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Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson

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You may love BS Johnson, you may never have heard of him, but if you're interested in writing - how to write, why to write, what does it all mean? - this book is wonderful: interesting, enjoyable, thought-provoking, but most of all, somehow heartwarming, even though it is about a writer who killed himself.

In a way, this is the biography of BS Johnson that BSJ himself would have wanted (and then some). I'm not talking about the content particularly, although Johnson's life has been rigorously researched and then described in fascinating detail, but the tone and form of the biography. It holds a mirror up to what Johnson was trying to do with his own (mostly autobiographical) novels and reflects as much as it can back at you. Johnson had two strongly (passionately, belligerently) held beliefs about the novel. First was the idea that 'telling stories was telling lies' and he tried to make his writing as honest as possible (or did he? is there in fact as much artifice in the 'truth' he writes about as in any work of fiction?), writing mostly about himself and his experiences. He didn't believe in 'fiction' but he did believe in the 'novel' and his second strong belief was that James Joyce's Ulysess changed the novel so significantly that to act as if it had never happened was tantamount to treason, instead the novel must continue to evolve. An experimental writer (although Johnson himself disputed this term, claiming his experiments were just that and never submitted to publishers), his most common experiment was with form - using whatever form he felt best suited his material.

And that is exactly what Jonathan Coe has done. He grapples with the act of writing biography, how to get at 'the truth', how to write honestly about someone you never knew, and he freely admits when he's guessing or extrapolating. He talks personally about his experience of Johnson, as a teenager, a student, a biographer, a fan, but also as a successful novelist, standing in direct opposition to Johnson, not just because Coe is admired by the literary establishment but because he creates fantastic stories/'lies'(although is it just coincidence that Coe's novel The Rotters Club, written at the same time as this biography, is more strongly rooted in his own past than any before?). And then, having collected all his biographical evidence, Coe creates a narrative out of it by using whatever form works best to 'tell the story' - usually directly quoting from a friend, an irate letter of Johnson's, one of his poems, screenplays or novels. This is done most evocatively towards the end of the biography in one section that consists solely of recollections from friends and Johnson's widow.

BS Johnson himself, of course, is the only person who could ever reveal the real truth behind the truth, what really went on 'inside his skull', but Coe manages to reveal the heart of the man. While Johnson could dismiss Coe's tentative Coda suggesting what might have led up to his suicide, BSJ and the rest of us can only admire this honest, passionate, playful portrayal of a troubled, confused man, a single-minded writer, and writing itself.

The Washington Post reviewer betrays his own mindset when he allows that Johnson's ALBERT ANGELO to be "an impressive novel, though redolent of 60s experimentalism," in which the word "though" stands out like a red flag. What does he mean, "though"? Read the sentence without "though" and it would represent my point of view. Oh well to each his own. But I say, what's wrong with 60s experimentalism? You'd think it was a taint of some kind.

The truth is that Bryan Johnson, ill read and ill served by his publishers (though he couldn't have been easy to handle) is a far more interesting author than Jonathan Coe, no matter how many awards the latter has received. The whole project had a quixotic tilt for Coe, who seems to have regarded himself very reflexively, for of course he is constantly having to defend his own bourgeois conception of the novel against the avant-garde of Johnson and, say Beckett, and constantly he is shading his generally well thought out exegeses on Johnson's books (a few of which I have not read) by citing their inhuman, formalist coldness, a quality he abhors, a quality that he believes contributes to the "deadness" of experimental writing.

So it's a funny book in many ways, and yet I am grateful to Coe for writing it, for it establishes a context, no matter how skewed, by which he might form a coherent view of BS Johnson's life and times. And surely we owe him a huge debt of gratitude if only for spending eight years interviewing many souls (and many who have since passed on) who knew Johnson and who otherwise would have let their knowledge go quietly into the grave of experimentalism in England. It is a rich turf, nearly unknown, terra incognita and nearly untouched by biographers.

All in all, a splendid book, a book you can lose yourself in, and perfect for long winter nights

Jonathan Coe writes great novels, and here he triumphs in non-fiction with a biography of the avant-garde English novelist B.S. Johnson. Johnson's boundary-pushing experiments with the novel form are probably more interesting to read about than to read themselves, but even without this assist Coe excels in a fascinating biography. Winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize in Non-fiction.

This biographer wrote about a man whom 99% of readers have never read his books. And he does it well. Johnson wanted to push into the future and not repeat the linear exposition of novels that remain popular today. Johnson was a literary artist, not a bestselling author. Coe recognizes this and should be acclaimed for the honest and careful style he uses as a biographer to explain Johnson and his work. Johnson influences many writers today who seek the leading edge.