Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139714 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-25
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

Synopsis
Christie Malry is a simple person. Born into a family without money, he realised early along in the game that the best way to come by money was to place himself next to it. So he took a job as a very junior bank clerk in a very stuffy bank. It was at the bank that Christie discovered the principles of double-entry book keeping, from which he evolved his Great Idea. For every offence Christy henceforth received at the hands of a society with which he was clearly out of step, a debit must be noted; after which, society would have to be paid back appropriately, so that the paper credit would accrue to Christy's account. Now made into a film starring Nick Moran of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame. Acerbic yet funny, this is a novel which, even as it provokes laughter, will alarm and disturb as well. 'A most gifted writer' - Samuel Beckett. 'The future of the novel depends on people like B.S. Johnson' - Anthony Burgess. 'Mr. Johnson has undoubtedly written a masterpiece.' - Auberon Waugh. 'Delightful to read, highly amusing, and clever.' - "Daily Telegraph."

Customer Reviews

angry satire but by no means Johnson's best
BS Johnson is one of those experimental writers, controversial during their lives that subsequently vanishes from print. Johnson was a journalist, a socialist, and a fine novelist. Best known for The Unfortunates (his book in a box where every chapter is separately bound and the reader is invited to read them in any order he or she wishes), Christie Malry's Own Double Entry is perhaps his most accessible novel.

However, this "accessibility" is in the midst of a studiedly experimental text. This is a corruscating satire in which Johnson targets one of the symbols of capitalism, the double entry system. The very basis of accountancy, and the manipulation of finance, Johnson turns this building block on its head as his central character, Christie Malry, a young man with a future, decides that he will live his life accoridng to the principles of double entry.

Johnson's novel has acute observations on a variety of issues in British life that still merit comment. How working class people come to vote conservative, the manner in which people's worth is measured financially; and all of this is in the midst of an angry satire where Malry wreaks vengeance on the system. It is a bitter cycnical novel, with a dark wit.

There is love, sex, and death; and an unusual use for shaving foam. And all of this is presented in a slightly distant way, where Johnson continually turns to the reader and winks, letting you know this is a novel. Characters are aware of their place in fiction, and Johnson deconstructs the novel to let you see how it works.

This description may be off putting, but this is classy fiction. It is funny, and angry. I enjoyed this work, but preferred Johnson's The Unfortunates; which I feel has more depth, and more humanity.

If you enjoyed this you may like Graham Greene's Dr Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party or Michael Dibdin's Dirty Tricks (a Thatcherite satire).

Transporting brilliance.
This book is one of the funniest and most moving I have ever read. It's easy-peasy to read, highly entertaining and fantastically clever. The biographical notes on the Author are also very moving, and kind of make you want to shake your fist at the sky - no earthly justice if a person this talented could be so miserable.
Absolutely transporting.
Ironically it looks like 2002 will be B.S. Johnson's year, with lots of re-prints and attention - SKILL!

Chris Packet, Derby.

Darkly funny classic that deserve more exposure.
It is slightly ironic that, for an author who thought that the novel as a form of story telling had been superceded by film and TV but that books allowed the writer to enter into a characters mind more, that this inventive book is soon to find its way onto the screen. This is still not so surprising as some of the "gimmicks" employed in this book have been used in the cinema for decades e.g the constant reminding to the audience that this is merely a work of fiction like when Christie is stopped by a policeman before being allowed to go on and Johnson then writes that he had ben told to put such instances in for suspense. This can be traced back to many Hollywood films of the 40s when in-jokes were de rigeuer. For all that this still remains a highly amusing and bitter novel which certainly deserves the exposure a film may give it.