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buying_time_'s review
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
The 4.75 is somewhat for the sheer amount of research that Coe has done just to get this book out. It's an incredible feat of immersion in someone else's life, and then making sense of it. Even though Johnson only lived for four decades, he did not skimp on getting the stuff in him out of him and onto paper.
Bryan Stanley Johnson was an experimental writer. And as a writer he flourished in the 1960s and 70s -- and by flourished, I mean that he was pretty active writing books that people didn't really buy, creating documentaries that people didn't like, penning collections of poems about his life, and writing acerbic letters to people that could help him, but ultimately wouldn't or couldn't work for or with Johnson...for reasons (mainly Johnson's). I think it's safe to say that Bryan Stanley Johnson was a tedious man. And yet...
Coe's impressive doorstop of a biography outlines Johnson as an incredibly talented and important writer of his age. Johnson's approach to writing was to tell the truth, rather than telling the lies that he accused traditional fiction of telling. A working-class writer who became friends with Beckett (he actually idolised and aspired to be Beckett), Johnson refused to compromise on his view that the form of the traditional novel needed updating. And if you've never read a novel by B S Johnson, then there is certainly enough about them in Coe's book to give you more than a flavour of the writer, and why he's still worth reading today, some four decades after he committed suicide at just forty years old.
Johnson was also much liked and loved by those who knew, worked with, and even those who he clashed with. Coe paints a deeply coloured portrait from the professional, personal and private relationships of a man who was very insecure about himself, incredibly verbose and certain about the importance of his work, but one whose depression, anxieties and insecurities would ultimately take its toll on him completely.
As a reader who knew nothing of Johnson, Coe certainly changes that. But to say that Johnson comes across as 'loveable' is certainly not the case; by the end, you could say that he is 'likeable' and 'relatable'. You really do get the sense of why Johnson's friends and foes never seemed to hate or even dislike him -- despite, like I say, a deeply tedious side to his character. And yet, it is Coe's style of writing that keeps you reading.
Unlike a lot of biographies I've read, I got the impression that Coe, like those who knew, loved or even came into contact with Johnson during his life, could not help but like him -- in-spite of Bryan being Bryan. And by the end I certainly had that same sense. I have since gone on to read a few of Johnson's books, and have genuinely appreciated them more because of this biography.
Bryan Stanley Johnson was an experimental writer. And as a writer he flourished in the 1960s and 70s -- and by flourished, I mean that he was pretty active writing books that people didn't really buy, creating documentaries that people didn't like, penning collections of poems about his life, and writing acerbic letters to people that could help him, but ultimately wouldn't or couldn't work for or with Johnson...for reasons (mainly Johnson's). I think it's safe to say that Bryan Stanley Johnson was a tedious man. And yet...
Coe's impressive doorstop of a biography outlines Johnson as an incredibly talented and important writer of his age. Johnson's approach to writing was to tell the truth, rather than telling the lies that he accused traditional fiction of telling. A working-class writer who became friends with Beckett (he actually idolised and aspired to be Beckett), Johnson refused to compromise on his view that the form of the traditional novel needed updating. And if you've never read a novel by B S Johnson, then there is certainly enough about them in Coe's book to give you more than a flavour of the writer, and why he's still worth reading today, some four decades after he committed suicide at just forty years old.
Johnson was also much liked and loved by those who knew, worked with, and even those who he clashed with. Coe paints a deeply coloured portrait from the professional, personal and private relationships of a man who was very insecure about himself, incredibly verbose and certain about the importance of his work, but one whose depression, anxieties and insecurities would ultimately take its toll on him completely.
As a reader who knew nothing of Johnson, Coe certainly changes that. But to say that Johnson comes across as 'loveable' is certainly not the case; by the end, you could say that he is 'likeable' and 'relatable'. You really do get the sense of why Johnson's friends and foes never seemed to hate or even dislike him -- despite, like I say, a deeply tedious side to his character. And yet, it is Coe's style of writing that keeps you reading.
Unlike a lot of biographies I've read, I got the impression that Coe, like those who knew, loved or even came into contact with Johnson during his life, could not help but like him -- in-spite of Bryan being Bryan. And by the end I certainly had that same sense. I have since gone on to read a few of Johnson's books, and have genuinely appreciated them more because of this biography.
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