Christie Malry's Own Double Entry by B.S. Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Novel Epigram

The author, B.S. Johnson:

"The novel should now try simply to be Funny, Brutalist, and Short."

"It does not seem to me possible to take this novel much further. I’m sorry."

Ain’t that the truth.

The Zany Prankster

This novel is Funny, Brutalist, and Short. (Only a little longer than this review actually.)

It takes a simple person, an industrious pilgrim, Christie Malry, and it tells you the truth about him, his place in the world and his progress through it.

Unlike most people, he doesn't necessarily like what he sees, so he does something about it, albeit with his author’s hands or the hands his author supplied him.

He is a prankster, a hoaxster, a subversive, a revolutionary, an urban guerilla, who despises the pious mouthings and hypocrisy of society and religion.

He establishes a personal ledger, containing debits and credits, representing injustices and offences (balanced by appropriate compensation), so he can call society and religion to account.

Notwithstanding the advice of his mother (a sceptic, if not an agnostic or atheist), the expectation is that the ledger will be consulted on the day of reckoning, and justice will be done. Though in the meantime, just in case, Christie does his own reconciliation or reckoning, and takes justice into his own author-supplied hands.

In a way, the novel becomes a piece of metafiction that enables the author, via his character, to rage against the machine.

However, for all the Biblical and Accounting framework, the novel is one of the most humorous and affectionate novels I have ever read.

It is the product of a genius, a metaphorical bomb-maker with a deceptively simple, but explosive message that baffles and mucks about with the establishment, while amusing us zany hipsters.

It is a tragedy that the author did not live to see its publication or to add to his legacy.

It is our duty to ensure that people who care learn of its existence, read it, laugh, love and think.

A Weighty and Inelegant Piece of Dialectic

This is what Christie’s mother has to say about the day of reckoning:

"We fondly believe that there is going to be a reckoning, a day upon which all injustices are evened out...but we are wrong…we shall die untidily…in a mess, most things unresolved, unreckoned, reflecting that it is all chaos.

"Even if we understand that all is chaos, the understanding itself represents a denial of chaos, and must therefore be an illusion."

To the extent that this is a caution against tolerating injustice in the hope of heavenly justice and redemption, it is the equivalent of the existentialist messages (for they are different) of Camus and Sartre, only it’s delivered in an almost offhand, wry, humorous way.

Love

Sexual love sustains Christie during his pilgrimage.

He started life as an idealistic boy who was very fond of his cat and was not afraid to tell his mother:

"I do love pussy."

At age 28, he meets the love of his life, and the two of them are perfectly happy (“well, this is fiction, is it not?")

Guys, has anyone ever said this to you:

"I don’t know why I love you so much…but I do, mystery man."

Has your girlfriend ever said to her mother in front of you:

"We must go now, Old Mum, Sunday’s the only day we have for a really long fuck."

And is this not true love:

"The Shrike loved Christie. Then Christie loved the Shrike. Then they both loved each other, on the carpet in front of her gas fire."



Good Name for a Band

DOOM DOOM and the Sugarboilers


Words I Hadn’t Encountered Before

Aleatoric
Brachyureate
Campaniform
Cryptorchid
Eirenicon
Exeleutherostomise
Fastigium
Helminthoid
Incunabula
Macaronic
Malicho
Nacreous
Retripotent
Sphacelated
Sufflamination
Trituration
Ungraith
Vermiferous
Vermifuge


Upon the Etymology of "Christie Malry"

DJ Ian:

Christie, I’d like to ask you about your names. First name: Christie, surname: Malry.

Christie Malry:

My parents gave them to me.

DJ Ian:

Your parents?

Christie Malry:

Yes, both of them, separately. Well, B.S. Johnson really. The author. He gave my first name to my mother, and she gave it to me. He gave my surname to my father, and he gave it to me.

DJ Ian:

OK, I was really thinking about the metaphorical significance of your first and last names.

Christie Malry:

What could be more significant than that they are my names?

DJ Ian:

Well, Christie might be derived from "Christ". And "Malry" might be derived from "mal", the French word for evil or bad or wrong. So your name might literally represent a war between good and evil? A heavenly dialectic between God and Devilry? Outside the institution of the Church. Diabolical as it might sound.

Christie Malry:

Don’t be ridiculous.

DJ Ian:

I don’t know why my producer exhumed you.

Christie Malry:

I am the body. I am the resurrection.

DJ Ian:

What?

Christie Malry:

I overcome evil with good.

DJ Ian:

Don’t be ridiculous. You’re mucking us about.

Christie Malry:

Is this interview finished? Can I go back to being dead now?


SOUNDTRACK

Stone Roses - "I am the Resurrection"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyrrTK...

REM - "So. Central Rain" (1st TV performance on 10-06-83)(from the album "Reckoning")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGiNVZ...




My Father

This novel reminded me of my father.

B.S. Johnson was born on 5 February, 1933, the same year as my father was born.

My father was an accountant in a bank. He wasn’t happy unless the ledgers balanced at the end of the day. A penny out was not good enough. Everybody stayed behind, until debit and credit matched. Only then could he go to the pub.

My father had a sense of humour, which I inherited. So did one of my brothers.

My father died when he was 55 and I was 30, 15 years after B.S. Johnson, so he didn’t get to laugh at all of my jokes. Only the early funny ones. Both of them.

Thanks, Dad. I did enjoy making you laugh for a few short years.


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