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Christie-Malry's Own Double-Entry
by
B.S. Johnson
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 eve...more
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
October 1st 1985
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
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I've hit upon a lucky string of pretty excellent books lately, and this is another.
Detailing the life of a petty clerk who begins to tally his accounts with society -- debits incurred by an assortment of modern inconveniences, frustrations, and injustices against his credits, beginning with minor vandalisms and quickly escalating -- this reads like a kind of darker Calvino, seemingly light-handed amusing post-modernism eliding into something much more cynical. As others have observed...more
Detailing the life of a petty clerk who begins to tally his accounts with society -- debits incurred by an assortment of modern inconveniences, frustrations, and injustices against his credits, beginning with minor vandalisms and quickly escalating -- this reads like a kind of darker Calvino, seemingly light-handed amusing post-modernism eliding into something much more cynical. As others have observed...more
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Extremely clever rendition of a bored accounts clerk who decides to square it with fate with his very own double entry ‘reckoning’ by going ‘postal worker’ : debit Christie Malry, credit the body count. The ratio seems to work out roughly to several hundred corpses for every time his boss shouts at him. Which is not to say that he’s got double entry right here: what I’ve retained from accountancy 101 makes me cringe at this blatant misuse of credit and debit (done deliberately I believe, as Jo...more
Ok,i break my rules again. I was just posting a Bill Bryson's book on the App. Trail, and I though to myself, how rare to find a book that made me laugh out load, no chortle no quiet guffaw or an internal "that is funny, " but a really laugh out loud and proud like a Nazareth record (70's band.. look it up).
there a few. and this one, comes immediately to mind, so i figure I should add this now even though i read a while ago.. but I am sure will re-read again.
plus BS JOhnso...more
there a few. and this one, comes immediately to mind, so i figure I should add this now even though i read a while ago.. but I am sure will re-read again.
plus BS JOhnso...more
Nominally about some simpleminded clerk in dreariest Hammersmith who takes the soothing certainty of the double-entry method and applies it to the unsettling complexities he encounters inside and outside of the workplace. The narrative includes a number of double-entry sheets with debits and credits assigned to various injuries Malry suffers and the actions he takes to compensate for them- a few hundred in the debit column for the fact that socialism hasn't been given a chance, and a few hundred...more
Whereas ‘The Unfortunates’ was wonderful for its stream of consciousness honesty, this book is possibly the most arch and knowing thing I’ve ever read. What they both share, however, is Johnson’s challenge to the traditional form of the novel. In The Unfortunates, this is achieved brilliantly by a collection of sections that can be read in any order. Consciousness doesn’t have a beginning, middle or end; it just is, and I found the tone of TU enthralling. In this, the narrating voice frequen...more
I first read this novel about four years ago and was blown away by it. The story of a young man who applies the principles of Double Entry Bookkeeping to the moral questions of everyday life -- as I'm convinced many of us do -- seemed profound, funny and tragic all at the same time. Almost immediately *Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry* became one of my all-time favourite novels, certainly somewhere in my top 10 best-ever fiction reads.
After this recent re-reading it still holds its ...more
After this recent re-reading it still holds its ...more
This touching and despairing and hilarious and beautiful book demands to be read NOW. B.S. Johnson was painfully aware of the artifice of the novel, fed-up of conventional narrative styles and the failings of the novel as an art form. In a sense he was an anti-novelist, his utterly contrary approach making him one of the most original novelists of his generation.
This book, for those morbid enquirers, can be read as Johnson's suicide note. Despite its cynical, dismissive view of human...more
This book, for those morbid enquirers, can be read as Johnson's suicide note. Despite its cynical, dismissive view of human...more
This book is very interesting indeed.
Johnson was writing at a time when much of the literati were bemoaning the death of the novel. The introduction tells us that Johnson, in many ways, agreed. If all you wanted to do was tell a story then film or television was a better medium. The saving grace of the novel was it's ability to delve into internal states. All very true.
Yet here's a book that's packed with plot. It fizzes along, casually throwing around some very big ide...more
Johnson was writing at a time when much of the literati were bemoaning the death of the novel. The introduction tells us that Johnson, in many ways, agreed. If all you wanted to do was tell a story then film or television was a better medium. The saving grace of the novel was it's ability to delve into internal states. All very true.
Yet here's a book that's packed with plot. It fizzes along, casually throwing around some very big ide...more
Mike Puma
rated it
This novel’s humorous tone and the author’s suicide will put some readers in mind of John Kennedy Toole and his A Confederacy of Dunces. The protagonists of both novels share a general loathing of their circumstances and the people around them. CMOD-e is, however, much more fun and funnier. Johnson’s metafictional account of Christie Malry’s attempt to balance his life’s accounts is, at first, easy to identify with and creates in the reader a sympathetic reflection.
At one point the intrusive au
...more
B.S. Johnson was unique in terms of his approach to the novel. There is a constant pulling back of the curtain here to reveal the author, like the Wizzard of Oz, pulling all the leavers and simply making all of this up. Why is Christie the way he is ? What does it matter? Why do you want to know back story, it'll only mean I have to make it up and my intention is to keep this novel short.
