Christie Malry`s Own Double–Entry - Softcover

Johnson, B S

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811209547 ISBN 13: 9780811209540

Publisher: New Directions, 1986

Synopsis

Christie Malry's Own Double Entry A disaffected young man, Christie Malry, is a simple man who learns the principles of double-entry book-keeping while taking an evening class in accountancy and working in the local bank. He begins to apply these principles to his own life, revenging himself against society in an increasingly violent manner for perceived 'debits'. Debit: the unpleasantness of the bank manager is the first on an ev Full description

About this title

Review:

Beautifully constructed, funny and poignant, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry is regarded as B.S. Johnson's most humorous book but it is a dark, sly humour predicated on the distaste Johnson had for an oppressive post-war British society (an oppression he delineates brilliantly in The Unfortunates).

Christie is, we are told, a simple man, who works in a bank alongside, but excluded from, money. He moves from the bank to learn Double-Entry Bookkeeping in a firm called Tappers, where his disillusionment deepens leading to his Great Idea: he decides to use the principles of Double-Entry (an Aggravation column for offences caused to him, a Recompense column detailing his revenge) to settle his accounts with society.

Johnson (1933-1973), a forgotten hero of the British avant-garde of the 1960s and 70s (he committed suicide when he was not yet 40), wrote seven wonderful novels that echo Joyce and Beckett in their intelligence, inventiveness and genius for language. The books, full of the kind of typographical innovations so beloved of the concrete poets, have been largely ignored since Johnson killed himself but more than deserve to be looked at again; writers as skilled as Johnson are very few and far between indeed. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

‘Delightful to read, highly amusing, and clever’ Daily Telegraph

‘Johnson has undoubtedly written a masterpiece’ Auberon Waugh

‘The most accessible, exuberant and despairing of all his works’ John Lanchester

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0811209547
• ISBN 13: 9780811209540
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192