B.S. Johnson – författare

Why don’t you take a permanent job, Albert? You’re twenty-eight now, you know,” his mother remarks when he goes on his weekend duty visit home. Albert Angelo is by vocation an architect and only by economic necessity working as a substitute teacher. He had thought he was, if not dedicated, at least competent. But now, on temporary assignments in schools located in the tough neighborhoods of London, Albert feels ineffectual. He is failing as a teacher and failing to fulfill himself as an architect. And then, too, he is pained by the memory of a failed love affair. “I’m trying to say something not tell a story telling stories is telling lies and I want to tell the truth,” Johnson insists in the penultimate section of the book when his authorial voice intervenes. Or, as Johan Thielman writes in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, “Johnson is trying to use fiction to reproduce life as closely as possible and, in his inevitable failure to succeed, he extends our notion of the possibilities of the novel…he made a body of work which remains fascinating, not in the least because he achieved one of his main ambitions: to be totally honest…His novels are the moving traces of a passionate devotion to and pursuit of his truth.”

House Mother Normal, subtitled “A Geriatric Comedy,” is the English writer B. S. Johnson’s fifth novel. Unusual in both its subject and structure, this novel is a remarkable study of old age, stripped of sentimentality and spiked with bizarre language and perceptions. Made up of eight monologues describing a single day at a nursing home, House Mother Normal explores the failing minds of the elderly with precision, humor, and unflagging compassion, and Johnson achieves, with inventiveness and escalating absurdity, a vivid multidimensional effect.

Straight from the deepest crevices of the soul, the poems in Rhymes From Darker Times are not your typical "e;Roses are Red"e; poems. They stem straight from heartache, let-downs, and sometimes even late-night-pour-me-another-one-feel-sorry-for-myself binges. They will take you from strange to odd, weird to sad and back again.

Maters, Taters & Grits is not your typical book. It is probably like nothing like you've read before. It won't take you very long, as it's a short lil' read. But it was written with the intention to make the reader smile, laugh and maybe even take a walk down memory lane for a minute. Written as if she was sitting in your living room, B.S. Johnson writes just how she speaks. With Southern slang. Although she makes it very clear she understands and comprehends proper English, she embraces her "e;redneck"e; background and runs with it! Come learn about life in the South, Georgia at least, written in a comical way from someone who just wants to make you smile. You just might enjoy yourself. :)