Albert Angelo – A Novel - Softcover

Johnson, B.s.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811210030 ISBN 13: 9780811210034

Publisher: New Directions, 1987

Synopsis

Why don't you take a permanent job, Albert? You're twenty-eight now, you know," his mother remarks when he goes on his weekend duty visit home. Albert Angelo is by vocation an architect and only by economic necessity working as a substitute teacher. He had thought he was, if not dedicated, at least competent. But now, on temporary assignments in schools located in the tough neighborhoods of London, Albert feels ineffectual. He is failing as a teacher and failing to fulfill himself as an architect. And then, too, he is pained by the memory of a failed love affair. "I'm trying to say something not tell a story telling stories is telling lies and I want to tell the truth," Johnson insists in the penultimate section of the book when his authorial voice intervenes. Or, as Johan Thielman writes in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, "Johnson is trying to use fiction to reproduce life as closely as possible and, in his inevitable failure to succeed, he extends our notion of the possibilities of the novel...he made a body of work which remains fascinating, not in the least because he achieved one of his main ambitions: to be totally honest...His novels are the moving traces of a passionate devotion to and pursuit of his truth."

About this title

About the Author

B. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley Johnson) (1933-1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet, literary critic and filmmaker. He 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 Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry was released in 2000. Increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide.

From the Back Cover

An exhilarating, disturbing, and very unconventional book, 'Albert Angelo.'

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811210030
• ISBN 13: 9780811210034
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180