Johnson was largely unknown to the wider reading public at the time of his death, but has a growing cult following. In a sense he was an anti-novelist, his utterly contrary approach making him one of the most original novelists of his generation.

You are allowed complete freedom in the matter of warts and moles; as long as he has at least one of either. Not only is Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry a cutting satire that is self-aware, but Johnson is deliberately pushing the boundaries of what a novel can be. However, for all the Biblical and Accounting framework, the novel is one of the most humorous and affectionate novels I have ever read. In addition, Leonardo da Vinci is employed there, and these scenes also follow his struggles as he challenges what he sees as interference into his artistic vision from the Catholic Church, against a backdrop of an imminent invasion by the French army. After he graduated with a 2:2, Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels.

And, I thought, most depressingly, how often are we – you and I – are culpable of falling into such capito-nihilistic logic, like the novel’s namesake? Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition. This is a signed and inscribed (to the poet and editor Nikos Stangos) first edition, published by Collins, London, in 1973, and is in Fine condition. After a few months of this menial occupation, something better comes along, namely an accountancy position at the firm of Tapper’s, which manufacture cakes and sweets.

Double Entry” to my queue (and not only because of the career I appear to have fallen into over the past 2 decades . It seems to me far more than educational access that resulted in a monk formalising the system of double-entry. It is playful, anarchic, has some ghastly puns, rude moments and it challenges the boundaries of fiction. Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) is the penultimate novel by the late British avant-garde novelist B.He takes up with a sexually eager young woman – think vacuum cleaners and shaving foam – known only as the Shrike. Despite starting his career with aspirations of financial success, Malry soon get bogged down in Reggie-Perrin like frustrations about the injustices of life (the atmosphere was acrid with frustration, boredom and jealousy, black with acrimony, pettiness and bureaucracy), and invents his own form of double-entry bookkeeping with debits for the petty aggravations in life, and credits as he gets his own back on the world with, initially, relatively petty retaliations. Indeed, much of the humour of the novel is dependent on Johnson’s ability to seamlessly intersperse the text with clauses, sentences and sections that break down the text’s artifice. Down with the system, burn everything down, out with the old—our spleen gets a vicarious outlet identifying with Christie Malry. In what was perhaps an attempt to spur the story on as well as to more accurately describe the sensations and the sickness of sea travel, Johnson spent three weeks aboard the Northern Jewel on its voyage up to the Barents Sea.

Johnson was painfully aware of the artifice of the novel, fed-up of conventional narrative styles and the failings of the novel as an art form. At the age of 40, increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide.Very good cloth copy in a good if somewhat edge-torn and dust-dulled dust wrapper, now mylar-sleeved. As an accountant he keeps a double entry accounting record of where he has been slighted and plans to obtain appropriate credit for these debits.

As mentioned in other reviews, this is an experimental novel that combines wicked doses of dark humor with many different, and hilarious, nods to the fact that this is a novel. The film largely follows the same storyline as the novel though there are a number of differences, with the biggest one being that the novel ends abruptly when Christie is diagnosed with late-stage terminal cancer and dies of related pneumonia, whereas in the film he is killed when a bomb he is taking to detonate at the Houses of Parliament goes off unexpectedly, exploding as he carries it on a bus across Westminster Bridge and killing him, with the bombing being attributed to the IRA.Abstracted so, these experimental passages could appear heavy handed and trite, but you will have to trust me (don’t forget you are reading this, an exercise which demands a good dose of T) or find out for yourself that Johnson ensures you don’t turn your lip or sigh over the page in response. It was an enjoyable read but I did feel that the concept overshadowed both the story and inner message. If one thought that experimental fiction (although Johnson hated the term) was boring or unreadable, think again. He then starts a job at Tapper's chocolate factory, where he meets Headlam, an eccentric co-worker whom he becomes friends with, and shortly afterwards hits upon the idea of using double-entry bookkeeping as a method of recording perceived wrongs made against him by society then cancelling them out by committing what he deems to be equivalent acts of revenge. Let us, though, for the time being at least, like the good humans we are, focus on that other god: capitalism.