Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson

by Jonathan Coe

In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known young novelists in Britain. A passionate advocate for the avant-garde in both literature and film, he became famous -- not to say notorious -- both for his forthright views on the future of the novel and for his idiosyncratic ways of putting them into practice. But in November 1973 Johnson's lifelong depression got the better of him, and he was found dead at his north London home. He had taken his own life at the age of forty.

Jonathan Coe's biography is based upon unique access to the vast collection of papers Johnson left behind after his death, and upon dozens of interviews with those who knew him best. As unconventional in form as one of its subject's own novels, it paints a remarkable picture -- sometimes hilarious, often overwhelmingly sad -- of a tortured personality; a man whose writing tragically failed to keep at bay the demons that pursued him.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literature, British Literature, Criticism, Comedy

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Jonathan Coe, born 19 August 1961 in Birmingham, is a British novelist and writer. His work usually has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name, in the light of the 'carve up' of the UK's resources which some felt was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's right wing Conservative governments of the 1980s. Coe studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Trinity College, Cambridge, before teaching at the University of Warwick where he completed a PhD in English Literature. In July 2006 he was given an honorary degree by The University of Birmingham.

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Retrieved 10:55, February 2, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan...

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Painful and Instructive Case of B S Johnson, who never saw a Garde he didn't want to Avant


There's a very interesting strand of literary biography emerging these days and this is a great example. Another of this type would be Roger Lewis' crazy Anthony Burgess and Norman Sherry's three-part, 2251-page bio of Graham Greene. In these biographies the biographer himself appears on the page, he shows you around, he moans about the lack of information about those crucial months in 1951, he tells you about the saucy minx he met whilst researching in Sardinia, he gets depressed and discusses giving up the very book you're reading – it's all great fun and a completely different reading experience to those giant stalactites like Leon Edel's Henry James or whatsisname's whatsisname, you know the ones I mean.

However, before we go any further, let it be said that reading a literary biography is a vile, treacherous, low, abject thing to do. You don't see animals reading literary biographies do you? Well, don't do it yourself then! Read the actual books the biographed author actually wrote, instead. These biographies are a waste of everyone's time. What are we, armchair purveyors of the crassest pop psychology?

It's the art that matters, everything else is the Twa Corbies

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
"Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?"

"In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain author;
And nane do ken that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound an his agent fair."

"His hound is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His agent has jist been arrested for downloadin' kiddie porn,
So we may mak oor dinner sweete."

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We'll theek oor nest whan it grows bare."

"Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane;
Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,
This literary biography sall blaw for evermair."

Okay, sorry, I got carried away.

B S Johnson was stuck in a truly awful intellectual space. He was a total believer in artistic progress & so saw the connection between Tristram Shandy and Ulysses in a heartbeat. He saw that Joyce and Beckett had murdered the traditional realist novel in the pantry with a blunt instrument. Anyone dealing with plot & character & three acts & dialogue after Ulysses should be run out of Booktown on a rail (which by the way I have always wanted to see done). So he wrote these ferociously modernist novels, and the same 92 people bought them from Travelling People in 1964 to the posthumous See the Old Lady Decently in 1975. He was in a minority of a minority of a minority. So his life was difficult. He hated pop music (he liked jazz, he was completely predictable in many ways) but he ended up writing to the Beatles for a grant on January 4th, 1968, when they set up Apple :

Dear Paul MacCartney

I read in the Sunday times recently that you were setting up a fund to help experimental film makers

(he did little films, plays, essays, he hustled like mad trying to make a life).

Paul didn't reply.

BS Johnson is the poster boy for a particular artistic cul-de-sac and of course he committed suicide. His story must be read with love and pity. A great biography, but, you know, don't read it.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

As writers, we are overly conscious of our foibles and traits: where we see ourselves on the great graph of dysfunction. On the page, I have walked the perilous road of selfconscious indulgence, of postmodern pretention. I have written dozens of stories, and two novels, that collapse into self-referential revelation: pure spits of Johnson’s own plea: FUCK ALL THIS LYING! I have stepped onto the stage like a shy schoolboy and told my embarrassed audience: “I have nothing to say except how much I hate myself.”

