Events & Reviews at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library

B.S. Johnson was the perfect subject for a brilliant biography, and new interest in his work has been sparked by the recent republication of The Unfortunates (a novel about a sports writer in which you can sort the unbound chapters of the book in any order). While it’s easy to get lost in his works, each of which is an utterly unique attempt to reinvent storytelling from scratch, his life ranks with that of Vladimir Nabokov in competing with his own works for interest. Jonathan Coe won a host of awards and accolades when this came out a few years ago, but the book is still best recommended with this quote from The San Francisco Chronicle: ‘It’s as if Paul McCartney wrote a song about John Cage, and it made you want to listen to them both all over again’. Continuum, $23.95