These were the immortal words of BS Johnson, the avant-garde novelist whose insight into the human condition was so raw, brilliant and painful that it led to his suicide at the age of 40. It was this man that acclaimed British novelist Jonathan Coe focused on in his recent autobiography, ‘Like a Fiery Elephant: the work of BS Johnson’.
Author of six best-selling novels, including ‘What a Carve-Up’ and The Rotter’s Club, Coe has been described as ‘one of the UK’s funniest serious novelists’. He first became aware of BS Johnson at the age of 13, when he and his family watched ‘Fat Man on a Beach’, an unlikely (and undoubtedly rather unusual for the early 1970s) documentary about Porth Ceiriad Bay in Wales, featuring 40 minutes of Johnson reading poetry, playing in the sand with found objects and delivering wonderfully random dialogue such as: “Cut to a bunch of bananas.” Expecting a tourist programme about their favourite holiday destination, the older members of the Coe family were as unimpressed as they were unaware that only two weeks after this funny, unusual and inventive little film was made, BS Johnson had killed himself. But in the young Jonathan Coe, the seed had been planted. He would later spend seven years of his own life trying to uncover the story of Johnson’s.
Speaking at Pave in conversation with Dr Melanie Williams, Coe’s interest in and knowledge of his subject was evident in his eloquent responses to questions asked by Dr Williams and the audience. His talk was illustrated with two short films, BS Johnson’s ‘You’re Human Like the Rest of Them’ and the last fifteen minutes of ‘Fat Man on a Beach’. Both films were not without significant effect. In ‘You’re Human Like the Rest of Them’ the main character Haakon forces us to take a look at the futilities of our existence; pervaded throughout with a sense of unrelenting dourness, the film nevertheless displays a wickedly dark humour with Haakon’s stark and exasperated declarations about the horror of mortality often contrasted with blank looks from colleagues and the occasional yawning schoolboy.
Even if you were not aware of the tragic outcome of BS Johnson’s life, ‘Fat Man on a Beach’, whilst appearing to be light-hearted enough, has an undeniably poignant feel. Sitting in various poses on the beach, Johnson reads poetry, throws bananas into the sea and ruminates on the oddities of life. Although his tone is jovial enough, his eyes show a seriousness that sits uncomfortably with his antics. The film finishes with a widening shot of him striding off into the sea – again, something that is impossible to view without thinking of the reality of his suicide.
So what did we learn about BS Johnson? That he was a man whose work was highly experimental, as illustrated by ‘Travelling People’, ‘Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry’ and his ‘novel in a box’, ‘The Unfortunates’ to name but a few of his works. He was an intense, passionate yet clearly funny and likeable man. He committed himself to the pursuit of truth in fiction, and he struggled to reconcile his creative beliefs with the reality of his work and the demands of fiction. Sadly, when he committed his suicide, the literary world lost one of its greatest and most innovative talents.
CB and SH
More from Eldred Jiggle at
Chips (With Gravy) On My Shoulder: Fat Man on a beach in a swanky bar at the end of my street in Hull
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