341- ] English Literature
B. S. Johnson
‘Like a
Fiery Elephant’ is a magnificent, wonderfully complex beast. This is a novelist
writing about a novelist who thought writing novels could save him but didn’t
and the novelist wants to know why and, by the end, so do we.
‘Like a Fiery Elephant’
is Jonathan Coe’s incredible biography of British poet, author, playwright,
reporter and filmmaker Bryan Stanley (B.S.) Johnson, someone once described as
England’s “one man avant-garde”. Obsessively innovative, inventive and
determined to tell the truth at all costs, in his brief career he left behind a
varied, and fascinating, body of work until his untimely death by suicide at
the age of 40.
I was actually concerned
about reading ‘Like a Fiery Elephant’ as what drew me to Johnson — his
fascination with death, honesty, an allergic reaction to ‘plot’ and “what
happens next”, the curiosity of form and embrace of chaos and the pathological
urge for full disclosure — are all subjects and stances that resonate and
appeal to me. But there’s only so much stark nihilism I can take and was
worried this book might illicit unwanted “dark ruminations”. Eek!
Fortunately Coe’s book is
so relentlessly fascinating, and Johnson’s observations about death so savagely
funny, that “morbid” is the last word you’d use to describe this biography
(well, most of the time). It is also more, much more, than the life story of a
writer: it is an examination of the perils of the creative act, the art and
process of writing and the limitations of literature as well as an incredible
insight into the world of the British and European post-war cultural scene of
the fifties and sixties. It is a book that has appearances (either “on screen”
or “off”) by such luminaries as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Chris Marker, Walerian
Borowczyk, Humphrey Lyttleton. Even Jacques Tati pops up for a somewhat funny
and rather irritating cameo (which, for this reader, was fitting as, I’m afraid
to confess, I’ve always found Tati’s movies only somewhat funny and, most
certainly, irritating). This was a time when, in some circles, you weren’t
quite sure what event caused the most shock in Britain — WW II or the
publication of ‘Ulysses’. It is truly, and wildly, fascinating.
And into this post-war,
burgeoning counter-culture scene comes B.S. Johnson; a young writer/poet from a
modest working-class background and determined to continue the work Joyce and
Beckett had started and to prove the form of the novel need not be purely for
“fiction”. Stating that “telling stories is telling lies” Johnson would write
books mercilessly based only on events he had experienced first-hand and with a
savagely obsessive need to constantly re-invent the form of the novel. So he
wrote books with holes cut in certain pages allowing the reader to glimpse into
the future along with a novel where all the chapters are loose and contained
within a box so the reader can experience the randomness of life.
But this, pretty much
necessarily, meant abandoning the “Victorian” idea of story, of traditional
narrative and saying goodbye to large and lucrative book sales. And this is
part of what makes ‘Fiery Elephant’ work and become so revealing as Coe’s
self-declared stance of being a “traditional novelist” means this difference
between the two allows for literary contrasts, and hence insights, to be
revealed.
It is this tension
between Coe and Johnson, the marked differences of styles, which makes ‘Fiery
Elephant’ vibrate and reveal so much about the writing process. This tension
simmers until Coe’s anger and frustration, not only towards some of Johnson’s
beliefs and ideals but, most importantly, his suicide (which hums like
background radiation throughout) becomes explicit and Coe cannot help but be
constantly drawn back to the question of “Why?” or, at least, preparing us to
consider asking that question. The love, admiration and respect towards Johnson
are there but also, and this seems a common response to the man, the
hair-pulling exasperation at a lot of his stances and fights and, ultimately,
his final decision.
So it’s more than just a
straight bio, although we do get all the pertinent details and events of
Johnson’s life-story: graduating with a 2:2; grudgingly taking a teaching
position; becoming a sports journalist; winning writing competitions; having
his first novel published; friendships made and lost; arguments with
publishers; marriage and kids; professional successes and failures etc. But
Coe, as a nod to B.S., allows himself with play with form, so prose sections
cut to extracts from letters or to a short film script all keeping the style
varied. There are footnotes a plenty providing informative and comic asides and
the end (spoilers!) functions as a sort of fragmented roll-call of the various
people from Johnson’s life recollecting and summarising their thoughts, both
good and bad, about the man.
