Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry [Paperback]

B.S. Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 2009

A disaffected young man, Christie Malry, is a simple man who learns the principles of double-entry book-keeping while taking an evening class in accountancy and working in the local bank. He begins to apply these principles to his own life, revenging himself against society in an increasingly violent manner for perceived 'debits'. Debit: the unpleasantness of the bank manager is the first on an ever-growing list; Credit: scratching the façade of the office block. All accounts are settled in the most alarming way.

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (April 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811209547
• ISBN-13: 978-0811209540
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #179,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An angry satire but not Johnson's best, June 22, 2001

By 

"scottish_lawyer" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (Paperback)

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).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best comic novel of all time, March 7, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (London, Britain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (Paperback)

I read Christie Malry's Own Double Entry when I was about 15 - I got it from the local library as it is generally out of print in the UK, a tribute to British library services in the 1970s and no tribute to British publishing at any time - and I had never, and still haven't ever, read anything like it. Its "experimental" qualities - distancing, irony, the extraordinary ending - descend from Laurence Sterne and all that but Johnson's tone - political, cynical and above all very funny - was all his own. Christie Malry should have been the first in a line of great novels instead of the last. With luck, Johnson fan and influencee Jonathan Coe's forthcoming biog and the reprint of The Unfortunates should see a mass reprint of Johnson's work that will overwhelm the cack-faced sludge of manky novels about people with trust funds pretending to be interesting in West London.

David Quantick, London March 6 1999

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hidden treasure, December 16, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Savannah, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (Paperback)

This is a small gem of a book by an underappreciated writer (1933-73). The short novel centers around a simple man who decides to live his life according to the principles of Double-Entry Bookkeeping, which he adapts in startling ways to settle his accounts with society. Johnson liked to experiment with fictional forms; here, as in his handful of other works, he plays games with the reader, mocking and fragmenting the traditional novel. That sort of thing can easily drop into post-modernist preciousness, but the book is redeemed by Johnson's mordant, unsparing wit. The book's back cover even includes praise from the notoriously exacting Samuel Beckett. I hope you'll agree with Sam and me that this is a wonderfully comic book.