Research Interests - Ryan Rushton
B. S. JOHNSON (1933-1973) has been described by Jonathan Coe as 'Britain's one-man literary avant-garde of the 1960's.' Somewhat relegated to obscurity since his suicide at the age of forty, Johnson has enjoyed a recent mini-revival largely spearheaded by Coe's acclaimed literary biography
Like A Fiery Elephant (2004). This is not to say he was ever at the forefront of the British literary scene. Writing during the sixties his work seemed drastically out of place, some claimed anachronistic amongst the socio-realist novels which dominated the period. Johnson often cited Nathalie Sarraute's analogy of literature as a relay race in which the baton of experience is passed from one generation to the next. In his opinion his contemporaries had 'stood still, dropped the baton or not even realized that there is a race.' He, on the other hand, would continue and evolve the work of the modernists, which he argued was far from complete. This is why we have a writer who in every act is committed to questioning the very form he is working within. His novels work as thoroughgoing metafictional discourses, invested with a multitude of experiments ranging from the minute to the grand that relentlessly draw attention to the process and effectiveness of writing.
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