This shambles ended for me when my first novel, A Postmodern Belch—a shameless vehicle for dated metafictional tricks, a Mulligan Stew without the theory—caused its small LA publishing house to collapse through bilious dissent. For who, in good conscience, could publish two hundred pages of a writer treading water, showing off his verbal artillery, but so scared to write a well-rounded character or fast-paced plot, he would never make these poor fresh-faced saps a single cent? (I am convinced to this day the editor faked her sister’s car accident to shut down the press and hide from me).

So I came, a year after my first serious novel was torpedoed, to B.S. Johnson. Seeking amusement. Lightness. Inspiration. I found in Christie Malry a quaint dark comedy, a book unreplicable in its technique, which I wanted to write so bad, my valves chafed. Then on to Albert Angelo: a full-bodied experimental workout with curious perforations. Less envy, more curious squints. Then the humorless snooze of Trawl: an unrelenting Beckett homage, seasickness in hardback. And last, House Mother Normal. A startling work of poisonous comedy, confirming to me the warped magnificence of this sad man.

I forgot The Unfortunates—to me, his least successful novel, despite its standing as an objet d’art among the vain literati. What I learned from Johnson, among other innovators, was how to make a form or structure integral to the emotional core of a work. There’s no point writing an 1000-page epic in misspelled Norwegian iambics if this form isn’t crucial to the meaning. The rampant postmodern dickery that mars my juvenilia (which, although dated, is at least charged with a Pythonesque mischief—see this example) was crucial in my ongoing quest for identity as a writer, as an unsalaried drudge on this woeful sphere. It’s not a vast education, perhaps, but I’m a slow learner.

My fascination with Johnson seems typical: I too was raised in a working-class household, absconded to university, and now swing awkwardly in a bourgeois hammock. Although class is less divisive in the UK as in the 1950s, I can empathise with Johnson’s attempt to prove himself as an artist in a world of Oxbridge leg-ups and Cambridge cronyism. I often indulge in logic-free rants against a literary system that refuses to subsidise ambitious creatives living in penniless decadence. I have an arrogant streak. (But unlike him, I am svelte, raffish).

So his persona, his techniques, his suicide, his charming turn on the ITV special Fat Man on a Beach (prime-time avant-garde films!), all drew me to him naturally. My interest, while mostly distanced, has stretched to reading some of his out of print works at the NLS archives—more from a stubborn obscurantism of preoccupation that makes me such a hit with the ladies than genuine obsession. (I also like to snowboard on the novels of David Markson).

So at last, I came to Coe’s magnificent bio. And what a triumph. Entirely readable, compulsive, obsessive, fascinating—all these words and more. Coe, himself a mainstream and tame novelist, makes his own literary approach clear from the off: Johnson, far from being a literary mentor or inspirer, is more a strange avuncular figure in his life, like my distant relatives in Invergordon. Who I am told have money, but I never see a cent.

This fat volume, with its criminal small print (not helpful for us lame-sighted) is as comprehensive a book one could expect on Johnson, and the speculation about his own relation to the occult, and myths, plus his rumoured homosexuality, all add intrigue to this complex portrait of a mad, feverish and unbalanced creative firecracker. A terrific book, and apologies for the preamble, but this review is really about me, isn’t it?

[Robert Ronsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I read this book I had never heard of BS Johnson. I vaguely remember something about ‘a book in a box’ where the chapters where bound separately and could be read in any order but I didn’t know the author’s name.
I am a fan of Jonathan Coe’s novels. My first experience of his work was ‘What a Carve Up!’ and I recognised several elements in its structure and plotline that made me regard the author as a soulmate. His other novels: House of Sleep, Rotters Club, The Closed Circle and The Rain Before it Falls all substantiated this view.
So it was through Coe and this biography that I learned of Johnson. Because of the way I feel about Coe, I can understand what Coe sees in Johnson.
This is no ordinary biography. In homage to his subject’s technique, Coe describes Johnson through his seven novels, 160 ‘fragments’ and 44 ‘voices’. The result is a cross between conventional biography and the approach of AJA Symons in The Quest for Corvo. Coe has collected the evidence of Johnson having lived, his books, his scripts and films, the impact an impressions he has made on others and lays this all before us. This is not to say Coe is an indifferent presenter of research. Using his trademark relaxed prose he connects everything to enlighten and enthuse.
The result is an innovative biography consistent with the life it describes. If at times it appears shambolic and conflicted and at others over-confident and assertive it is because Johnson was all these things. Coe’s admiration for his subject shines through. His evangelical praise for Johnson made me seek out the latter’s work and be both confused and stunned by its brilliance. It is no coincidence, and entirely due to Coe’s talent, that this biography has the same effect.
I have one fragment of Coe’s biography of Johnson framed above my computer monitor so I read it daily. It concludes: Not many novelists are prepared to … own up to their responsibilities – to the form, to their readers, to the tradition they are inheriting. That is what BS Johnson meant by ‘writing as though it matters, as though they meant it, as though they meant it to matter’. Coe has done justice to this legacy in his book.

