B.S. Johnson: A Critical Reading

This study introduces the prose writing of B.S. Johnson, the quintessentially lost or neglected British novelist. Famously he rejected fiction as lies. Celebrated in his short lifetime (1933-1973), Johnson both adapts the experimentalism of the nouveau roman, and commits his narratives to a plural and chaotic notion of truth as a literary critique. Using appropriate theorists and philosophers, Philip Tew contextualizes Johnson's works and advances a reading that sustains the novelist's importance and redeems the relevance of the socio-critical aspects of his oeuvre.