It is the equivalent of that moment in TV Land when the person turns, walks up to the camera a...more
It is the equivalent of that moment in TV Land when the person turns, walks up to the camera a...more
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B.S. Johnson is someone I had never read before, but had been on my radar to read for quite sometime. I think at some point I read that DFW really liked him, and then a few years ago Jonathan Coe wrote a very interesting looking biography on him. I don't know what took me so long to finally try to read him, his books that are still in print aren't too big, this one is only about two hundred pages, and a lot of those pages are filled with lots of white space. Yes his books are kind of expensive, ...more
It's rather amusing, this self-conscious novelette, exposing the fault-lines and prejudices of the novel. Indeed, "Why spend all your spare time for a month reading a thousand-page novel when you can have a comparable aesthetic experience in the the theatre or cinema in only one evening?
I truly like the gratuitous sex scenes, which are tiny pornographic morsels. I always find those who say a certain sex scene is well described as faintly ridiculous as if sex needs to be elevated...more
I truly like the gratuitous sex scenes, which are tiny pornographic morsels. I always find those who say a certain sex scene is well described as faintly ridiculous as if sex needs to be elevated...more
It's quite amazing to ponder, and also hugely regrettable, that this is the only book I am aware of that weds the principles of double entry book-keeping to literature. A playful, cheeky book that sees a minor personal comment as justifiable reason to commit murder out of revenge - a brilliant introduction to the work of this criminally under rated writer.
A short, caustic and brilliant black comedy with an amoral, crazed but strangely charming protagonist. In its especially good evocation of the vacuous nature of modern working life, and its faux-naive style, it prefigures Magnus Mills, among others.
another book I forgot to review. this is fantastic. B.s johnson killed himself because he was angry that he wasn't more famous, if that isn't a reason to read it nothing is.
What a great way to start the new year. I don't think walking on the street will be quite the same in 2012 as it was in 2011, before I read this book.
To paraphrase Johnson' own description: short and brutal. A very self-aware novella, & my first exposure to Johnson. Clever, occasionally funny, but mostly dark and bitter -- engagingly so. My sense (limited as it is) is that this is a fairly successful lesser work from this author. Looking forward to talking THE UNFORTUNATES.
A po-mo, as the post-modernists so post-modernly like to call them. This one has the virtue of being short, clever, and funny. But as--in the author's words--"a continuous dialogue with form," there's nothing here that hadn't already been done--and far more amusingly--by Laurence Sterne. So if you haven't yet read "Tristram Shandy"... well, then you're not likely to be reading a review of any of B.S. Johnson's works.
What I learned: some neato words... exeleutheros...more
What I learned: some neato words... exeleutheros...more
This was a terrifically fun book, puncturing convention and poking fun at itself throughout. Quite brilliant.
Mindelei
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Mindelei by:
Dr. Stephen Burn
Shelves:
british-fiction,
meta-fiction
B.S. Johnson is interested in what he terms "the technological fact of the book". He acknowledges that television and cinema are better at telling stories than the novel and that the novel must find it's own niche.
This is a great piece of meta-fiction! Johnson creates superb frame-breaking between the Christie and the narrator/author and also includes conversation that's aimed at the reader from the narrator.
If you've seen the movie, don't let it cloud your ...more
This is a great piece of meta-fiction! Johnson creates superb frame-breaking between the Christie and the narrator/author and also includes conversation that's aimed at the reader from the narrator.
If you've seen the movie, don't let it cloud your ...more
Loved it. His unique style and the weirdness really worked for me.
My new favourite book!
Kevin
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
accountants, outsiders, office temps
Shelves:
fiction,
experimental
I was expecting this to be experimental in a difficult way, but it was surprisingly fast-paced and funny. I can see why people might say it's his most "accessible" work. There were moments toward the end when I wish the author's voice didn't stray into a critic's voice, but overall I liked the whole concept of moral accounting and how it's used to create a narrative structure. It seems the rest of my book club hated it.
what a weird, silly book.
First published in the early 1970s (I think), this experimental novel is about a man who tries to “credit” himself somehow each time the world “debits” him, in the form of some sort of offense. Playing with the conventions of fiction in all kinds of overt and subtle ways, this book is hilarious on several levels.
Funny, quirky, and very experimental for its time. B.S. Johnson knows how to use metafiction.
A quirky book about the quiet one in an office. B.S. Johnson is a British cult writer who has a rather dry sense of humor (or humour) and this book is funny. It has almost a Goons sense of adventure/funny ha-ha, but it actually has serious overtones.
The experimental aspect of the novel can be border-line pretentious, but the humor saves it from that dreaded area. I will locate more of Johnson's writings/books!
The experimental aspect of the novel can be border-line pretentious, but the humor saves it from that dreaded area. I will locate more of Johnson's writings/books!
The best literary attack on late capitalism I've ever read.
This book is just the best.
At the risk of sounding like a terrible human being I absolutely lost it at the mother's funeral scene with the goats. Read the book and you'll know what I mean!
Going to try and get a Kindle version so I can look up all the 5 dollar words and beef olives. Wow beef olives are a real thing and they look disgusting.
Double Entry accounting + Revenge. How could this not be good.
At the risk of sounding like a terrible human being I absolutely lost it at the mother's funeral scene with the goats. Read the book and you'll know what I mean!
Going to try and get a Kindle version so I can look up all the 5 dollar words and beef olives. Wow beef olives are a real thing and they look disgusting.
Double Entry accounting + Revenge. How could this not be good.
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B. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley Johnson) was an English experimental novelist, poet, literary critic and film-maker.
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's...more
More about B.S. Johnson...
Johnson was born into a working class family, was evacuated from London during World War II and left school at sixteen to work variously as an accounting clerk, bank junior and clerk at Standard Oil Company. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, attended a year's...more
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