[Terry Clague · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Life does not tell stories. Life is chaotic, fluid, random; it leaves myriads of ends untied, untidily. Writers can extract a story from life only by strict, close selection, and this must mean falsification. Telling stories is telling lies."

Jonathan Coe has to contend with this central plank of his subject's life's work, which is no mean feat. He does so in a style that nods toward Tristram Shandy in discussing a man "wracked by self-certainties". In the course of researching and writing the book, the author (perhaps in desperation) spoke to an expert medical friend – “there's enough material there for an entire conference,” as The Psychiatrist in Fawlty Towers would say.

It may seem odd and amusing that a man apparently so heavily set on telling the truth would abbreviate his name to the globally understood acronym for "bullshit", but here's someone not without dark contradiction. In fact, as befits a work on an "experimental" writer, there's a strong argument that it would make just as much sense to read the work almost on shuffle. The coda section at the end is mindblowing and practically requires you to start again - backwards. I'd be tempted to do this but, having never read any of Johnson's works I am first compelled to start there - but where?

It's clear that Johnson could be bewildering, charming, thin-skinned and prone to bursts of anger – not to mention hard-working and generous: in 1972 and 1973, "while he was often to be found entertaining lavishly, he was also applying for jobs as Assistant Secretary at the Royal Town Planning Institute and as a Publishing Editor with Routledge"!

He writes to Paul McCartney to ask The Beatles to fund an adaptation of his second novel (“why not back it? Or is that too direct?”). He complains about conservative constraints on his ideal innovations in book production (for The Unfortunates) - “bollocks to librarians, too – of all the ponces who feast off the dead body of Literature, the carrion who feast on the corpses of good men, writers, pay us fuck all and go out to lunch every day of the working week… librarians are the worst, and I shall be very interested to see how they take this book: there are, of course, the librara (I’ll misspell the cunts) suppliers, who buy sheets and bind up their own special copies: they’ll be buggered, ha ha!”

He falls out with film directors, including Mike Newell (the one who went on to direct Richard Curtis scripts, rather than the Blackburn Rovers banger) – Coe thought twice about seeking Newell’s views after finding “a scrap of paper in Johnson’s handwriting on which he had written down Newell’s phone number and added the note ‘CUNT OF A DIRECTOR’”.

All the while, he stews in a teen angst brew about life: “They don’t have to tell me what life’s about, because I know that already, and it’s about hardness. Hardness and being on my own, quite on my own. You understand that right from the beginning, from the first time the pavement comes up and hits you, from the first time you look round for someone you expected to be there and they aren’t.”

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlucky (early) in love and unlucky in career (minor fame, piss-poor book sales), B. S. Johnson was lucky, very lucky, in biographer. Jonathan Coe’s justly acclaimed biography is a wonderful, insightful, measured, respectful, yet unflinching look at the life of England’s experimental novelist and gadfly of the 60s and very early 70s. Johnson was more than a bit of a paradox, a reactionary member of the avant garde, conservative in many things but not in politics or art. He lived with a chip on his shoulder. He wrote about himself in a very frank and relentless way, protecting it with a dogmatic approach to literary theory that justified his obsessions in subject matter and form. He married a beautiful woman, though he was regarded as chubby and not all that attractive (by friends, and more dismissively by himself) but wrote endlessly about a lost love earlier, the bitterest betrayal in an endless series of betrayals that led to his suicide in 1973 at the age of 40. His mother had died. His career was in stall. He and his wife were in crisis so he took the Roman way out, opening his veins in a warm bath, leaving an unfinished bottle of brandy and two notes. One read “Barry, finish this.” The other, en toto: “This is my last / word.” Coe, an English novelist, writes with compassion and with a desire to make sense of this mess of a life, yet significant career (Beckett was among his admirers) without making too much of too little. There is a mysterious friend, hints of repressed homosexuality, clear evidence of paranoia, and many other ingredients for a psychological stew or, worse, one writer co-opting the life of another for self-promotional purposes or simply to show off one’s brilliance. But Coe restrains himself, taking his responsibilities seriously, taking a cue from his subject when it comes to honesty and sharing the process of writing the book with the reader. The effect is a miracle of clarity from which you come away knowing, on some significant level, B. S. Johnson with sympathy but with some degree of objectivity. If that seems a small accomplishment I have read numerous biographies of Hemingway and Dylan (to name two life subjects) with far less understanding of who and why they are. Coe does very right by Mr. Johnson. I’m keen to read Trawl, one of several of Johnson’s novels that I haven’t yet read. (I’m finishing The Unfortunates and read decades ago Alberto Angelo, House Mother Normal, and Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry.)

