The Unfortunates
B. S. Johnson
(Author)
Jonathan Coe
(Introduction by)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
B.S. Johnson's lost classic has been showered with praise: New York Magazine named The Unfortunates one of their Ten Best Books of 2008, listed in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2008, and The Los Angeles Times declared it to be "his most daring work."A legendary 1960s experiment in form, The Unfortunates is B. S. Johnson's famous "book in a box," in which the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in any order the reader chooses. A sportswriter, sent to a Midlands town on a weekly assignment, finds himself confronted by ghosts from the past when he disembarks at the train station. Memories of one of his best, most trusted friends, a tragically young victim of cancer, begin to flood through his mind as he attempts to go about the routine business of reporting a soccer match.
The Unfortunates is a book of passionate honesty and dark, courageous humor: a meditation on death and a celebration of friendship which also offers a remarkably frank self-portrait of its author.
Product Details
Price
$26.95
$25.06
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
November 17, 2009
Pages
176
Dimensions
5.34 X 1.15 X 7.81 inches | 0.86 pounds
Language
English
Type
Boxed Set
EAN/UPC
9780811217439
BISAC Categories:
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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.
Jonathan Coe is a journalist who writes for the Guardian and the London Review of Books. He is the author of a biography of Humphrey Bogart and three novels.
Reviews
A most gifted author.--Samuel Beckett
Far from some modernist stunt, the form of the book dovetails beautifully with Johnson's subject-the accidental yet persistent nature of memory....This book, with no belief in God, no hope of heaven, makes you feel the stuff of life as sacred, and our inability to hold on to it as damnation enough for anyone to be made to bear.--Charles Taylor
You'll fall in love.--Sam Anderson ""Top Ten Books of 2008" "
Far from some modernist stunt, the form of the book dovetails beautifully with Johnson's subject-the accidental yet persistent nature of memory....This book, with no belief in God, no hope of heaven, makes you feel the stuff of life as sacred, and our inability to hold on to it as damnation enough for anyone to be made to bear.--Charles Taylor
You'll fall in love.--Sam Anderson ""Top Ten Books of 2008" "