It is easy to understand
that frustration and anger. Johnson was a man of contradictions. Left wing but
oddly conservative. Self-proclaimed member of the avant-garde but dismissive of
the sixties counter-culture and, especially, hippies. At one time a materialist
who couldn’t not help but look at life, mortality and decay in a fetishticly
unflinchingly way, yet a man who claims to have seen the physical manifestation
of The White Goddess. Wait, the what?! I thought B.S. was a rational atheist?
But this is just one of the contradictions that becomes a clue in the final
analysis. And the White Goddess will return later.
Until she does, ‘Fiery
Elephant’ is the best insight into the life, and struggles, of the British
literary set I’ve read as Johnson stamps his way round the publishing houses of
sixties London, trumpeting flames from his trunk, as he demands why his novels
haven’t been picked-up in Europe or America or why the printers can’t meet his
exacting demands. Then there are the furious letters to anybody who rejects him
or fails to see his genius.
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This is some of the best
vain-glorious invective ever as Johnson is, at times, almost continuously
firing off letters, memos or articles tearing people new ones all over the
place for not seeing his greatness. Johnson provides some of the most hilarious
pieces of rabid self-aggrandising I’ve ever read. Nearly every letter to a
publisher, reviewer or literary journal would invariably include the lines “Do
you know I have been compared to both Joyce and Beckett?!’ over and over again.
Any piece of praise he has garnered seems to have been memorised and repeated
ad infinitum. The most desperate point comes when Johnson includes a quotation
of praise by his hero Samuel Beckett that is used on a cover to his latest
book. However, these words of praise came from Beckett in a private
correspondence to Johnson so, understandably, ol’ Sammy was furious.
However, I do find
Johnson’s author egotism direct and honest. When he breaks the fourth wall and
addresses the audience or writes himself into his own novel he does so
explicitly unlike, for example, John Fowles (now THERE’S a massive walking ego
for you) who sneaked himself into ‘The French Lieutenants Woman’ like some sort
of surreptitious god admiring his own creation. I mean, come on! Even Vivian
Darkbloom would roll his eyes at that!
This ego also highlights
the solipsism in Johnson’s work. As opposed to a writer such as Alain
Robbe-Grillet who’s gaze was focused purely outward on the geometry of
surfaces, Johnson’s gaze, however, seemed turned aggressively inward, to map
the “geography of the inside of his own skull”. It is easy to imagine Johnson
getting lost inside his own internal landscape.
But I love writers and
performers who talk straight from unadulterated personal experience. It’s one
of the reasons I was a massive fan of the monologist Spalding Gray who, like
Johnson, would lay his life bare in front of an audience, almost as a form of
therapy until his untimely death by suicide at the age of… hmm, you know, I
think I’m starting to see a morbid pattern with these striving for honesty
writers.
And although I admire his
view to write only what has happened to the author, I would be lying if I said
I found this obsession to truth preferable to the escapist invention of someone
like Thomas Pynchon and his joyous demonstration of the imagination. Johnson
had a fierce imagination but, like his taste in architecture, it sometimes
seemed of a brutalist design. Besides, we are creatures of pattern recognition
and when there are no patterns we provide them. Projecting structure onto
external reality isn’t a lie as such but more of a survival mechanism; a
cognitive prosthetic that helps us navigate, and tolerate, our environment. And
as we will see, if your world is collapsing or spiralling out of control then
these stories can become a matter of life or death. And as Coe points out — stories
do matter because we share them. Even Robbe-Grillet for all his
experimentalism, ultimately, went back to the Greeks.
So again, there are
contradictions. B.S. Johnson might have declared all is chaos but it is
striking how much he needed structure — family, work, society itself and, most
of all, his superstitions. He approached writing in an almost religious sense
which could explain why his method of writing was so ritualistic, almost
sacramental as he attempted to transubstantiate experience into art for his
muse, the White Goddess.
Ah, the White Goddess,
that moonscaped muse that drives many poets to inspiration but also
destruction. An inspiration to writers including Sylvia Plath who, until her
untimely suicide at the early age of… fuck me, another one! This White Goddess
seems somewhat bloody dangerous!
And as Johnson enters
into the most dangerous time in his life so he is seemingly drawn back into the
infantile, narcissistic, paranoid, illusionary world of the occult and
paranormal. The refuge of people obviously in pain and suffering from trauma
and easily exploitable. It does seem it is at times of stress that The White
Goddess returns.
This combination of
superstition, paranoia and dangerous characters in his final days is mirrored
in the real world by the manifestation of a certain Michael Bannard — a sort of
bogus Alaister Crowley (if that’s not a tautology) whom we first meet
relatively early on. It is a relationship that, at first, we feel will be one
of relative youth, of young men experimenting in various ways. But Coe leaves
this period not with closure but with what feels like a subtle threat — that
Bannard will return again at a later date into Johnson’s life. When this
happens it feels like the tale has taken on the qualities of a nightmarish
dream and just as Johnson “saw” The White Goddess become physically manifest
so, almost like an inversion of her, Bannard’s physicality dissolves and haunts
Johnson like a spectre, sometimes even from the other side of the world. There
are no accounts of Johnson’s last hours but Coe, and we, know enough to
speculate and there are many unsettling intimations.
Towards the end Johnson’s
paranoia and superstitions spiral rapidly out of control. There is a sequence
that would be funny if it wasn’t so indicative of his state of mind where he is
outraged at the Apollo Moon landings which he declares as faked. The idea of
his Moon Goddess being violated by man (and in the name of a Sun god too for
added irony) is too much to bear. He refuses the truth so he invents a story, a
lie.
What is also interesting
is how the word “puritanical” is declared in the first few pages of ‘Fiery
Elephant’. It is a word Coe uses to describe both Johnson and himself. It is
used in reference to literary beliefs but I think it resonates a little deeper
too because in responding to Johnson a lot is also revealed about Coe. Just as
Johnson was happy to say anything and everything (“exeleutherostomise — to
speak out freely, especially in an inappropriate moment”) so Coe is revealed to
be, in contrast, a bit of a prude at times declaring at one point, like a
teenager feigning moral outrage, that Johnson has provided “too much
information” after B.S. admits to wanking quite a bit during a prolonged period
of singledom. Not, exactly, a shocking revelation.
Yet wisely, and
sensitively, Coe doesn’t describe (yet makes it obvious) how Johnson took his
own life. The respect is there and it is deeply moving. But what would Johnson
himself have thought of how Coe writes his suicide? Should Coe have told the
“truth” and provided the unpleasant details with the same morbid fascination
that Johnson describes the motorcyclist being sliced like “cheese cutter
cutting through cheese” in “Fat Man On a Beach”? Of course not and the balance
swings back to Coe; there is such a thing as too much information after all and
this is information we do not, and should not, really want to know. This is a
moment in which we want to see, and remember, Johnson decently.
‘Like a Fiery Elephant’ lives up to its title.
It has heft and weight and blazes with a burning intelligence. Jonathan Coe as
written a biography, an insight into literature, a detective story and a
history of a period of time in Britain. It is a remarkable achievement. What is
also remarkable is that for all his railing against “narrative” is how B.S.
Johnson seemed to see so much unavoidable dramatic and narrative beats and
themes in his own life — to be dead by the age of 29 or to go without love as
sacrifice to the muse etc.
“Telling stories is telling
lies”. Could it be that, in the end, it was a story that killed B.S. Johnson? A
narrative of his own making?