[Aleksandr Rubtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

However flippant such a comment may seem when applied to the biography of Johnson, Coe does succeed in making the man come alive in all his insecurities, self-assurance, and ultimate undeniable brilliance.

[Steph Bennion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is best biography I've read to date. B.S. Johnson comes across as a man full of inner conflicts (even if he did come across as a bit arrogant at times) and as an important yet sadly overlooked literary icon who worked hard at pushing the novel into new forms. Jonathan Coe is also one of my favourite writers and this biography is a fitting tribute and a well-researched book about the man. This is highly recommended for anyone who likes writer biographies.

[Joe Maggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

My own relationship with B.S. Johnson started when a friend from work told me about Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry. Along with that came a few tidbits about Johnson as an author, how he was seen to be pushing boundaries perhaps a bit too far and had a tendency to blow his top at the literary establishment. Suitably intrigued, I read The Unfortunates and Albert Angelo too, both of which were fantastic. But frustratingly, all I knew about Johnson was the surprisingly limited information available online. I am so glad to have read this biography because all that has now changed.

Coe boldly begins by promising a biographer unlike any typical one, in keeping with BSJ’s style intending to not conform with the usual form. This he delivers, with the “Life in 160 fragments” being the backbone of this book, giving an unparalleled and vivid insight into the life experiences that drove BSJ to be the kind of author he was and create the truly unique art that he did. Thanks to Coe’s unabridged research I now have a greater understanding of what made BSJ tick and how that underpins the novels I’ve come to love. It personally adore how BSJ engaged in so many different forms - plays, journalism, TV, cinema - but am conscious that the romanticism I apply to him was likely just a way to pay the bills. Overall, I thank this biography for converting my simplistic understanding of BSJ as a semi-unsuccessful novelist who was spiteful to the world because of this lack of success, into a much deeper appreciation of his life, his fruitful career. his hopes and loves, his struggles and his tragic death. Above all, Coe’s work has allowed me to realise I react so strongly to BSJ’s work because of his insurmountable exploration of the human condition.

[Aaron (Typographical Era) · Rating 5 out of 5]

(http://www.opinionless.com/goodreads-...)

“Like A Fiery Elephant” is the best biography ever written about the life of Bryan Stanley Johnson, but I immediately know what you’re thinking; who?

From the introduction, where Coe explains how he first encountered the work of B.S. Johnson and declares:

“It seems, nowadays, that literature is discussed more than ever before; but at the same time, it has never been less valued.”

to the chilling reveal in the closing chapter of the book titled “Coda,” Coe creates a vivid portrait of who Johnson was both as a novelist and a person.

For those unfamiliar with Johnson’s literary work, he was an experimental novelist and poet who drove his agents, editors, and publishing houses mad.

In his 1964 novel “Albert Angelo” Johnson insisted that holes be cut in the middle of several pages so that the reader could see forward to a future event. He also broke character and inserted his own voice near the book’s finale to rant and finally proclaim that “Telling stories is telling lies.” He then continued by tacking on an ending to the story because he knew that his readers would want some form of closure for what they’d invested time in reading.

His 1969 novel “The Unfortunates” was published as a book in a box in which each of the twenty-seven chapters was separately bound. The first chapter and the last chapter were clearly marked, but the other twenty-five were left to be read in any random order the reader saw fit.

