Giles Gordon (ed.) — Beyond the Words: Eleven Writers in Search of a New Fiction [1975]

In 1975, at the fag end of the avant-garde in Britain, eleven writers went (had been) in search of a new fiction (for a long time prior). Alan Burns practised the cut-up method in a series of novels (and one collaboration with Burroughs), and dropped from fashion faster than David Bowie could pen ‘Let’s Dance’. His novel, Babel, is the one left in print. Scottish female experimenter (now there is a niche!) Elspeth Davie took a filmic approach to capturing the day-to-day absurdities of life, and never rears her head much in Scotland or in print. Stories have been collected by Canongate in The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books. Eva Figes produced a formidable oeuvre exploring female consciousnesses in a sombre and intelligent manner, although her flat and humourless narrative style has not endured (one novel, Nelly’s Version, is available). Giles Gordon wrote one nouveau roman-lite detective novel in the second person (the mediocre Girl With Red Hair) and edited this volume, damming up after the 1980s for a career as an agent. None of his fiction is in print. B.S. Johnson wrestled with form like no fat man before, leaving a respected legacy, and found himself in print as the future fumbles forward (with thanks to Jonathan Coe’s incredible bio Like a Fiery Elephant). Gabriel Josipovici wondered (and still wonders) what ever happened to modernism, and continues to sculpt innovations while shunning the self-referential modes that followed, his most recent novel Hotel Andromeda fresh from Carcanet. Robert Nye has proven the most prolific, penning fourteen poetry collections, nine novels (some in print), nine children’s books, and two story collections. The word ‘masterpiece’ has been attached to his 1990 novel The Life and Death of My Lord Gilles de Rais. David Plante strove to write out of faith and skirt the unpretentious. He succeeded and still no one calls. Ann Quin cut her life short after completing 20pp of The Unmapped Country, a brilliant fragment of what might have been her masterpiece, a mordant portrait of life in a mental hospital. All her novels are in print. Maggie Ross swapped fiction for the limelight, returning recently with an entirely un-new fiction, The Villa Rogue. And no collection of British experimental work could omit chronic trier Anthony Burgess, whose Joycean imitations M/F and Napoleon Symphony, despite their awfulness, find themselves on the shelves of prominent bookstores. In conclusion? The new fiction was not found. But that is no reason not to read these daring and neglected adventurers. 

Editions: 

Hardback, Hutchinson, 1975.

B.S. Johnson — Travelling People [1963]

And so, an almighty aposiopesis leapt from the page (Albert Angelo) in an all-caps fury, and a legend was born. The fiery elephant’s fiction debut is, like lesser-known Canadian novelist Chris Scott’s Bartleby, a comic homage to Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Rabelais. Unlike Chris Scott’s Pythonesque assault on taste and historical correctness, Johnson’s offering is a far milder picking—a likeable and autobiographical tale of his own exploits at a luxury Welsh resort, making use of light (by Johnsonian standards) experimental techniques, such as a screenplay, letters to a friend, metafictional interruptions, stream-of-thought, and the Sternean black page (preceded by his own innovation—waves engulfing the page to indicate the near-drowning of a character). The curious thing about this novel is that, in spite of Johnson’s steadfast refusal of the conventional, as with other items in his career, he wrestles with simple autobiographical material (comic scenes, romantic encounters), and must reinvent the wheel to tell a simple tale. In this novel, straight third-person narrative is the dominant mode, punctuated with the usual shruggish authorial interjections (which reached a mordant peak in the hilarious Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry), and yields the most interesting and insightful material from the Johnson pen. The novel was heavily championed by, among others, Johnson himself, who in writing the blurb made the assessment ‘it seems likely B.S. Johnson will develop into one of the most original writers this century’, and later attempted to quote Beckett without the master’s permission. The short oeuvre of this fightin’ writer (a 2010 study of his work by Nicolas Tredell is aptly titled Fighting Fictions) is blissful in its range and humour, from this pomo picaresque, to the loose leaf novel The Unfortunates, to the pitch-black ‘geriatric comedy’ House Mother Normal. Too intense and too sensitive for this uncaring world, Johnson ended his life, like his female counterpart Ann Quin, in a watery manner in 1973. I first read Johnson’s novel in hardback in 2011 one summer, holed up in Edinburgh’s National Library, reading for no other reason than the pleasure of discovering Johnson (a freedom my undemanding girlfriend at the time bestowed me), and read the paperback in 2015 for this book. This mirrors the original publication history: hardback in 1963, paperback in 1967. (Fascinating, no? No). Johnson’s refusal to have this reprinted means we will need to wait until 2038 before this is reissued.

Editions: 

Hardback, Constable, 1963. 

Paperback, Panther, 1967.

Bibliography: 

Novels: 

Travelling People, 1963, Constable. 

Albert Angelo, 1964, Constable.

Trawl, 1967, Secker & Warburg.

The Unfortunates, 1969, Secker & Warburg.

House Mother Normal, 1971, Collins.

Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry,1973, Viking.

See the Old Lady Decently, 1975, Hutchinson.

Short Fiction:

Statement Against Corpses, 1964,  Constable.

Aren’t You Rather Young to be Writing Your Memoirs?, 1973, Constable.