Thoughts on Jonathan Coe's biography of B.S. Johnson

I have of late been wasting my sweetness on the desert air of the literary blogs. (Chiefly the Guardian Books' blog, and the New York Times' Papercuts blog.) Bad habit, must stop.

But, meanwhile, I'll occasionally copy some of those offsite, lit-blog comments into the blog here, and link to the full conversations, for anyone who's interested in reading further, or joining in.

Here's a Guardian chat from yesterday about the (dead, English, experimental) novelist B.S. Johnson... (The chap in the picture, above.)

 My thought on the subject was this:

I've praised Jonathan Coe's biography of B.S. Johnson before, but sure I'll go wild altogether, risk pulling my praising muscle, and praise it again.

As entertainment, as literature, Like A Fiery Elephant beats the shite out of most recent novels. First, it's better written. Second, even though as a biography it's blushingly wedded to the naked truth, Like A Fiery Elephant is far more inventive than most novels. A novelist's biography in both senses (biography of a novelist, biography by a novelist), it creatively rejigs the clichés of the form.

It's grippingly honest, too. While doing a far better job than most biographies, it never stops questioning itself and the entire idea of biography. It makes writing a dead man's life seem like a lively and a dangerous thing to do. There is an urgency to some chapters that gives it some of the tense virtues of a thriller, especially towards the end, when time is running out for Johnson. An ambitious English novelist is trying to understand why an ambitious English novelist killed himself...

Empathy, which is the key virtue of any novelist anyhow, is devastatingly well deployed here.

I'm wary of overpraising B.S. Johnson, because he had flaws the size of China, and his idea of the novel was so restrictive it may have strangled him. But he also had virtues as big as his tummy, and that was some tummy. If you haven't sampled his wares, first read Christie Malry's Own Double Entry. Then read Coe's biography, and explore from there.

And, yes, I do own a copy of The Unfortunates, dozens of bits in a box. What a lovely object it is, too. Wish that had become a standard format. All short story collections where the order isn't important should be published like that. You could bring one or two stories with you on a journey, or down to the beach, and not have to carry the whole book. You could throw away the ones you didn't like.

-Julian Gough

 To which the poet Billy Mills very sensibly replied, "You could end up with a nice collection of empty boxes that way."

 (Mark Hooper's original piece, "Let's Have A B.S. Johnson Day", and the subsequent conversation, are here.)