Perhaps his most famous work, 1973’s “Christie-Malry’s Own Double-Entry” tells the tale of man who applies double-entry bookkeeping to his life, crediting himself against others’ perceived debits in more and more violent ways.

“Like A Fiery Elephant” is far from just a study of the works of B.S. Johnson though. It is a true biography of the man’s life from his early days and his separation from his family as a child through his adult years and his unfortunate suicide.

No one had ever been able to piece together the final forty-eight hours leading up to the end of Johnson’s life, but here Coe presents a compelling argument for what may have actually taken place.

Another mystery Coe gets to the bottom of his Johnson’s strange fascination with Robert Graves’ idea of the White Goddess and how Johnson applied this theory to himself and his craft.

Coe’s detective work and writing are both excellent. I went into the this book as an experiment only because it was written by one of my favorite authors figuring that at best it would be mildly interesting and at worst it would be boring, but I could check it off my list of things I’d read read that were written by Coe. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he paints a great picture of a larger than life man as seen through the eyes of those who knew him. He only inserts his own thoughts or comments when they are relevant or to clear up anything perceived as an inaccuracy.

Coe spent years putting this biography together and his passion for his subject clearly shows and has left a lasting impression on him. In the years following the completion of the biography Coe would weave pieces from Johnson’s real life into his own fictional work, most notably with “The Rain Before it Falls,” which I read before reading this biography and “The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim,” which I read after.

If you’re looking for a great, gripping biography, not just one that happens to be about an obscure British author, this is it.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a bit strange reading a biography of a writer whose work you have never read. In fact if it wasn't for Jonathan Coe being one of my favourite writers, I'd never even have heard of BSJ.

This is an intriguing biography, as unconventional as its subject. It took Coe years to write, and he became quite enmeshed in Johnson's strange life. He was an odd man. Staggeringly rude to publishers who failed to recognise his self-evident genius, he often started on projects only to have them rejected. As a working-class boy made not so good, he had a massive chip on his shoulder. Yet he was also fiercely loyal to his friends and they, likewise, were genuinely fond of him, despite his temper and unpredictability. He was a good father to his children. So he clearly had his good points, and Coe convincingly argues that his arrogance was a front for deep insecurity and self-doubt. While recognising the deep flaws in Johnson's argument that novelists can only write "the truth" -- i.e. things they have personally experienced -- he also acknowledges the strengths of Johnson's poetry and prose. There's also a marvellous piece of detective work at the end, where Coe digs up a possible narrative of Johnson's last 48 hours, before he committed suicide in his bath.

I'm not sure I'm going to read any BSJ -- although Christie Malry's Own Double Entry sounds intriguing. It is interesting to see some parallels with Jonathan Coe's novels though, notably the way he introduces himself into his narratives.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bryan Stanley Johnson did not write ordinary novels so it’s fitting that this is no ordinary biography. Jonathan Coe unfurls the life of BS Johnson through summaries of his work, extracts from the author’s novels, poems, articles and correspondence and selected interview statements from people close to our Bryan.Despite publishing seven novels the term “fiction” must be used with caution where Johnson is concerned. His mantra was “telling stories is telling lies” and his attempts to present the truth in his fiction became one of his obsessions. This seems a naive concept considering that stories are not objective and present selective information...

Full review here: http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com/2010/06...

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly, this biography was so good that I was gripped all the way through, even though Johnson wasn't that great a writer and didn't seem like a particularly nice man. It's his high ambitions and his failures to achieve them that are so touching and compelling, both as a writer and as a person. And that's Coe's focus - this isn't a hagiography, but a study of the goals that Johnson set himself and the extent to which he did or didn't achieve them.

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting style in biography, seemingly bridging the formal gap between literary criticism and literary biography, as well as rich in authorial interaction with the subject. Coe, however, seems to fall short in a few places, leaving much of Johnson's biography untouched, and much criticism of his works unrefined. The product is, as Johnson himself despised as a label for his work, experimental, albeit interesting.

[Denise E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The is literally the perfect book.

[Andy Tabeling · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty fascinating read. Probably the first literary biography read on my own volition, so some of the "how the sausage is made" parts where Coe sort of details how he works his magic are interesting but maybe even more so if you're used to the form.

