The Unfortunates

Description

B.S. Johnson’s lost classic has been showered with praise: named one of their Ten Best Books of 2008, listed in 100 Notable Books of 2008, and declared it to be “his most daring work.” A legendary 1960s experiment in form, 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. 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. A gift “book in a box” by one of Britain’s greatest modern writers, hailed as “a triumph” by . Far from some modernist stunt, the form of the book dovetails beautifully with Johnson’s subject–the accidental yet persistent nature of memory….This book, with no belief in God, no hope of heaven, makes you feel the stuff of life as sacred, and our inability to hold on to it as damnation enough for anyone to be made to bear. You’ll fall in love. Beautifully reprinted with an invaluable introductory essay … allows us a peculiar feeling of discovery. A most gifted author.