and with this preparation, managed to pass the university exam for King's College London.
After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. Travelling People (1963) and Albert Angelo (1964) were relatively conventional (though the latter became famous for the cut-through pages to enable the reader to skip forward), but The Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers could assemble the book any way they liked) and House Mother Normal (1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various characters' thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined, not just page by page, but sentence by sentence. Johnson also made numerous experimental films, published poetry, and wrote reviews, short stories and plays.
A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2000.
At the age of 40, increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide. Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. Jonathan Coe's 2004 biography Like a Fiery Elephant (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson prize) has already led to a renewal of interest in Johnson's work.
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's pre-university course at Birkbeck College, and with this preparation, managed to pass the university exam for King's College London.
After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. Travelling People (1963) and Albert Angelo (1964) were relatively conventional (though the latter became famous for the cut-through pages to enable the reader to skip forward), but The Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers could assemble the book any way they liked) and House Mother Normal (1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various characters' thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined, not just page by page, but sentence by sentence. Johnson also made numerous experimental films, published poetry, and wrote reviews, short stories and plays.
A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2000.
At the age of 40, increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide. Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. Jonathan Coe's 2004 biography Like a Fiery Elephant (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson prize) has already led to a renewal of interest in Johnson's work.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 13, 2011
Three B.S. Johnsons in one! Praise the Lord! (Though Johnson was an atheist, so praise the gravitational singularity!). Albert Angelo was a quick read, and an exemplary collage novel about a teacher longing for lost love while battling a classroom of London urchins. The experimentation is impressive, ranging from reported speech, first-second-third person narratives, cut-out paragraphs, offensively funny homework, to meandering thoughts. Then there's the legendary cut-through pages, tricking the reader into predicting the plot. A crazy work.
*
Trawl is a more torturous read: a proper Beckett homage, the prose bound in tight Doric columns with next to no paragraph breaks. A trawlerman (or someone loafing about on a trawler) ponders his isolation in the world on a trip to a Finnish port. The narrative comprises detailed memories, from his childhood in the war, his transfer from working to middle-class, to his various sexual relationships. There are also glorious ruminations on the sea, the sky, the vicissitudes of seafaring life. On the whole this novel is less rewarding: long stretches of the work seem indulgent and tedious. The narrator isn’t convincing or likeable, though glimpses of Johnson’s own past can be seen throughout, which is more interesting.
*
And for afters, there's House Mother Normal, stripped of its original subheading "a geriatric comedy." This is the most typographically innovative work from Johnson, using blank space, kerning and line breaks to tell a mordant story about an OAPs' home run by a sadistic House Mother. The narrative is told from eight OAP POVs, some sad, some naughty, some bleak. The climax is pitch-black humour more in line with someone like Chris Morris. Pretty astonishing.
This Omnibus is essential reading for devotees of the avant-garde, in a time when the avant-garde is no longer sneered at.
*
Trawl is a more torturous read: a proper Beckett homage, the prose bound in tight Doric columns with next to no paragraph breaks. A trawlerman (or someone loafing about on a trawler) ponders his isolation in the world on a trip to a Finnish port. The narrative comprises detailed memories, from his childhood in the war, his transfer from working to middle-class, to his various sexual relationships. There are also glorious ruminations on the sea, the sky, the vicissitudes of seafaring life. On the whole this novel is less rewarding: long stretches of the work seem indulgent and tedious. The narrator isn’t convincing or likeable, though glimpses of Johnson’s own past can be seen throughout, which is more interesting.
*
And for afters, there's House Mother Normal, stripped of its original subheading "a geriatric comedy." This is the most typographically innovative work from Johnson, using blank space, kerning and line breaks to tell a mordant story about an OAPs' home run by a sadistic House Mother. The narrative is told from eight OAP POVs, some sad, some naughty, some bleak. The climax is pitch-black humour more in line with someone like Chris Morris. Pretty astonishing.
This Omnibus is essential reading for devotees of the avant-garde, in a time when the avant-garde is no longer sneered at.
August 7, 2020
I'm going to go ahead and be the first to describe B.S. Johnson as a kind of proto-New Sincerist. This can especially be seen in the 'Disintegration' section of Albert Angelo where he breaks free from the lies of fiction to speak about the real truth behind the story. So many readers speak about Johnson's typographical experimentation, but not enough praise is directed toward the sincerity behind the fiction. Behind the nihilism and humour, Johnson strives to reorient the reader to face their mortality and to make the most of their lives. He invites us to do our own introspection, to live in the present, to peel away our own fictions that we construct for ourselves and others...
Overall, as an "experimental writer", B.S. Johnson is incredibly accessible and easy to read. I loved his "hole in the page" technique in Albert Angelo, and the kerning and spacing of internal monologue by the geriatric residents in House Mother Normal was fantastic. It was quite touching toward the end. Trawl is easily the weakest of the three novels in the omnibus (and the only Johnson I haven't liked out of the five I've read so far), though, the ending was decent, which comes as no surprise, as Johnson always has good endings.
Albert Angelo - 6.5/10
Trawl - 3.5/10
House Mother Normal 7.5/10
Overall, as an "experimental writer", B.S. Johnson is incredibly accessible and easy to read. I loved his "hole in the page" technique in Albert Angelo, and the kerning and spacing of internal monologue by the geriatric residents in House Mother Normal was fantastic. It was quite touching toward the end. Trawl is easily the weakest of the three novels in the omnibus (and the only Johnson I haven't liked out of the five I've read so far), though, the ending was decent, which comes as no surprise, as Johnson always has good endings.