The experiments, and they're obvious, are mostly a huge triumph. In a very Johnsonian "the substance dictates the form," Coe's use of Johnson's fiction to detail his actual life in the "fragments" section works absolutely beautifully. It makes you realize just how seriously Coe has thought about Johnson has a literary figure and just how seriously he takes Johnson's ideas about literature.

The only problem I had reading this one is probably a deeply personal one: I'm not sure I have much affection for Johnson as a think or a writer despite spending 450ish pages with his thoughts and actions. I am not particularly compelled to go out and read his fiction. If anything it's only proved to me that there's genuine danger in dogmatism and thinking theoretically before thinking about what it is what you want to say. For all the "substance dictates the form" that Johnson starts with, it feels like his attempts at invention and inspiration come from a position that he rigorously maintained but was probably always ultimately doubtful of. If anything I'm more curious to see his film work (gotta find Fat Man on a Beach ASAP), where it seems clear that he's more interested in simply creating and not thinking about film so much from a historicizing perspective. Benefit of the younger medium I guess.

I came to this very randomly (Nick Hornby writing about it in Polysyllabic Spree) and I'm really glad I did. Even though I can't say I gained much in terms of how I view the ultimate goals of fiction and the novel, I gained very much insight into the work of literary biography. Coe's end of this is, by and large, an extremely successful attempt at showing the possibilities, and crucially the limits, of what these books can do. There's a lot to be found here about living, and knowing others in the process. And if that's the takeway I'll ultimately have, I think it's a very very good one.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could pick threads with this,'biography' ...lets not. He depicts a monstrous man, who was apparently a teddy bear. John Berger hits the nail as does Gordon Williams, very few other contributors seem to get him, which speaks volumes as to the cod mystique motive involving his last moments..why did I feel Jonathon Cole didn't really get him...or did he?

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biography of a little known experimental novelist with a liking for football written by the brilliant Jonathan Coe, I particularly liked reading about Coe’s struggles with trying to understand his subject and the literary detective work that went into reaching a speculative conclusion.

[Alberto Galassi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solo J.Coe può trovare un modo tanto meraviglioso per raccontare la vita B.S. Jhonson romanziere britannico negli anni 60/70. Fù un'uomo davvero difficile e il suo tratto principale che salta fuori in questi frammenti è l'insicurezza, che lo rendeva ancora più spigoloso. Per lui "raccontare una storia equivaleva a raccontare una bugia" J. Coe in questo libro diventa il nostro investigatore che frammento dopo frammento ci fa scoprire la figura di BS Jhonson fino all'altimo frammento chiarificatore... che dire splendido!!!

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an impressive work in which you get immersed in the life of the idiosyncratic figure that was B.S. Johnson. But, at the same time it’s hard work (I can’t understand people who raced through it in a few days). Yet, it’s worth persevering through to the end because the last third is perhaps the best. On the back cover it is described as the literary equivalent of Paul McCartney writing about John Cale - I think that captures it perfectly.

[Eugene · Rating 3 out of 5]

didn't finish it. but it did make me think a bit about johnson and the life of an experimental novelist... and, like pound sd to williams: "you don't have to finish everything--don't tell people i said so."

skimmed though. and did check the index and read all the entries where beckett comes up. (he comes off rather well.)

one of the main conflicts in the book, introduced in full self-awareness in an early chapter, is coe's conflict, his torturedness even, about the traps and hypocrisies of writing a literary biography. as well, and this is simplifying it a bit, but it felt like coe was also conflicted about his own method and proclivities as a novelist and the more transgressive tradition that b.s. johnson represents. it's almost as if coe doesn't want to admit the avant-garde, when it succeeds, is the only game in town. (or maybe better said: the advanced guard, when it survives, gets farther into the interior.) he has a hard time reconciling this fact with the more regular enjoyments he gets out of traditional narratives. it's a real dilemma and somewhat enjoyable/educating/painful to watch it get worked out as he writes his book.

he has a nice digression, near the end, when he hesitates before writing about johnson's death. very human and sad and dignifying.

because of the bio i took another look at ALBERT ANGELO and i thought a few things... i think i remembered johnson as a major minor writer... but then, thinking about that categorization, i thought it a weasley and probably wrongheaded bureaucratic-minded ranking... or--if it stands--that i *like* major minors. something about their failures and/or their often slightly off but great ambitions... anyway, looking at albert angelo, i remembered what i liked about it: the idea of the artist-as-a-young-man, someone hopeful but uncertain how to see his daily humiliations--as stations of the cross or the amassing proof of his ultimate unworthiness. the contender slogging through his days. ...also, his portrayal of a school seemed, fifty years after and taking place in a foreign nation, very familiar to me.

