The Unfortunates

B.S. Johnson's lost classic has been showered with praise: New York Magazine named The Unfortunates one of their Ten Best Books of 2008, listed in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2008, and The Los Angeles Times declared it to be "his most daring work."

A legendary 1960s experiment in form, The Unfortunates is B. S. Johnson's famous "book in a box," in which the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in any order the reader chooses. A sportswriter, sent to a Midlands town on a weekly assignment, finds himself confronted by ghosts from the past when he disembarks at the train station. Memories of one of his best, most trusted friends, a tragically young victim of cancer, begin to flood through his mind as he attempts to go about the routine business of reporting a soccer match.

The Unfortunates is a book of passionate honesty and dark, courageous humor: a meditation on death and a celebration of friendship which also offers a remarkably frank self-portrait of its author.

Author: B. S. Johnson
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 11/17/2009
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Boxed Set
Weight: 0.86lbs
Size: 7.81h x 5.34w x 1.15d
ISBN: 9780811217439


Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 08/24/2008 pg. 14
New York Times Book Review 08/31/2008 pg. 18
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/07/2008 pg. 10

About the Author
Johnson, B. S.: - B. S. Johnson (Bryan Stanley Johnson) (1933-1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet, literary critic and filmmaker. He was born into a working-class family, was evacuated from London during World War II, and left school at sixteen to work as an accountant. However, he taught himself Latin in the evenings, and with this knowledge, managed to pass the university exam for King's College London. After he graduated Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry was released in 2000. Increasingly depressed by his failure to succeed commercially, and beset by family problems, Johnson committed suicide.Coe, Jonathan: - Jonathan Coe is a journalist who writes for the Guardian and the London Review of Books. He is the author of a biography of Humphrey Bogart and three novels.