Albert Angelo - 6.5/10
Trawl - 3.5/10
House Mother Normal 7.5/10
September 8, 2012
This hefty tome contains three of Johnson’s most famous novels, but he only wrote seven in his lifetime and three of those are unpublishable here for structural reasons, leaving only *Christy Malry’s Own Double-Entry* as a glaring omission in this volume.
Johnson is one of the most unfairly-maligned British authors of the past 50 years. His dictum that “fiction is lies” alienated many in the literary world, but it led him to attempt experiments with form that were original, entertaining and certainly valid on their own terms. Recently his work has staged something of a comeback, partly thanks to Jonathan Coe’s excellent biography of the man and his work.
This ‘Omnibus’ volume contains the following novels:
*Albert Angelo* -- first published in 1964 this is the tragicomic story of a supply teacher who dreams of being an architect but is foiled in his ambitions by the absurdities of everyday life. This text contains the notorious ‘holes in pages’ designed to allow the reader to peer ahead into the ‘future’ of the story and thus be already prepared for the violent scene ahead, a consideration that few novelists had ever shown before...
*Trawl* -- first published in 1966, the conceit of this novel is that the narrator (Johnson himself) must isolate himself from his normal life in order to ‘trawl’ his memories to locate the source of his feelings of isolation. He does this by enlisting on a North Sea trawler. It’s fiction as therapy, or rather therapy as fiction. Masses of dense text confront the reader, making this a seemingly daunting read, but in fact it’s engaging, lyrical and not as self-indulgent as it might be.
*House Mother Normal* -- first published in 1971, one of the few ‘perfect’ novels I have ever read. The same story is told from nine different perspectives with the text arranged so that the timing of all events occurs in the same place throughout each variation. The nine different viewpoints reinforce each other, contradict each other, build up a complete picture of a situation that is grotesque, ironic and horribly funny. This novel is an immense technical achievement and one of the finest experimental works ever published in English.
Johnson is one of the most unfairly-maligned British authors of the past 50 years. His dictum that “fiction is lies” alienated many in the literary world, but it led him to attempt experiments with form that were original, entertaining and certainly valid on their own terms. Recently his work has staged something of a comeback, partly thanks to Jonathan Coe’s excellent biography of the man and his work.
This ‘Omnibus’ volume contains the following novels:
*Albert Angelo* -- first published in 1964 this is the tragicomic story of a supply teacher who dreams of being an architect but is foiled in his ambitions by the absurdities of everyday life. This text contains the notorious ‘holes in pages’ designed to allow the reader to peer ahead into the ‘future’ of the story and thus be already prepared for the violent scene ahead, a consideration that few novelists had ever shown before...
*Trawl* -- first published in 1966, the conceit of this novel is that the narrator (Johnson himself) must isolate himself from his normal life in order to ‘trawl’ his memories to locate the source of his feelings of isolation. He does this by enlisting on a North Sea trawler. It’s fiction as therapy, or rather therapy as fiction. Masses of dense text confront the reader, making this a seemingly daunting read, but in fact it’s engaging, lyrical and not as self-indulgent as it might be.
*House Mother Normal* -- first published in 1971, one of the few ‘perfect’ novels I have ever read. The same story is told from nine different perspectives with the text arranged so that the timing of all events occurs in the same place throughout each variation. The nine different viewpoints reinforce each other, contradict each other, build up a complete picture of a situation that is grotesque, ironic and horribly funny. This novel is an immense technical achievement and one of the finest experimental works ever published in English.
August 5, 2018
B.S. was a man who wrote experimental fiction. That means, to me, he actually tried to create distinctive and original works, pushing the envelope, as they say, which is more than most writers-- most artists-- do. (Why he thought he would achieve a form of mainstream recognition with his odd books is a mystery though.) This nice looking edition contains three novels, two of which were pretty great, one less so. The opener, Albert Angelo, was quick, amusing, and cleverly put together. Albert (B.S.) is a substitute teacher-cum-failed-architect-- or rather, he's a bit of an everyman, faltering on several levels in his life, not just career, a man who'd rather sleep in, dwell upon lost loves, and drink a few pints at the local pub than get dedicated to anything that would elevate him. The story is told in several styles that effectively bring the reader as close to Albert's (fairly mundane) thoughts as possible while still allowing for a more subjective view of the man. Nice capture of London's geography and grit at the time. Teachers sure did hit students back then! Next up is Trawl, with beautiful passages about a landlubber (B.S.), seasick on a North Sea fishing boat thinking about lost loves and childhood. House Mother Normal, the last book, was less effective, a bit of a gimmick, really, in which a short spell of time at an old folks' home is viewed through the eyes of eight unreliable narrators / residents, one after the other, in the same format, before handing over the coda to the mean young Mother. B.S. tries to capture the levels of dementia through close third person but the reveals are heavy handed and take away from the potentially more powerful content.
April 15, 2020
Trawl I enjoyed. Overall, the play with the medium is sometimes interesting and the writing is often very good but some of the attempts at provocation and general attitude seem very dated.
September 22, 2024
Loved it! Love his experiment with the form and physicality of the novel!
February 23, 2016
Accessible experimental writing from a neglected writer of great skill and wit.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews