The last novel of the avant-garde British writer BS Johnson, published shortly before his death by suicide aged just 40 in 1973. Johnson was a forceful advocate of innovation in literature, and against reversion to the conventional 19th century style novel, and while Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry is perhaps his most accessible novel, it is certainly far from conventional, as well as a lot of fun. Nicolas Tredell (2010), Fighting Fictions: The Novels of B. S. Johnson. Paupers' Press, ISBN 978-0946650996

Why am I writing this article about B.S. Johnson’s small book Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry ? Is it because it has been 47 years since the publication? Or is it because it has been 564 months? Or is it because 2020 is the 47 th anniversary of B.S. Johnson’s death? Or maybe because this year would have been the 87 th birthday of the writer? No, none of these work, they aren’t rounded, divisible by five or ten. Let’s try a different avenue. OK. Yes. Yes, maybe, maybe this could work. I am writing this article because B.S. Johnson sounds kind of like that blond mopped Tory who is At the 56th British Academy Film Awards, held in 2003, writer Simon Bent was nominated in the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer category but lost out to Asif Kapadia for The Warrior. There are some grand aggravations, but Christie is not without ambition and resorts to some aggro of his own, to balance things out. There's the usual Johnsonian play and experimentation -- the ledger sheets, for example, or the intrusive authorial presence making itself felt -- but Johnson goes about it with a minimum of fuss.

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A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2000.

Christie is therefore an average shape, height, weight, build, and colour. Make him what you will: probably in the image of yourself. You are allowed complete freedom in the matter of warts and moles; as long as he has at least one of either. (51) ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," an attitude like that can also change a moribund system. In one exchange with his office supervisor Christie explains he was absent from work because of his mother's funeral: Christie's other doings -- his small and large acts of sabotage -- and his final undoing are also very well done. The book and film are both set contemporarily to when they were released, so whilst the novel is set in the early 1970s the film is set in 1999, and Christie’s ledger includes cultural references such as Oasis, Ben Elton, The Simpsons and Chris Morris, along with Christie’s gravestone showing he dies in December of that year.Luke Haines received a nomination for Best Music at the 2001 British Independent Film Awards, [14] and at the same ceremony the following year the film won the award for Most Effective Distribution Campaign [15] Differences Between Novel and Film [ edit ] Setting [ edit ] The eponymous Christie is a young bank clerk without qualifications who starts to tally his life with the double-entry bookkeeping principle that debits (hurts inflicted on him) need to be balanced out with credits (to himself, by avenging the hurt). It starts out with small chagrins that are recompensed with silly innocuous ‘subversive’ acts but the debits get massive rapidly and Christie’s retaliatory methods get more grandiose and serious spoiler: massively murderous. At times the balance scoring can get tedious but, after all, that’s in the nature of bookkeeping. Johnson scatters many metafictional elements throughout the novel, often for comedic effect. Characters frequently mention in passing that they know that they are works of fiction, such as when Malry's mother says to him that she has been his mother for the purposes of the novel (27), or when Christie complains that the novel contains too many exclamation marks (166). Johnson also frequently emphasizes the written, and thereby invented, nature of the text. Following Malry's poisoning of a reservoir, Johnson writes: Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry is well worth reading -- both a great deal of fun and thoughtful, too. By all accounts, B. S. Johnson was the principal figure in the ’60s-’70s wave of British experimental fiction and it is said that Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry, his penultimate work, is his most accessible novel. I didn’t have any difficulties reading it, the ‘experimentation’ is mild by comparison to other novels I’ve equally enjoyed but probably because the experimental fiction has evolved and branched out in many directions since Johnson’s pioneering times.

Johnson introduces himself as a character near the novel's end, apologising to Christie that he won't be able to continue the book much further—to which Christie replies that people don't equate length with importance, and that readers no longer want long novels (165). Johnson delays his description of Christie until the sixth chapter, where he provides a description "with diffidence," fearing that the reader will simply ignore it, or disagree: His family is not wealthy, and he wants to be near money so simple Christie takes a position at a bank.

Christie,’ I warned him, ‘it doesn’t seem to me possible to take this novel much further. I’m sorry.’ The film received its UK premiere on the 15th of August 2002 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. [6] Reception [ edit ] Critical response [ edit ] Even if we understand that all is chaos, the understanding itself represents a denial of chaos, and must therefore be an illusion." Give and take, debit and credit -- or aggravation and recompense, as he defines it for his own purposes. Malry uses the principles of double-entry bookkeeping to 'settle' these accounts against the world.