Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B. S. Johnson Review

Christie Malry, a young accountant, decides to apply the method of double-entry bookkeeping to his own life - if the world wrongs him, he will debit it and credit himself; that is, allow himself some form of revenge to “balance the books”. Except Christie begins to lose perspective over the value of the wrongs done to him and his reactions become more extreme and darker very quickly.

BS (Bryan Stanley) Johnson was a 20th century British novelist known for his experimental approach to fiction. One of his books had holes in it so readers could see things happening pages ahead before reaching them. Another of his books came unbound with the idea of the reader choosing the sequence of pages themselves.

Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry, Johnson’s last novel to be published in his lifetime, is, I’m told, his most accessible. And while it is that, I can see why he was and remains an obscure literary figure - this isn’t the most compelling of reads.

The story of Christie’s rather dull life working in one dreary company after another, having an unremarkable relationship with a girl known only as “The Shrike”, and the rushed, comedic terrorist actions he enacts towards the end don’t make for an exciting narrative and my attention often wandered.

What kept me engaged was the playfulness with form that Johnson scatters throughout. He frequently breaks the fourth wall, addressing the reader as himself, talking directly to the characters - who also seem to be aware that they are characters in a novel - and the meta-angle feels very modern (the book was first published in 1973).

Johnson also randomly inserts esoteric vocabulary for no other reason than for literary colour which was amusing to see. From a single paragraph on page 42 alone: trituration (to reduce to a fine powder through grinding), helminthoid (wormlike), cryptorchid (undescended testicle), and eirenicon (peaceful).

The bleak and destructive finale seems to foreshadow the author’s fate - at just 40 years old, Johnson would take his own life shortly after this novel’s publication, depressed about his lack of commercial success, as well as other problems in his life. More sadly, he never really found fame in the following 50 years, despite believing he would* (unlike, say, John Kennedy Toole would after doing the same thing).

Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry isn’t a good novel - the story and characters are no great shakes, and, despite playing with form, Johnson’s not doing anything in this book that’s especially standout, and the novel as a whole feels very unimpressive. I enjoyed the moments of unpredictable, imaginative flourishes dotted sporadically throughout, but it’s not hard to see why BS Johnson was, and remains, a minor/basically unknown writer with limited appeal.

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*I wonder if that’s why Terry Pratchett named his Discworld character Bloody Stupid Johnson in reference to this author, as a comment on the stupidity of offing oneself? Perhaps he just wasn’t a fan of Johnson’s avant-garde novels.