(there's a nice review by kermode, in the london review of book, of the bio and johnson. in his review, kermode has a terrific digression about literary risk-takers like johnson: "Many have argued that a book’s defiance of contemporary opinion and convention is itself an index of virtue, that some element of ‘estrangement’ or ‘defamiliarisation’ is a preservative, and that too easy a compliance with accepted norms is bound to result in oblivion. Literary transgressiveness, often reflecting radical social and political opposition, can thus be taken as a justification for rescue work. It may be, as Roman Jakobson believed, that its virtue lies in its power to protect us from ‘automatisation, from the rust threatening our formulae of love and hatred, of revolt and renunciation, of faith and negation’. Since the transgressive has this value it will be worth much effort to recover lost examples of it.")

i love johnson for--this crystallized in the bio--his us versus them combative position. he called the majority of his contemporary novelists philistines for being mired in the techniques of the 19th century novel despite the examples of joyce and beckett. what can i say, even though this is kinduva schoolboy dichotomy of the barbarians and the keepers-of-the-flame, i sorta believe it. don't tell anyone i said so.

...also i love him for his typographical rapscallionisms. prolly my favorite one is: in HOUSE MOTHER NORMAL, which takes place in an old folks' home, he represents the senile with...blank pages! another, in albert angelo, he cut holes through several recto pages so a reader could, literally, see into the future. a human and very funny writer that b.s.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's very hard to think of a more accomplished biography than this one and much of that is down to Coe, who proves to be a sensitive narrator of Johnson's life and legacy.

On the basis of my reading of The Unfortunates and Christie Malry's Own Double Entry alone, the author's obscure reputation is indeed undeserved and it's heartening to know that the publication of Coe's study a few years back led to a reappraisal of the man's literary standing - even if, as my friend Grace McInnes remarks, "a shadow is cast" upon it by another man of almost equal corpulence: another "B. Johnson" - Boris.

As the book progresses however, one wishes one could summon the big man back to life to try and convince him to be less bitter - scores of letters to publishers proclaiming his own excellence and his living a life in perpetual indignation with those arouind him must have been trying in the extreme - both for him and others. Mind you, if you had been turned down for the position of Publishing Editor at Routledge and Kegan Paul, you might bear a grudge too.

[Kieran Telo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apart from passing references, and having vaguely heard of the novel published loose-leaf in a box, I knew nothing of B S Johnson before reading this absorbing and very moving biography. By the time the text ended, with the sadly inevitable denouement followed by the deeply affecting "44 voices" memorial section and the lost fragments at the very end, I felt that I had really come to know him. Johnson is captured in great detail, humanely but honestly, his faults and foibles and paranoia are not glossed over. I have to say that he reminded me uncomfortably of myself a lot of the time, so I empathised with him completely. Whether I will now go on to read some of his books I don't know, I think I will let them find me rather than the other way around. Jonathan Coe is a fantastic writer and this is a brilliant brilliant book. This my last

word

[Becky]

As a biography it's structurally interesting (as are many of Coe's novels), but I'm not into B.S. Johnson. His life seems kind of interesting, but his work? Sounds like an old-fashioned schoolboy over his head in trying to impress everyone with his wit. Old-fashioned as in bordering on Monty Python-esque indifference to racism and sexism (the political issues of his day?).

I guess what I was interested in with this biography were the contradictions between his perception of himself/his work and everyone else's view of him. I like reading about tortured artists, but that was not enough to get me to the end.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A literary biography of experimental British writer B.S. Johnson in which the author mimics some of Johnson’s stylistic tricks and fragmented writing in telling his subject’s story. Entertaining and informative.

[Gerry]

Strange man.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fittingly for the subject a biography written in a completely different format. Has prompted me to get hold of some of his work and read them properly.

[Stephen Bywater · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic biography which switched me onto B S Johnson. Thank you.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I nearly gave up on this, but persevered. It was reasonably interesting, although a very dense read.

[Grania · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jonathan Coe does love his miserable old existentialists.