one pages per person. Thus you see I too am the
puppet or concoction of a writer (you always knew
there was a writer behind it all? Ah, there’s
no fooling you readers!), a writer who has me at
present standing in the post-orgasmic nude but
who still expects me to be his words without
embarrassment or personal comfort. So
you see this is from his skull. It is a diagram
of certain aspects of the inside of his skull!
What a laugh!
Still, I’ll finish off for him, about the sadness,
the need to go farther better to appreciate the
nearer, what you have now: if you are not like
our friends, friend, laugh now, prepare, accept,
worse times are a-coming, nothing is more sure.
But here’s something he found in the Montgomeryshire
Collections and thought you might like to have
for yourself, friend:
F for Francis
I for Chances
N for Nicholas
I for Tickle us
S for Sammy the
Salt Box
About the Author
B. S. Johnson was born in 1933 at Hammersmith and (apart from the war, during which he was an evacuee) lived in London most of his life. He read English at King’s College, London, and was married with two children. His other novels include Travelling People, which won the Gregory Award for 1962, Alberi Angelo (1964), Trawl, which won the Somerset Maugham Award for 1967, The Unfortunates (1969), Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry (1973), and See the Old Lady Decently Buried (1975), published posthumously. He also published two volumes of poetry, Statement Against Corpses (short stories with the Pakistani poet Zulfikar Ghose, 1964), Street Children (text for photographs by Julia Trevelyan Oman, 1964), and a volume of nonfictional pieces (Aren’t You Rather Young To Be Writing Your Memoirs?, 1973), and edited The Evacuees (1968). He was Poetry Editor of Transatlantic Review and in 1970 was appointed the first Gregynog Arts Fellow in the University of Wales. He also worked as a film and television director, and his You’re Human Like the Rest of Them won the Grand Prix at two International Short Film Festivals in 1968. His play B. S. Johnson v. God was staged at the Basement Theatre in 1971. His work received great critical acclaim: of his novel House Mother Normal, The Times of London said “the most accomplished tour de force so far from a writer who has always rejected the Dickensian limitations of the novel,” and Gavin Ewart described it as “a remarkable book, original and extremely well written.” He died in 1973.
Copyright © 1971, 2016 by B. S. Johnson
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be produced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1971
First published clothbound and as New Directions Paperbook 617 in 1986 and reissued in 2016 as New Directions Paperbook 1349 (isbn 978-0-8112-2214-3)
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
eISBN: 9780811225854
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
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