B. S. Johnson
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For other persons of the same name, see Bryan Johnson (disambiguation).
B. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley Johnson) (5 February 1933 - 13 November 1973) 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 as an accountant. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, and with this knowledge, 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 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.
Contents |
[edit] Bibliography (novels)
- Travelling People (1963).
- Albert Angelo (1964).
- Trawl (1966).
- The Unfortunates (1969).
- House Mother Normal (1971).
- Christie Malry's Own Double Entry (1973).
- See the Old Lady Decently (1975).
[edit] Selected filmography
- You're Human Like the Rest of Them (1967).
- Paradigm (1969).
- Unfair (1970).
- Fat Man On A Beach (1973).
[edit] Biography
Jonathan Coe. (2004) Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson. Picador.
[edit] Academic Studies
Philip Tew. (2001) B. S. Johnson: A Critical Reading. Manchester University Press.
